On the one hand, the game looks gorgeous. The developers pushed the envelope on their previous games as well, but this one severely improves upon them. Not only because the world looks fantastic, but also because there are so many different views to take in. While in previous games after about 10 hours of playtime I had seen everything there was to see, and only had to expect more of it, I have spent about 40 hours in Skyrim now and I still get dazzled by new panorama’s and interesting recombinations of previously encountered elements. And I am sure there is still more to come.

On the other hand, the world feels so empty. There are dozens of towns, populated with hundreds of people, but none of them I find interesting in the least. They are meaningless answering machines who rattle off a prerecorded message when pushed a bit. The developers have not taken a single step to try to get me to empathize with any of them. A good example are the companions that help out during quests. These characters are just there, occasionally swinging a sword, carrying all the stuff that is too heavy to put in my own inventory. But they are not engaged with me, nor with my quest, nor with anything that is happening in the world.

Mechanically, the people of Skyrim can do a lot. They get up in the morning. They go to work. They go to a bar. They get into bed again. And the programmers have taken care to allow various interactions with these characters. If I feel a fancy, I can even get married to one. But why would I? If I take a roleplaying action such as marrying in a game, I need to roleplay that I actually like my S.O. And what is there to like about these zombies?

A lot of people love Skyrim. And a lot of people complain about it. What they complain about are mostly Skyrim‘s bugs. And there are bugs; plenty of them, and pretty serious ones too. To that extent, Skyrim is like all previous Bethesda games. But to me, the bugs are a relatively small problem; bugs can get fixed, but Skyrim‘s people cannot be made more engaging by patching the game.

For their next release, I hope that Bethesda will invest more into bringing some spirit to their characters. If need be, at the expense of the beauty of the surroundings. Because all that shaping of the world is clearly intended to bring it to life. But it will never actually come to life if it remains populated by the dead.

In the last weeks I replayed Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. This game is only seven years old, but that is ancient in video game terms.

I am not a Star Wars fan, but I am always keen on experiencing games by BioWare, so when Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was published, I played it. And I liked it a lot. It is one of my favorite games. When The Sith Lords was announced, I was eager to play it too. The Sith Lords was not produced by BioWare, but by Obsidian, using the BioWare engine. That gave a few grounds for worrying, but as some of the people who worked on it were also responsible for Planescape: Torment, my all-time favorite CRPG, I shoved those aside quickly.

The Sith Lords was a very weird experience. On the one hand, the game was epic in a way that not even the first game had been able to achieve. On the other hand, about three-quarters into the game is suddenly turned into a gauntlet where you only sliced down hordes of Sith enemies, until you got to fight Darth Traya at the end. Frankly, it was boring. And it was annoying as hell, because all the side characters, who seemed to play important roles in the story, failed to come to fruition. But there still were those first 25 hours of game time, which were building up a carefully-constructed tale — a tale with no real ending.

Nowadays we know that the reason for this epic failing is publisher LucasArts’ insistence that the game should be released in time for the Christmas sales. Obsidian had only 14 months to produce it. And when time fell short, they cut corners. They removed several sequences from the parts of the game that were already built, and lashed on a relatively short end sequence. And by that, they reduced what could have been one of the rare truly great video games to a mediocre mess. If one needs any indication of the lack of a heart in LucasArts, even for their cash-cow Star Wars, one only needs to look at how they treated The Sith Lords.

Interestingly, most of the content that was cut still existed somewhere on the release discs. Voice files had been recorded, areas had been designed and populated, and story sequences were defined. And through the years, fans of the game have been working to restore some of that lost content. Recently, mods were released which re-activate some of what was removed (you can search for “Restored content Sith Lords” to find it). For me, that was a reason to fire up the game again.

