In “Blood Dragon,” you play as Sergeant Rex Colt, a cyborg on a mission to save the world and bring down your old commanding officer in a post-nuclear Cold War dystopia. Voiced by Michael Biehn of “Terminator” and “Aliens” fame, Colt is the typical American ’80s action hero badass, complete with one-liners for every occasion, such as blowing up a car or blowing off a robot’s head with your shotgun. But he straddles the line between self-aware protagonist and committed hero, frequently questioning why he is collecting so many VHS tape collectible items.

As a game, “Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon” exists in a weird nebula. At its core mechanics, the game takes its main elements from the 2012 game “Far Cry 3,” keeping the free-roaming mission structure and open ended combat intact. Most of the changes from “Far Cry 3” are concerned with the game’s aesthetic; a cyber bow replaces the bow, cyber tigers replace tigers and collectible VHS tapes replace ancient artifacts — though arguably there isn’t a difference between the last two.

Not all the changes are aesthetic. The titular Blood Dragons, gigantic lizardlike creatures that shoot lasers out of their eyes, are added into the mix during combat and function as wild cards that can attack both you and your enemies. Skill trees and the experience point system have been streamlined, and more attachments for guns have been added, such as quadruple barrels for the shotgun and explosive rounds for the sniper rifle. Priced at $15, “Blood Dragon” is a standalone experience, separate in plot from “Far Cry 3.” But for those expecting an entirely new experience from “Far Cry 3,” know that there are not any major changes to the core formula; “Blood Dragon,” for the most part, offers more of the same.

The aesthetic and humor of “Blood Dragon” are arguably its most interesting aspects. The game tries incredibly hard to replicate, lampoon and cherish its ’80s roots. Half of the time, the jokes hit hard and are incredibly funny, especially for those who grew up adoring ’80s films, games and television. But for the other half, the jokes’ intentions — mocking but also celebrating the ’80s — become muddled, and as a result, become a mix of humorous, nonsensical and awkward.

In fact, many aspects of the game suffer from this identity crisis. The aim of “Blood Dragon” is too large for its scope, and there simply isn’t enough time to flesh out this neo-’80s world that Ubisoft Montreal attempts to create. For a game that takes about six hours to complete, the main story wraps up very quickly, and it is easy to forget what is going on or who the villain or certain characters are. From one perspective, this matches the tone; “Blood Dragon” is lampooning the throwaway nature of the ’80s action movie star. But at the same time, the game attempts to make protagonist Rex Colt as memorable and awesome as possible.

Yet, despite some of its awkwardness, “Blood Dragon” holds some sharp, humorous writing that makes up for its inconsistencies. And there’s enough to shoot, hunt and explode, which makes “Blood Dragon” worth the trip back to the ’80s. Those who have played and beaten “Far Cry 3” will not find a lot new here. But it’s a formula that works, especially when combined with lasers, neon and nostalgia.

Contact Art Siriwatt at asiriwatt@dailycal.org. Check him out on twitter at @artsiriwatt.

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“Papers, Please,” named for your character’s “catchphrase” of sorts, casts you as an immigration inspector in the fake communist state of Arstotzka. It’s 1982, and your glorious mother country has just ended a six-year war with the neighboring state of Kolechia, resulting in the acquisition of the eastern half of the border town, Grestin. Your job is simple: Decide who can enter Arstotzka, who should be denied and who should be searched, fingerprinted or arrested based on your low-tech inspection systems and eye for the fraudulent. You must work quickly, because you’re paid per person inspected per day — and you have a family to feed.

It seems somewhat mundane. Look at passports and entry visas, check for discrepancies, stamp the papers. Make a subsistence wage. With each game day, the goal is the same. But “Papers, Please” works despite its boring concept, and that is what sets it apart from hundreds of other indie games awaiting approval on Steam Greenlight.

Steam is an online gaming platform through which players can purchase games and connect with friends. Steam’s Greenlight service works much like Kickstarter in that users pledge support for software they want, and it’s a way for gamers to choose which games should be sold on Steam. Most games on Greenlight are either in beta — that is, they work, but they are far from the final version — or simply trailers and concepts.

“Papers, Please,” is available as a beta, and it’s available for download for free on Lucas Pope’s website so players can get a chance to try it before supporting it on Greenlight. The beta is a short teaser of a very promising game; everything from the drab, pixelated art style (a homage to ’80s graphics, which fits the game’s setting quite well) to the immigrants’ varying personalities works to transform a boring job into an entertaining and highly addictive experience.

