Repost: Dead Space 3 Microtransactions Break Internal Logic

Ben Kuchera of the (fantastic) PA Report wrote an interesting post about the recent news that Dead Space 3 will include microtransactions allowing players to purchase materials to craft weapons. The article touches on some of the qualities I most enjoy about the Dead Space series, and so I figured I'd chime in a bit here.

Kuchera notes how the Dead Space games have always been particularly effective at establishing and drawing players into a coherent and self-contained world: the menus appear in the game, all information typically conveyed via a HUD are contained within the game world, etc. The point of all this is to more effectively draw players into the world of the game and hold them there. The most superficial effect of this is to increase players' tension by refusing to allow them to put the action on hold while they access their inventory (as was the convention prior to Dead Space). However, Kuchera argues that this tension is but one symptom of the greater immersion that the game creates by forcing the player to participate in its world in the same way as the fictional characters within it. At no point in the game does the player engage in activity that their fictitious character does not also undertake; in effect the game world is constructed so as to force player immersion by limiting their interactions with the game world to those of their character.

The availability of microtransactions in the upcoming Dead Space 3 breaks this immersion via the deus ex machina availability of crafting materials. When players use a terminal they are told they can access "Downloadable Content" by which "A god-like hand is introduced and drops supplies in the lap of the character." This whole availability breaks the immersion spell that the Dead Space games have so effectively established, and moreover upsets the delicate sense of isolation and desperation that the survival-horror genre is premised upon.

The offending intrusion on Dead Space's fiction.

Kuchera's argument is compelling, and though even he acknowledges the nerdiness of getting hung-up on such a detail, I think it's a significant sacrifice on the part of the developers. A big part of what made Dead Space unique was its uncompromising immersion, forcing them to exist in the game world. It's unfortunate to have that quality diluted for the sake of some extra income and a further attempt at attracting a wider audience by dumbing-down the experience.

Tom Phillips at (the also fantastic) Eurogamer has also chimed in with a counterpoint, arguing that the kind of gamers who will be bothered by this feature are also not the types who are likely to use the it. Rather, Phillips argues, the microtransactions will only be taken advantage of by more casual gamers while more hardcore players will likely ignore them. While I think Phillips is right practically speaking, at the same time I'm more in line with Kuchera in feeling that there's a more significant cost to the sacrifice. I don't think "hardcore gamers" will take advantage of the microtransactions, and while I do feel there's a somewhat legitimate argument to be made against their existence at all I'm perfectly happy to simply ignore them. However the fact that they're implemented in such a way as to break the immersive fiction of the series will bother me if/when I play Dead Space 3. From all accounts the menus make their existence painfully clear so as to attract potential buyers, and that fourth-wall-breaking advertising is necessarily going to take away from the sense of isolation and immersion that the series' horror is based upon.

What do you guys think? Is it too early to tell, is Phillips right and are Kuchera and I just whining EA-haters, or is this a legitimately intrusive dilution of one of Dead Space's most unique qualities?

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'Reposts' are inspired by other articles or blog posts around the Internet. They are used here with accreditation as the basis for short bursts of Max's interests.

Customizable Button Mapping for Disabled Gamers

Update: Added a title to the post. Whoops :S

A few weeks ago I posted about how Sony San Diego's upcoming MLB '11: The Show will include an "Association for Disabled Virtual Athletes" mode. Basically the game will be playable using only one button, making it accessible to disabled players. Anyway, this morning I read on Joystiq that developer Visceral Games plans to patch customizable controls into the PC version of their recent Dead Space 2.

The patch comes in response to an online petition and a forum post by Gareth Garratt, a player living with cerebral palsy. Garratt has been playing through Dead Space 2 on his PC using a mouse as his primary input device. Frustrated at the inability to program a "walk forward" command to one of the mouse buttons, Garratt posted on publisher EA Games' forums. There he complained about his difficulties with Dead Space 2 and asked the developers to acknowledge the needs of disabled gamers.