I just finished it, and this is what I think: The Sith Lords had the potential to pay off what it had set up. There were spotlight moments designed for all characters in the game. They all came together in the end. There was insight and understanding. There was truth, vengeance, mercy, and redemption. There were underhanded tactics, meaningful confrontations, actual challenges, and the culmination of several heroes’ journeys. There was sacrifice, heroism, joy, and finality. And the character that was the driving force behind the game, Kreia, proved to be more iconic than Darth Vader. It could have been wonderful.

Unfortunately, the Restored Content does not make the game what it should have been. It does bring the game as it should have been a lot closer. But areas are still bare, some story lines falter, and several pay-off moments that were planned are lacking, as there was insufficient material to get them in. Some of the sequences added (notably the HK50 factory) did not fit well into the game, and could even make it impossible to finish for an unprepared character.

Amongst Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons, Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, and Richard Garriott’s Ultima IX, Obsidian’s The Sith Lords lies on a pile of potential masterworks irreparably hurt by the money behind them. I do really appreciate all the work that went into the Restored Content mods, and I am grateful for having had the opportunity to experience what could have been. But the masterpiece that is hidden in The Sith Lords will never see the light of day.

Recently I decided to clench my teeth, and buy a tablet. I also knew what I wanted — I am not going to step into the Apple trap again, but the Androids are good enough now to warrant a purchase. So I went into a store and saw the Asus Transformer that I wanted. I slid my fingers across the screen, examined the webbrowser, and was pleased. Then I tried to lift it.

It was heavy! It was freakin’ HEAVY! I tried to lift some of the alternate offerings (including the iPad2), and they were all heavy! I mean, people talk about these things as if they are eBook readers. I have an eBook reader, and I can comfortably lie on my back, the reader in one hand hovering over my face, and read. These tablet computers I need to lift with two hands, and no way I can hold them over my face for any amount of reading time. Granted, my laptop is a bit heavier, but not much. No way I am going to drag both of these things around.

Reluctantly, I left the shop, deciding against buying a tablet now. Yes, I need one, but I need one that is light enough to drag around as an extra, and powerful enough to do my work on. That is not for sale right now. Why don’t these tablets provide what I need? Simple: because they are still a first generation. There is no doubt in my mind that within two or three years we will have powerful tablets that are also light.

There was a time that I went to work carrying a laptop, a phone, an electronic agenda, a GPS, a calculator, and a camera. I am really pleased that I now only need to bring a laptop and a phone, as all the other things are integrated in those. Recently I began to also take with me an eBook reader. As a tablet cannot be a replacement for any of these pieces of hardware, so as soon as I have a tablet, it is an extra piece of apparatus I need to drag around.

A tablet computer is an extra. It doesn’t replace anything. It doesn’t replace a laptop, because it hasn’t got a laptop’s power. It doesn’t replace a phone, because it hasn’t got phone capabilities. It doesn’t replace a camera or a GPS, because it is unwieldy. OK, it might replace a calculator, but I already have a calculator replacement in my phone. It is an extra, and as such it is merely extra weight. It doesn’t help me with my problem.

I will definitely get a tablet — once it allows me to leave other stuff at home. Such a tablet does not exist at the moment.

I now know why I see people mainly use tablets as toys. They are toys. Really, really expensive toys.

Normally these would be reason enough not to get the game published, but Portal was bundled with two other games in the Orange Box. Furthermore, the building of the game could be done pretty cheaply: it reused the Half Life 2 engine, its environments were all very similar and needed very little artwork, and only one voice actor was involved. All this together made it possible for this excellent game to see the light of day, and become very popular. So popular, in fact, that a sequel was made: Portal 2, which recently hit the market.

Sequels are a tricky business. In movies, barring rare exceptions, sequels are usually much worse than the originals. There are many reasons why that is the case. An important one is that the elements that made the original movie fun, no longer are new in the sequel. Ripping off a good movie and adding lots of special effects does not make a better product. In games we see similar problems, although the fast advances in technology make the chances for a sequel being good higher.

So, is Portal 2 any good?