Although the game starts out slowly — on the first day, only Arstotzkan citizens are granted entry, which makes your job quite easy — it quickly increases in difficulty, and it does so cleverly. New rules to guide the inspection process are introduced as responses to certain events, which are given in daily bulletins. In one instance, a Kolechian terrorist attack results in a mandate to search all Kolechians for weapons or contraband; in another, news of an escaped killer (and his name) keeps you on the lookout for him in line. The details are subtle, but they engage the player and make the game hard to put down.

“Papers, Please” has garnered an overwhelmingly positive response on Greenlight, and it seems as if it will be available for purchase once the full game is completed. It’s a perfect example of the potential of the indie games market: It’s a creative, completely new idea for a game made possible by the low monetary risk associated with a low-budget production. It doesn’t have to try obnoxiously hard to appeal to the core 18-to-25 male demographic (think big guns and pretty women). It represents freedom in creation and quality without outrageous expense.

Best of all, “Papers, Please” does not apologize for being weird. It’s unusual and quirky, and it knows it. It makes the boring more fun and the ordinary much more strange, and that’s what makes the game worth playing.

Contact Kallie Plagge at kplagge@dailycal.org. Check her out on twitter at @kirbyoshi.

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In April 2010, when he applied to work on a “Half-Life 2” mod — a game developed as an expansion pack of sorts for the original game — called “Age of Chivalry,” Bao didn’t expect it to go very far. “At first, we were very much just a mod team. We were just a bunch of people who were like, ‘Oh, we should make a game,’ so initially we had no idea what we were doing,” he said.

Three years later, “Chivalry: Medieval Warfare” is an extremely successful indie game with a 79 on Metacritic and a large player base via Steam, an online gaming platform. It is known as one of the first high-quality medieval warfare titles of its kind, praised for its combat mechanics and multiplayer matches.

When the team — called Torn Banner Studios — decided to transition from a mod to a full-blown game, Bao was made lead programmer. He was in his junior year of high school and had only been programming seriously since his freshman year. “Requirements were a little more lenient (for the mod project), so I managed to sneak on during that. When we decided to transition to a full-blown project, I got switched over too,” Bao explained.
On top of everything, he was a self-taught programmer, and he had never used the Unreal Development Kit. The UDK is the free version of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3, which many developers use as a foundation of sorts for their code. In order to work on “Chivalry,” Bao had to quickly learn the ropes of the Unreal Engine.

For Bao, a lot of the value of his experience came from learning rather than getting access to gaming events or making money off of the game’s royalties. He says his experience with real-world programming has helped him in his computer science classes at Berkeley.

“I think a lot of people think that game development is really hard, and that’s why they shy away from trying to do it — but I think that once you get into it, it’s actually not that bad,” Bao said. “It just takes a lot of time and dedication. If you’re willing to put the effort into it, you can get it done.”

For Bao, putting effort into “Chivalry” meant working 20 hours a week for very little pay, and he says it became more of a “full-time job” toward the end of the project. “Mike was in front of his computer all the time. I’m surprised he ever ate or slept,” Kevin Lin said rather facetiously. Lin lived in Foothill with Bao during fall 2011 and spring 2012, when Bao was working on “Chivalry.” Gautam Tammewar, another former dorm-mate and friend of Bao’s, added, “He’s either at his computer or playing Mario with us.”

Bao worked tirelessly, sacrificing sleep and grades, all out of love for the project. “The game wasn’t about just one person’s vision but the entire team’s vision,” Bao said of the team’s dedication to the game. “If no one wanted to work on it besides the boss, then it wouldn’t be a game worth making.”

The team believed in “Chivalry” because it knew the game could find success. Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo as well as indie-friendly platforms like Steam make it easier for small developers to get noticed, and services like Humble Bundle give more players access to high-quality indie titles.

“I really like the fact that indie games can do so well in the gaming industry, just because the Internet is so friendly to indie games in general,” Bao said. “I think it’s one place where people with passion for something can really have success, and that’s one of the reasons why the gaming industry is so awesome. People who love what they do come together and do it. You can definitely tell when someone worked on a game that they really cared for.”

Bao added that the amount of time and effort he put into “Chivalry” was the exception to the rule when it comes to indie game development.