Garratt playing Fallout 3 by using his chin to manipulate the mouse

Garratt's post directed readers towards an already existing online petition that asks game developers and publishers to include custom button mapping in their games. At publishing the petition has received almost 25 thousand signatures, and evidently it took less than that to convince Visceral Games to support the cause. Executive Producer Steve Papoutsis has told Joystiq that the PC version of Dead Space 2 will be receiving a patch that will allow players to re-map the games controls to the mouse. For the full release head over to the original post over at Joystiq.

I don't know if it's just that I only recently started paying attention, but it seems like 2011 is proving to be a great year for disabled gamer accessibility. The original Dead Space was hugely enjoyable, and so I've really been looking forward to Dead Space 2. The sequel garnered excellent reviews, so I was already thinking about picking it up (eventually). This news gives me one more (altruistic-ish) reason to buy the game and support developer Visceral Games.

Thoughts on Dead Space and Horror

Fair warning: this post is particularly rambly, even for me.

I recently finished EA's 2008 survival-horror game Dead Space. The game's basic premise is "zombies in space," and in a lot of ways it resembles a futuristic Resident Evil.  It's also hugely influenced by films like Alien, Event Horizon, and The Thing. Seeing as how I adore all of those things it was no wonder that Dead Space would spark my interest, and having played through it I am happy to say that the game is awesome. It manages to keep you in constant suspense by cleverly utilizing horror tropes to create an unpredictable and terrifying atmosphere. On top of that the innovative strategic dismemberment gameplay mechanic demands that you approach each regular enemy differently, and the results are always ridiculously gruesome.

Dead Space has been out since 2008 and so it has already received massive amounts of coverage and a prequel, and next year it will be followed by Dead Space 2. I'm really excited for the sequel because it sounds like the developers are going to fix the only major problem with the original game: the story. Dead Space fails to emphasize its underlying story through gameplay and instead tasks the player with a series of contextually necessary objectives. In the end the only real accomplishment in the game is sheer survival, which is great but not substantial enough to really excite. There's also the fact that the protagonist, Issac Clarke, is a silent protagonist, an archaic gaming trope that invites the player to project onto the hero so as to give them a character; it's a bit of a cop-out writing-wise but nevertheless can be effective under the right circumstances (see Half-Life or Zelda). But Dead Space foregrounds Issac's development, particularly his declining mental stability, and given this focus it's counter-intuitive to make him silent and devoid of personality throughout most of the game.

I'm pretty late to the Dead Space party but I don't seem to be the only one: Scott Juster at Experience Points put up an excellent review of the game literally the day after I finished playing it. His post is well worth a read and he's now written a follow-up piece detailing how the game effects a horrific transformation in both Issac and the player. It's based upon a theory that Gerard Delaney posted at Binary Swan to describe how the real monsters in zombie movies are the human protagonists.

Even if you're not interested in Dead Space, Delaney's post makes some good points about the zombie genre, something I haven't thought about in a long time. It got me thinking about some of my favourite horror tales, including zombie movies, the sci-fi films mentioned above, and even a few classic novels and short stories. Far from being unique to the zombie subgenre, a lot of the most horrifying stories show monstrous transformations in their protagonists. The Thing, for example, focuses on the effects of paranoia by introducing a hostile, shape-shifting alien into a group of men. The Descent likewise examines how interpersonal relations and social niceties break down when a group of friends gets lost in an unexplored cave system.

Monsters and villains can be terrifying, but it's truly horrifying when protagonists are compromised. These are the characters we most easily identify with and so we can understand and even relate to their transformations, which in turn invites us to examine our values and limitations. Juster makes a compelling argument for Dead Space achieving this, but I think he's mostly projecting his own reaction to the sheer amount of gore that results from severing enemy limbs. Issac isn't defined well enough as a character to have a real transformation, he remains at all times a silent protagonist that stands as a placeholder for the player. He is what we put into him, no more, no less.

Dead Space succeeds in creating a terrifying atmosphere and repulsive gore, but there's just not enough to the game's characters or objectives. Hopefully the next one will fix this by giving Issac a voice, although it'll take more than that to make the story both horrifying and compelling.