In my opinion, Portal 2 is a truly excellent game. It took the core components of the original: the puzzles, the interesting characterization of the computer opponent GLaDOS, the self-contained environment, the atmosphere, and the surprising developments, and improved upon them. It did not change them, it improved.

The puzzles are still there: at the start of the game we even see the same puzzles as in the original game. Now, the game could have gotten away by using the same puzzle elements to create more puzzles of higher difficulty, but it did not do that. Instead, halfway through the game it adds a couple of new puzzle elements, which fit in very logically and consistently, to allow completely new puzzles to be created. Not harder ones (in fact, I think that the Portal 2 puzzles are all easier than the hardest ones from Portal), but different ones.

GLaDOS is still present, and has the same characterization as before. But now it is joined by a second personality, Wheatley, who is uniquely different but at least as much fun as GLaDOS. Also, the environment and atmosphere still feel like Aperture Science. Where the game was really improved was by the addition of a story. Not so much a story in which the player fulfills a role as protagonist, but the story of the history of Aperture Science, from its origins in 1952 until the present day. It explains the background of the developments of the Portal Gun, the puzzle environments, and the test subjects. Was that necessary? Absolutely not, as the original game proved. But it makes for the environments to have more meaning, and allows the introduction of slightly different visualizations of the environment elements, such as walls, signs, buttons, and computers.

One of the clearest indications of good game design in Portal 2 is the complete lack of cutscenes (except for the ending movie). While there are certainly many forced occurrences in the game, always the player is interacting. Interaction is the lifeblood of games, and game designers should not strive to be movie directors. Unfortunately, most of them seem to think that they are.

Portal 2 is as strong a game as the original Portal was. It took what was good about Portal, left it more or less unchanged, and added good stuff that fit in well.

The greatest problem with Portal 2 is its length. It can be played from start to finish in 6-8 hours. Longer than Portal, but much shorter than most competing games. And now it is published on its own, not bundled with anything, apart from a multiplayer mode which, frankly, is not what the game is about. Is Portal 2 too short? In my opinion its length is ideal for what it offers. Make it longer and it starts to get boring. The pacing of the game is exactly what it should be.

So, personally, I have no problems with Portal 2‘s length, but it will be hard to find publishers that are willing to invest in these shorter games. This particular game could be published because of its lineage. Other games of similar length will have a harder time to get published. Often we see game developers resort to padding to increase game length, which is usually detrimental to the game’s quality.

Will Portal 3 be published? I guess that depends on how well Portal 2 does. Will it be any good? In my opinion, it will be very hard to top the quality of Portal 2, but I would certainly be interested to see what the development team can do. Although just like in the movie business, in video games sequels of sequels are usually a disappointment.

A large part of the interview was on Ray Kurzweill’s claims that strong artificial intelligence will be achieved within a few decades, and that humans and computers will be integrated into a new transhuman whole. Kurzweill bases this idea on Moore’s Law, that says that processing capacity of computers doubles every 18 months. By extrapolation Kurzweill has calculated that computers surpass human capacities soon enough, and that we will thus see the rise of strong AI and transhuman beings.

On my main website I claim that within two decades we will see computer-controlled characters in games that are indistinguishable from human-controlled characters. I specifically claim this for games, as game worlds are rather limited. In my view, strong AI that works in the real world will take centuries to achieve, if we are able to achieve it at all. Thus, I seem to be in clear disagreement with Kurzweill.

True enough, I think that Kurzweill’s ideas are science fiction, fantasy, and a whole lot of wishful thinking. It is seriously misguided to believe that strong AI will arise during our lifetimes. Let me explain this with a metaphor.

Suppose that I want you to write a great novel, and I hand you a pencil and a sheet of paper. You tell me that you cannot write a great novel with a pencil and one sheet of paper. So I hand you another pencil and a second sheet of paper. You tell me that isn’t sufficient either. I now hand you two more pencils, a pencil sharpener, and ten more sheets of paper. Still not enough. And after having gone back and forth a couple of times, I have given you a whole box of pens and pencils in a rainbow of colors, several sharpeners, a stack of sheets a meter high, whiteout, some dictionaries, an encyclopaedia, and a bag of assorted writing paraphernalia. Now you have all the hardware that you could possibly need to write a great novel. Can you now write that novel?