“A lot of people do this in their free time, whether it means an hour a week or eight hours every day. There’s a lot of cool indie projects out there; you could probably join one by sending them an email and saying, ‘Hey, I’m a programmer. I don’t really know Unreal, but I can learn it really quickly,’” Bao said. These kinds of indie projects make game development accessible to students or those looking to break into the gaming industry.
Bao expects indie games to grow even more popular thanks to the open nature of PC gaming and the iOS and Android mobile markets. For aspiring game developers, this means that a pet project might turn into a career or, at the very least, an invaluable learning experience.

“As long as you have someone to do the art and someone to do the programming, you can make a game,” Bao said. He added that, even if the project is not successful, it’s always worth doing in the end.

Contact Kallie Plagge at kplagge@dailycal.org. Check her out on twitter at @kirbyoshi.

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Marie, an avid cosplayer, is the community and communication manager at Crystal Dynamics, which developed this year’s reboot of Tomb Raider. Like many video game industry professionals, she attended the Penny Arcade Expo East in Boston in March, and she held the cosplay event at Crystal Dynamics’ booth there. Eventually, a journalist approached the group and asked to interview the cosplayers.

“Turns out he’d probed what it felt like ‘knowing that none of the men in this room could please them in bed,’” Marie wrote in a blog post. “He proceeded to tell me that ‘I was one of those oversensitive feminists’ and that ‘the girls were dressing sexy, so they were asking for it.’ Yes, he pulled the ‘cosplay is consent’ card.”

It is 2013. It is estimated that nearly half of all gamers are women. Yet, when women attend gaming events, they’re still treated like decorations rather than participants in a culture. Critics of cosplay often claim that the women in question are just dressing up for attention, but the majority of serious cosplayers craft their own costumes and pay close attention to detail in order to replicate a beloved character. They do it because it is empowering and fun, not to get furtive glances from teenage boys at comic book conventions.

Sexism in the gaming industry is nothing new, of course. Video games are frequently criticized for their misogynistic or over-sexualized portrayals of women — the original Tomb Raider, with its very polygonal yet busty Lara, is often cited as an example of the “males are the audience” attitude. Games like “Duke Nukem,” “Saints Row” and “Grand Theft Auto” are viewed as far worse offenders in this sense, as most of their female characters are either prostitutes or strippers.

Even though none of these games are maliciously anti-woman, they contribute to a sexist environment. It’s the same environment in which a professional found it appropriate to disrespectfully talk to women about sex. It’s a culture built around a male audience, and that relic of the past makes gaming hostile to many women.
“The treatment and representation of women in gaming has come to a head this past year, and I know some of you are tired of hearing about it — I’m tired of living it,” Marie wrote. “I want to feel safe and valued as a member of this industry, whether I’m conducting an interview, talking to fans on a convention floor or cosplaying. And I have a right to that.”

After the PAX East incident, everyone thought that people would have learned their lesson. Of course, no one did. The Game Developers Conference in San Francisco was held the week after PAX, and although the panels and talks seemed to avoid controversy, the post-conference parties did not.

The International Game Developers Association sponsored a party for GDC attendees and hired scantily-clad dancers as entertainment. After news of the IGDA’s involvement surfaced, two of its members resigned from their posts in protest. YetiZen, which co-sponsored the party, denied that there was any problem with its choice in entertainment.

Mojang, which developed the sandbox game Minecraft, also held an event. Although Markus Persson (also known as Notch), the creator of Minecraft, has repeatedly denied it on Twitter, women were allegedly paid to socialize with men at the party.

Attendees spoke up in what became an ongoing Twitter discussion between gamers. “I guess I’ll be the one to say it: I was not okay with the gender situation in the VIP area at the Minecraft party,” said Bennett Foddy, who developed the Flash game QWOP. UK-based writer David Johnston of Smudged Cat Games eloquently added, “Yeah, I spoke to someone who was ‘paid to party,’ as she put it. Didn’t seem that interested in game dev. Good rack though!”

Over the span of two weeks — during high-profile professional gaming conventions — women in the industry were repeatedly made to feel unwelcome, and many were directly objectified. The events of PAX and GDC were proof that, even in 2013, little progress has been made toward equality for women in a culture that has historically been dominated by men.

“The PAX encounter was a catalyst to a discussion about a bigger issue … This (sexism) is a problem in our industry. This is something that needs to be addressed,” Marie wrote in an update to her original PAX post as GDC was drawing to a close. Marie is a talented cosplayer and model, and some tried to use that against her when she spoke out about PAX.

This points to an open hostility toward “attractive” women in the gaming community; these women are often seen as “fake” or vying for attention. They’re threatening because they could use their feminine wiles to manipulate male gamers. They’re intruders. At the very least, they’ll be seen as “cute” rather than “serious” or “hardcore.”

The message is clear: If you’re not here to please men, you shouldn’t be here.

Contact Kallie Plagge at kplagge@dailycal.org. Check her out on twitter at @kirbyoshi.

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“BioShock Infinite” is defined by its setting of a city in the sky called Columbia, previously a symbol of American exceptionalism before being disavowed by the United Stated for being too radical. As Booker DeWitt, a private investigator from New York, you’re tasked with finding a girl named Elizabeth to pay off a heavy debt. From the outset, Columbia is filled with a rich history and character. During the first 30 minutes of gameplay, you explore the city during an extravagant world’s fair-type celebration. Theocratic and nationalist propaganda, modeled after World War I propaganda, is plastered on every block as animatronic recreations of the founding fathers keep armed watch on street corners.

The situation becomes violent as the government deems you the “False Prophet” for a mysterious reason and attempts to stop your quest. While you search for Elizabeth, the city reveals itself to be a twisted nationalist paradise of purity and wealth at the cost of tolerance and political freedom. If the paradigm of “Birth of a Nation” became the norm, then Columbia would be its utopia. In tandem with the city’s manhunt, a rival anarchist group, the Vox Populi, is trying to destroy the white supremacy order. The game risks making these two factions caricatures of left-wing and right-wing ideologies, but ultimately their conflict is not the focus. Instead, the narrative uses DeWitt and Elizabeth to explore this dichotomy to develop the two main characters and the narrative behind Columbia.

Key in the narrative is DeWitt’s relationship with Elizabeth, who turns out to have been locked up and observed her whole life and is able to control tears, which are interdimensional portals into other universes. DeWitt’s relationship with Elizabeth is well crafted; she provides a voice of innocence that is juxtaposed with the grizzled, realist DeWitt in this disturbingly racist society. In combat, she provides supplies and opens up tear portals to create resources such as cover or turrets. As you get to know her, you’ll find that her history and fate are heavily intertwined with Columbia’s in an enigmatic, compelling way.

Similar to in predecessor “BioShock,” the combat systems rely on traditional gun weaponry and magiclike powers called “vigors.” Skylines, however, are a new addition to the game. Within the fiction of the world, they connect segments of the city and transport large-scale goods. But in combat, DeWitt can ride the rails, which makes traversal across large, segmented spaces much easier. Skylines provide a sense of speed and verticality to the fighting that isn’t present in any big-budget retail game like “Call of Duty” or “Halo.” Instead of incentivizing slow, cautious pacing, constant movement is necessary.

In the fantastic final act, the game wraps up in a surprising and unforeseen manner, tying up most loose ends. Without spoiling anything, the science fiction direction the game takes is one rarely seen in popular media and rarely done well. But “BioShock Infinite” manages to pull it off. It’s a revelation that resonates after the credits have rolled.

“BioShock Infinite” bleeds atmosphere and pseudo-authenticity. But it never squanders its attention to detail; every nook and cranny in Columbia has a purpose, and the intrigue of Columbia pushes you through an incredible world that most can never dream of.

Developer: Irrational Games
Publisher: 2K Games
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC

Contact Art Siriwatt at asiriwatt@dailycal.org.
Check him out on twitter at @artsiriwatt.

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In listening to Ashley’s Internet radio show “A Life Well Wasted,” a show about “video games and the people who love them,” you probably will not learn much about the newest video games. You could call it “This American Life” for people who love video games, but even that wouldn’t capture the amount of editing and attention to detail Ashley puts into his show. In hour-long episodes, he examines a handful of stories on certain themes, such as creating things based on video games in the episode “Artists, Fans, and Engineers,” through the form of highly personal interviews. Back from a three-year hiatus, Ashley has released the seventh episode, entitled “Work.”

A former Berkeley resident, Ashley wrote for various Bay Area video game-focused publications such as Electronic Gaming Monthly and Games for Windows Magazine. After the closure of Electronic Gaming Monthly, which brought about writing staff layoffs, he made his first episode of the show, “The Death of EGM,” which is about the writers’ experience of working at a video game magazine for most of their adult lives. Even without formal editing or production knowledge, Ashley went on to make five more episodes in 2009. In mid-2010, Ashley moved to Athens, Ga. to focus on making music with his band I Come to Shanghai, which also produces music for the show. During the hiatus, his band released two albums with no updates on the show. But now he is working on “A Life Well Wasted” with renewed vigor and plans on regularly releasing more episodes in the immediate future.