Of course not. The hardware is a requirement, but not the most important ingredient for writing a novel. We know that a great novel can be written, because several great novels have been written in the past. But there is no recipe for writing a great novel. Sure, some forms of novels can be written without much creativity, but these will never be truly great.

In the same vein, we know that intelligence can exist because we can observe it all around us. We also have the capability to create programs that perform some specific tasks for which a very rudimentary form of intelligence is needed. And we know that building hardware that has the capacity of storing human-like intelligence might be doable. But having the hardware is only the first step for creating intelligence. And frankly, as we do not actually understand what intelligence is and how it comes about, we have no idea what the second step should be. We do not even know which problems we have to solve to create intelligence.

Obviously, a smart man such as Kurzweill who has studied the subject area knows all this. I can only assume that he makes his overblown claims because it helps him sell books and it works well in the talkshow circuit. It brings him fame and wealth, and he will not live long enough to be proven wrong.

Naturally, Kurzweill has been criticized by many scientists. But these do not get much attention from the media. That is not surprising. As a skeptic you can be sure that I will never be invited to Oprah.

We are also looking into possibilities to create a validated psychological profile by observing automatically a player’s behavior in a game. Psychologists usually employ introspective tests to build such a profile, but it is a well-known fact that the results of these tests are rather debatable. For instance, while it is assumed that a psychological profile changes only marginally over a few months, the difference in profiles determined by two tests with a few months in between might be radical. Our idea is that observation of the dozens of hours that someone plays a game might provide the means to build an accurate psychological profile of that person. And if the game is designed to build such a profile, it might go even faster.

One can argue that a game is not suitable for building a psychological profile, as a game provides a fantasy, and a person might act different in a fantasy than in real life. But that needn’t matter. If a player, while slightly provoked, kills off a whole village in-game when he is playing it for the first time, that certainly is indicative of a specific personality type, even if he would react rather demure to provocation in real life. One could even argue that when a situation encompasses no pressing outside influence (such as laws or peers), which is the case when playing a game, a person’s personality can truly come out.

The most convincing way to demonstrate our ideas is to use an actual, fairly recently published game. I think I have found that game with Fallout 3. Fallout 3 starts with a sequence of about one hour in which the player gets born, creates his character as a baby, then has a birthday party as a ten-year old, and finally must do a career aptitude test as a sixteen-year old. The sequence has encounters with several NPCs, and multiple possible ways of responding, from friendly to aggressive to obnoxious. This sequence has three purposes: (1) it teaches the player the game mechanics; (2) it allows the player to design his character; and (3) it soaks the player in the atmosphere of the game. The sequence would be ideal for the game to get to know the player, but is not used for that purpose (apart from checking whether the player prefers melee combat over ranged combat). The reason is probably that the designers would not know what to do with knowledge about a player’s psychological profile. Or maybe they do, but designing the game as a static experience is already work enough. Making the game adaptable would require a huge amount of extra work that they simply cannot afford.

In many domains outside game development interest in knowing a persons character through games exists. I am mainly thinking about serious games, which are usually employed to train a person for certain tasks. Training can be more effective if it is tailored to the trainee; not only to his skills and knowledge, but also to his character. And even commercial game developers can profit from further investigations in this area: some changes that certain player profiles would appreciate might be easy and cheap to implement, e.g., changes in prevalence of music, use of colors, or required speed and thinking time. If I look at myself as an example, I know several games which I do not like as they are, but which I probably would enjoy very much with a few simple changes (Katamari Damacy, for instance). The reason that I do not like such games can often be found in my psychological profile, as many of my preferences are shared by people with a similar profile.