At the heart of Ashley’s show are interviews with mostly ordinary people with interesting stories to tell. However, unlike the typical journalist interview in pursuit of an angle, Ashley prefers subjects tell their own story in a unfiltered manner. “I like it when they don’t really know when the interview started, like you’re just sort of talking, and then all of a sudden they’re used to the fact that you have a microphone in their face,” Ashley said.

And this interview style is evident in the show. In each segment, Ashley highly edits dialogue down so that his own voice is eliminated and the interviewee’s story flows seamlessly. This is storytelling in the purest, most human sense. As a final touch, Ashley integrates music to propel or provide certain moods to segments of each story. It is here where Ashley’s skill as a musician shines: Ashley knows when to place a sad, wistful tone or to go out with an extreme flourish.

Through limiting the scope of the show to video games and the people who love them, Ashley is able to explore trends in this relatively new community. One of the central themes of the show is the sense of escapism inherent to playing video games. This escapism attracts people we might label as freaks, nerds, outcasts or weirdos. Yet Ashley explores this idea without making fun of the awkward. “I’m really not the kind of person who thinks it’s funny for someone to be a weirdo,” Ashley said. “I identify with the outsider type of person.” Ashley says he grew up as outcast, stating, “When I was a kid, and up until my mid-20s, I was a real weird, fat, awkward, not-a-lot-of-friends kind of guy, so I can understand people who don’t really fit into society in like a beautiful, normal way.”

A great example of this theme is shown in an interview with Nick “Ulillillia” Smith, the subject of his latest episode. A quick Google search may lead to a description of an Asperger-diagnosed shut-in who has played more than 1500 hours of “Bubsy 3D,” one of the worst video games ever made. But Ashley highlights Smith as a meticulous, intricate guy who has detailed his life in one incredible website and is attempting to make one of the most complex video games ever made, “Platform Masters,” from scratch. It’s this ability to remove all the stigma of being a “gamer” that Ashley excels at. He acknowledges it, stating, “I always try to find people who have something interesting about them that might not be obvious and encourage the audience to empathize with them and to get what is similar between them and someone who they might not think they could relate to.” Ashley believes that if you shove away all the superficialities, we’re all the same, and Smith is at heart an ordinary person with devotions, ambitions and emotions.

Ultimately, “A Life Well Wasted” is a podcast that evokes sympathy as much as awe. Ashley shows interesting stories can still come from people who stare at a screen all day.

Contact Art Siriwatt at asiriwatt@dailycal.org.
Check him out on twitter at @artsiriwatt.

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The Twitter mob would have you believe that “SimCity” is the worst affront to its collective gaming sensibilities since “The Wand of Gamelon,” but it’s actually a highly detailed, highly addictive city simulator and a worthy successor to 2003’s “SimCity 4.” Resource trading, city-to-city transit and other multiplayer features add depth to the city-building experience, and seemingly small details, like the individual tracking of every Sim in a city, add interest and realism. No one in the mob would know that, though. None of them have played the game.

The problem with “SimCity” is that, in order to play it, gamers must be online and connected to EA’s servers.
The problem with EA’s servers is that they cannot handle the masses of people who want to play.

It’s infuriating, because “SimCity” doesn’t have to be an always-online game. Unlike other popular always-online games like World of Warcraft and StarCraft II, “SimCity” isn’t an inherently multiplayer experience. The developers designed the multiplayer features to enhance the game — which they do, when they work — but if you want to play by yourself, which also works, you still have to connect to the servers. This is not an accident.

Video games are a unique entertainment medium in that they require two major investments from the consumer — time and money — in quantities unrivaled by other media. As a result, some gamers try to cut costs where they can, usually in the money department. This leads to widespread piracy. For example, “The Witcher 2,” which came out in May 2011, was pirated more than 4.5 million times by the end of November of the same year. As of January 2013, it was legally purchased more than 2.2 million times — so in six months, “The Witcher 2” was pirated twice as many times as it was purchased over its entire lifetime on the market.

DRM, or digital rights management, is a method of combating this kind of piracy through online verification with a developer’s servers. In theory, if you’ve pirated the game, you won’t be verified with the servers and therefore won’t be able to play. This is EA’s strategy with “SimCity,” but it hasn’t exactly worked brilliantly for previous publishers. Blizzard Entertainment, for example, chose to make 2012’s “Diablo III” always-online, and it significantly reduced the number of times the game was pirated. However, as with “SimCity” now, “Diablo III”’s launch was a DRM disaster. For weeks afterward, players either couldn’t play at all or experienced in-game glitches, a fact that the anti-DRM crusaders still use as ammunition against the controversial practice.

Always-online DRM might help EA reclaim profits that would have been lost to piracy, but only at the price of potential paying customers’ purchases. “SimCity”’s botched launch has strained the relationship between EA and its customers: Tweets directed at the “SimCity” team threaten to pirate the game out of spite, furious commenters on gaming websites spew hateful insults at EA and perfectly rational people on those same websites are postponing (or even forfeiting) their purchases of the game because of the ongoing server problems.

It’s a shame, because EA has a great product in “SimCity,” and it’s getting lost in the battle between quality and profit — a battle that every art medium knows all too well.

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For Conan Liu, a sophomore at UC Berkeley, competitive gaming has been familiar to him ever since he started playing StarCraft competitively in middle school. Known by his online handle “Suppy,” he is one of the best StarCraft 2 players in the world. He is also president of eSports at Berkeley, which recently won this season of the Collegiate StarLeague tournament, netting his team the grand prize of $40,000. The team, which is composed of seven UC Berkeley undergraduates, played various other universities in a ladder-type ranking season, which took place throughout the fall 2012 semester. They amassed enough wins to play in the live finals in L.A. and eventually won the tournament after winning against the Chunnam Techno University from South Korea in the final match.

In “StarCraft 2,” moving from a novice level to a professional level would probably require a couple of semesters’ worth of dedicated study and analysis. From a layman’s perspective, the main mechanics involve building a base and combative units to destroy the other player’s base. But every small action, from scouting the enemy player’s base to micromanaging a single worker, has to be done in the most efficient manner to maximize resources.

Improving your skills involves learning how to quickly multitask many micro objectives but also orienting these objectives toward a cohesive macro plan. Ultimately, improving this involves constantly refining and rethinking build orders and a plan of attack. Getting better requires post-match analysis. “I ask myself: Why did I lose? Are my builds perfect? How can I win more games? It involves watching replays and focusing on improvement,” said sophomore Luke Lalor, one of the seven players on the team. The number of possible strategies within the game makes matchups unpredictable, which makes players not solely reliant on mechanical skills but knowing when and how to counter different tactics. “The more situations you are exposed to, the more reactions that you know of what you’re supposed to do in certain situations,” said Liu. For each team member, this type of practice usually adds up to 10-plus hours per week during the season, which excludes reading up on and watching higher-skilled players and learning their strategies.

Apart from the game itself, the structure of tournament play is a game in its own right. Matches are played best of seven. There are five one versus one games, one two versus two game and if the score is tied, an ace match — where the best player on each team plays against the other — is added to the end. Lineups are picked blindly, such that players on each team know what map they will play but not whom they will play against. This structure adds another element called “sniping”: Teams can predict which map each opposing player will play on, and teams form specific strategies against specific players, such that a lesser-skilled player can beat a higher-skilled player by exploiting a specific weakness.

On the live stage at finals, this meta-game element is enhanced. A loss means elimination; thus, each match is crucial. As the stakes are upped, excitement runs high, and games become more daring and unpredictable. “I feel like the emotion that every team has is crazy,” said Liu, “We all lost our voice like two days after the event because we were yelling so much.” If something is to be taken from this (aside from the $40,000), it’s that everyone involved is dedicated, and the amount of investment and depth makes each match more emotional and exciting, especially during an upset win.

There are clear signs that the eSports scene is growing. The Collegiate StarLeague, which started in 2008, has grown immensely since then, featuring other types of tournament play from other games such as “League of Legends” and “Dota2” and even has obtained corporate sponsors. The potential audience only grows larger as these free-to-play games gain more exposure. The professional player base already exists, but managing and gaining a wider audience are challenges.