Research in this area happens only at a small scale. Reasons are that it is new, and it requires knowledge of rather diverse areas, such as artificial intelligence, psychology, computer science, and sociology. It is also very time-consuming to execute. But I predict we will see more of it in the near future. I think there is a lot to gain, both for serious and commercial games.

That’s a bit of a disappointment, isn’t it? After all my deep, philosophical ramblings (har har) I am now going to review a game. And a game that has been out for more than six months at that. But, you know, this is my blog, and I can write about whatever I like. And it is not as if hundreds of people are reading this. Face it, I would get a bigger audience if I spray-painted my texts on a blank wall in my backyard.

The reason that I want to talk about Mass Effect 2 is that it is a game that dares to challenge game design conventions and does so, for the most part, successfully. When reading reviews of this game I was rather surprised by the fact that many reviewers consider it good, but not as good as the original Mass Effect. In my opinion, Mass Effect 2 is vastly superior to the original game.

The first Mass Effect is a fairly traditional space RPG. You explore the galaxy, building up a character and some companions by tweaking dozens of little knobs, you collect vast amounts of armor and weaponry only to sell off most of them, and you try to have some impact on a railroad story by either sucking up to or pissing off NPCs. It is pretty much a mix of BioWare’s own Knights of the Old Republic and Baldur’s Gate. The game is fun enough, but it feels rather stale, at least to me. We have seen this all before, and we will see it dozens time more.

Mass Effect 2 is a natural follow-up to the first Mass Effect. The story continues, the main character is still present, and many of the side-plots link back to the first game. No surprises there. But as far as design is concerned, BioWare made some striking improvements.

The first major improvement is that the health bar is gone. Well, it is not exactly gone, but it took me about half the game before I recognized it. This is funny, as in virtually all RPGs the health bar is the one thing that you want to see on the screen. Players are constantly watching the health bar, and trying to decide what would be an opportune time to pull out that health potion or medkit. None of that in Mass Effect 2. If you are close to dying (and you often will be) that is clear from the red haze on the screen and the audible pounding of your (in-game) heart. When that happens, you take cover for a couple of seconds, your suit regenerates you, and you are as good as new. It is quick, it is simple, and it allows you to keep your attention on the game visuals, and not on your stats.

The second major improvement is that BioWare threw out the arsenal, all the weapon configuration options, most of the character stats, and all the tweaking. It is pretty simple: depending on your character class you carry three to five different weapons with you. You might discover a dozen more weapons in the game, which are alternatives for the weapons you start out with. At the start of a mission you decide which weapons to bring, and after that you are stuck with them. As for your stats, you have only seven fixed abilities you might develop, and your companions have only four. Each ability only has four levels. That’s it. Minor tweaks are gone; there are only a few major decisions to be made.

The third major improvement is that experience and money grinding are gone. There is no XP to be gained by killing enemies, by opening locks, by discovering secret areas, by doing minor stuff. For each mission you bring to a successful end, you get a fixed amount of experience, regardless of how you did it. And as far as money is concerned: there is a limited amount of it available, and it is just enough to buy the two dozen items that the game offers for sale.

The net effect of these improvements is that they significantly increase the player’s feeling of immersion. If you do not need to watch stats, if you do not need to tweak, if you do not need to try to wring every last point of XP out of a game, you are much better able to immerse yourself in the environment, the situation, and the story. That is what Mass Effect 2 accomplishes.

I am certainly not saying that Mass Effect 2 is a perfect game. It still contains needless grinding. The whole planet-scanning business is just silly: that is a task that should be left to a computer. The minigames get boring pretty fast: they are too easy, there are too many of them, and worst is that they break immersion. Your companions are still not very interesting, although they are more engaging than their counterparts from the first game. The story is still one long railroad. And they really need to find an alternative for the simplistic conversation system.

Despite these blemishes, I cherish Mass Effect 2. It is a great game, and I applaud BioWare for having the guts to experiment with game design issues. I know, Indie developers do that all the time, but it is a good thing that one of the big game development companies dares to not play it safe all the time.

Mass Effect 2: the Godfather II of the game world.

What is art? It is far from me to try to give a definition of art. The only thing I can do is point at things that are considered to be art by a majority of the people. Virtually nobody would question whether paintings can be art, or sculptures, or music, or novels. Some would question whether movies can be art, but I think that the general consensus is that they certainly can be.

What are games? Limiting myself to video games, they are a combination of images, sounds, and stories which allow someone (the player) to interact with them. From this perspective, games are an amalgamation of several different art forms. The images can be art in the same way that paintings and sculptures are art, the sounds can be art in the same way that music is art, and the stories can be art in the same way that novels are art. Putting it all together, games can be art in the same way that movies are art.

Of course, a critic who says that “games cannot be art” is using the term “art” in a different manner: he is referring to the “higher qualities” of an art form. Usually that means that, to be art, an expression of the art form must evoke a deep emotional response in the audience. When talking about paintings, if we compare the work by Bob Ross with the work of Van Gogh, most people would agree that Van Gogh’s paintings are on an artistic level far above Ross’ work. Van Gogh produced art, Ross produced paintings.

There are certainly games that contain images that can be considered art, or a story that can be considered art. But containing elements that are artistic does not mean that the game as a whole is art. If the images in Psychonauts are art, the game elements could be removed and the player could just explore the virtual world that is created without bothering about running, jumping, and shooting. And, indeed, the world of Psychonauts would be an interesting place to visit in such a manner. At best that would mean that the game world of Psychonauts is art, but not that the game is art.

Rogert Ebert made the statement that games cannot be art, which he based on two arguments: (1) you can win a game, and (2) games are commercial. I think both these arguments fail to discredit games as a possible art form. The fact that you can win a game is a consequence of the fact that you can interact with a game. Winning (or losing) a game simply means getting to the end of a game’s story. One wouldn’t say that novels cannot be art because they have an ending! Furthermore, most art also has a commercial component. Rembrandt’s artistic paintings were produced in a studio of which the singular goal was to make money, and Rembrandt was highly successful at that (he still died in poverty, though). Neither of Ebert’s arguments says anything about emotional response.

One cannot deny that many games evoke an emotional response. Unfortunately, most of the time this response is limited to anger, fear, annoyance, and frustration, and a few emotions in close neighborhood of these. If games are incapable of evoking any other emotional response, then I would hesitate to call them art. And even if I would do so, I would have to add that in my view we already have encountered the end of the line in artistic developments in games.

For a game to be art it must evoke an interesting emotional response. Moreover, it must do that through the one element that sets games apart from other art forms, namely player interaction. If the player interaction is not a requirement for the experience, then the fact that it is a game is not essential to the high qualities of the work. So, the question is: can player interaction in a game evoke a deep emotional response other than anger? Can player interaction evoke a feeling of sadness, or joy, or wonder, or bewilderment?

Some would now point to moral choices in RPGs, which allow you to be “good” or “evil.” I am quick to point out that, in general, while these choices are certainly part of player interaction, there is no emotional response attached to them at all, even if they do shape the story (which they seldom do). However, I do have some examples that, in my opinion, demonstrate that games can be art according to the requirements I gave above.

My first example is a well-known one: the companion cube in Portal. In Portal there are many cubes, which the player uses to solve puzzles. There is a level in which there is only one such cube, which the player has to drag with him through the level. There are only two things that set this cube apart from the other cubes in the game, namely (1) it has a name: the companion cube, and (2) there is a small pink heart printed on its sides. The player is required to solve the puzzles of the level with just this one cube. When the level ends, he must destroy the cube to proceed. Now a strange thing has happened: by the end of the level most players feel attached to the cube, and are averse to destroying it. They actively seek ways to get through the level while keeping the cube intact. And when they finally realize that the only way to proceed is to destroy the cube, they feel a sense of loss when they do so. The feelings of attachment and loss would not exist without player interaction.

My second example is, unfortunately, not as well-known. It is the 1999 RPG Planescape Torment. In this game the player is The Nameless One, an immortal being who has lost his memory and who seeks the reason why he is immortal. In this game, the player’s actions and choices actually have a deep impact on the story that is told. The storyline still follows one path, but the meaning of the story is influenced radically by how the player chooses to play and behave. The game evokes many emotional responses, of which maybe the most intriguing is a feeling of regret. Not regret in the sense of “I should have saved 5 minutes ago,” but regret over how the player, and past incarnations of the player, dealt with the world. Again, through the interaction with the world and its characters, the player becomes attached to them and actually cares about what happens to them, as if they have life beyond the game. Planescape Torment is a unique game; never before or after I have encountered anything like it. Which is perhaps the most obvious argument in favor of it being art.

I have to admit that it is hard to come up with examples of games that are art, but there is no doubt in my mind that the medium will progress, and more games that are definitely art will be produced in the future. And as long as they are enjoyable art, I see no reason why they couldn’t be commercially viable too. But in the end, as far as games and art are concerned, I can only reiterate the classic maxim: I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like.

With this setup, the user’s right hand has to cover quite a large area between the location of the right side of the keys and the location of the mouse. I experienced the painful consequences of this setup when I was working on my master’s thesis and tried to churn out 200 pages of text  in three months time, next to having a day job as a systems designer. My right arm started hurting. I recognized the beginnings of a so-called “mouse arm,” and knew I had to do something.

I decided to better balance the load of work between my two arms. At my job I would place the mouse at the right side of the keyboard, but at home I would place it at the left side. I was afraid that I would find it very hard to control the mouse with my left hand, but it proved to be surprisingly easy. In less than an hour of practice, I could control the left-handed mouse as well as the right-handed one. Because of the absence of a left keypad, I found that the left side of the keyboard is almost the natural location for the mouse.

A few notes on my setup: when I use a left-handed mouse, I mirror the functions of the buttons, i.e., the function of the button underneath my index finger is the same, whether the mouse is right-handed or left-handed. Furthermore, I always virtually maximize the speed of the mouse cursor. This means that very small movements of the mouse lead to big leaps of the mouse cursor on the screen. To get used to that took more practicing than getting used to working with a left-handed mouse, but in the end it lowers the strain on the arms even more.

I would have thought I was not the only one using this setup, but evidently left-handed mouse control is a rarity. This is notable especially in the design of games.

Mainy of today’s PC games use the so-called WASD setup, whereby the character controlled by the player is moved by using the W (“forward”), A (“left”), S (“backwards”), and D (“right”) keys. There are also default keys for functions such a “run,” “crouch,” and “jump.” I don’t know what these last are from the top of my head, because I always have to remap them.

I game at home, so I game with a left-handed mouse. Thus I use the cursor keys (which are meant for this particular purpose) to move my character across the screen. “Run” goes to the Right Shift, “jump” to the Right Ctrl, and “crouch” to the Ins key on the keypad (underneath the pinky). I always use the same setup. I always have to remap.

Now here’s my rant: why oh why oh why do I always have to do this remapping? Why can’t I just configure my mapping once? Microsoft forced that stupid Registry on us, which has only one advantage, namely that all configuration settings are stored in a single place. Shouldn’t these games learn from each other what my preferred setup is by accessing the registry? I can imagine that there would be some hesitation of game designers to copy settings from other games, but what if these games are in the same series? If I configure Knights of the Old Republic, why do I have to configure Knights of the Old Republic 2? Or, for that matter, Mass Effect 1 & 2, Jade Empire, and Dragon Age, which are all from the same designer, and which all use the same key functionalities?

And then there are the games that do not allow the remapping of keys, or (more common and more annoying by far) the switching of mouse buttons. Yes, there are numerous modern games that refuse to switch the action of “shooting” from the left to the right mouse button, not even if the player has configured Windows to switch these buttons.

Finally, I am saddened by the fact that on my new PC, which I just bought, I have to still use a plain old mouse, and I cannot switch to one of the new fancy gamer mice out there. You see, all these new-fangled mice are designed for the right hand, and the right hand only. I would love to get one of these, but I am not going back to using my right hand exclusively for mouse control.

Suddenly I feel like a “leftie.” What suffering these people must go through.

Typically, a game that works with dice is a game with randomness. In general, I do not enjoy randomness, and I am not alone in that. Still, there are games with dice that I enjoy. The reason is that there are different kinds of randomness. Broadly speaking, we can distinguish two: non-determinism, and imperfect information.

Non-determinism means that certain decisions of a game are resolved in a random manner. Imperfect information means that aspects of the game are unknown to one or more players. At first glance, one would say that only non-determinism amounts to randomness, while imperfect information does not. However, imperfect information can be the result of randomness, and that is the kind of randomness that I can enjoy!

Let me give an example of randomness: the game of Risk. In Risk, a player might decide to attack another player with a certain amount of troops. He then rolls dice to determine the damage that the troops do. His opponent defends by rolling dice. The two dice rolls determine how many troops are removed from the game. This is a typical example of non-determinism: the randomness gets applied after the decision to attack has been made.

On the opposite side of the coin we have a game such a Poker. Poker is a game of imperfect information. Each player knows his own cards, and open cards of his opponents, cards on the table, and the bids that the opponents made. They do not know the hidden cards of the opponents. Therefore, they have to make a decision in a situation with unknowns. There is no non-determinism involved, however; it is not as if the best hand will be decided by a die roll or something. The best hand is the best hand in the current situation, and the fact that part of that current situation is unknown makes the game interesting.

Some would argue that Poker has non-determinism in the dealing of the cards. That, however, is not non-determinism, even though it concerns randomness. The initial game situation is set up randomly, but that all happens before the first decision of a player. Therefore, Poker is purely a game of imperfect information.

There are no dice in Poker, but there are many games with dice that are imperfect-information games. An example is Backgammon. In this game a player rolls dice to determine his possible moves. He then decides which moves to make. The player has complete knowledge of the state of the game when he makes a decision, and the outcome of the decision is purely the result of his decision. However, whether or not it was the best decision depends on the situation in which the opponent must make a follow-up decision, and that situation will be partly decided by the rolling of dice.

To give a very simple example to distinguish non-determinism and imperfect information: suppose I have a game in which I have two pawns that move along a track. How far a pawn moves is determined by a die. Now, if the game rules specify that I should first decide which pawn to move, and then roll the die to determine how far it moves, that is non-determinism. If the rules specify that I first roll the die and then determine which pawn to move, that amounts to imperfect information. Personally, I’d say that the second game is more interesting than the first, as it may allow deeper tactics. Although I probably would still rather play Arkham Horror.

I recently stated in a newsgroup that the difference between imperfect information and non-determinism is similar to the difference between science and religion. In science, we examine in what shitty situation we are and take steps to get out of it. In religion, we place our trust in fate to get us out of shitty situations. I thought this was a fun observation but I got a warning from the moderator: I had not surmised that my (fairly innocent) remark might offend religious people.

The moderator was probably right. Still, the response brought me a slightly deeper insight in why I prefer imperfect information over non-determinism: it might be because I am a scientist. I don’t mind being thrown into a shitty situation in a game, and I don’t mind that my opponent gets into a less shitty situation. It is the situation I have to work with and which I have control over. It is a challenge to overcome, and the shittier the situation, the sweeter the victory if and when I manage to achieve it. On the other hand, winning because the dice fell favorably just feels hollow.

Well, yeah, I can relish in the knowledge that Fate was on my hand, but that means that Fate, not I, won the game. And frankly, if Fate really must win a game, I say let her pick her own game group.