Ultimately, what Liu hopes for is that eSports become more prominent in the future and the possible legitimization of it as a sport, specifically by the UC system. In other countries, such as South Korea, professional StarCraft play is televised. But translating this high-level play to a population that doesn’t understand the intricacies is difficult, especially when these intricacies make the game so compelling to watch. But in a sense, Liu has a point: Being top-tier requires an amount of dedication similar to that of an athlete but including an additional layer of mental prowess. No other experience can quite match it.

Contact Art Siriwatt at asiriwatt@dailycal.org.

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“Depression Quest” casts the player as an ordinary 20-something with a job, a girlfriend and crippling major depressive disorder. Throughout the game, the player must make simple day-to-day choices — whether to go out with his girlfriend or how he should conduct a conversation with his mother, for example — with the catch being that the best answer or answers are crossed out and unavailable, just as they would be to someone with depression.

It’s a simple gameplay mechanism, but it’s incredibly powerful in depicting life with the disorder. Depression isn’t just feeling sad or gloomy; it’s an overwhelming physiological state marked by a lack of energy, motivation and hope. Getting up and going to work isn’t always an option, as many of those afflicted simply can’t find the energy or willpower to do so.

Accompanying the actual gameplay is a melancholic piano and a synthesizer, which create a background more or less like white noise. It seems pointless and can get a little wearing, but it’s effective in putting the player in a despondent mood.

The most video game-like element in “Depression Quest” is the character development, which is subtle but key to the experience. The player only has three stats: how depressed he is, whether he’s seeing a therapist and whether he’s taking medication, all of which gradually change as different choices are made. Once again, the simplicity of the design is “Depression Quest”’s greatest strength, completely immersing the player in the ins and outs of managing depression by making it his sole focus.

Still, “Depression Quest” is almost too simple at points. Depression affects millions of people around the world, but there’s still serious stigma surrounding the illness, and a lot of people either don’t understand it or don’t take it seriously. While there are plenty of people who seem to misunderstand the player in “Depression Quest,” the game is missing the added dimension of true conflict — from a boss or perhaps a roommate — due to the illness. Conflict is an underdeveloped avenue at best and one that, if explored, would add even more depth to an otherwise heavy and thought-provoking experience.

Additionally, the game could benefit from some serious copy-editing. For an experience that relies almost exclusively upon text, there are far too many errors, ranging from simple grammatical flukes to confusing pronoun-agreement problems. It doesn’t detract from the emotional environment of the game, but it could divert some players’ attentions from an otherwise-immersive experience.

Still, “Depression Quest” is not an experience to forgo. Though it’s short — a single game only takes about an hour — it’s free to play and, due to its simple design, can run in the browser of even the most bare-bones computer. However, the general consensus is that the game is extremely hard to finish. Many people on Twitter discussing “Depression Quest” said that they had to stop playing before the hour was up.

The overall impression players will get from “Depression Quest” is one of deepened understanding. Regardless of the ending, good or bad, the game provides a comprehensive glimpse into the life of a depression sufferer, which is an amazing feat in itself. Although it’s not a “fun” game by any stretch of the imagination, it’s certainly worth playing.

Contact Kallie Plagge at kplagge@dailycal.org.

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“Proteus” exists in the space between visual art and video game. If you consider it a video game, it has little in common with “Call of Duty” or “Madden”; “losing” is impossible, there is no skill involved and the only agency the player has is through movement. Yet it’s hard to classify “Proteus” as visual art either. Logistically, it’s virtual software that is purchased and not an exhibit at the MoMA. Every session is amorphous, and it is dependent on interactivity, not just mere observation. But to its benefit, co-creators Key and David Kanaga utilize this space to make “Proteus” an interactive experience that, whether you decide to call it a game or not, is more interesting than most video games and visual art.

Key, the Cambridge-based programmer-designer of “Proteus,” revealed that the game started out as an open-world role-playing game but quickly evolved into a game where exploration was the focus. This emphasis was based on his upbringing in rural England, where the backyard into which he frequently ventured would later become the main inspiration for the expansive, sparsely inhabited landscapes in “Proteus.” He commissioned Oakland-based musician Kanaga, whom he had met through the online independent game developer community TIGSource, to develop the music. By that point, the vision was set.

The result is a game in which players simply traverse an island for a short amount of time (around 40 minutes). This island is randomly generated in every playthrough. As you wander through this landscape, the music adapts to what you see as you cross paths with various animals and plants, all of which produce distinct sounds and seamlessly blend into the soundtrack. Text does not suffice to describe this game; “Proteus” is an audiovisual experience that is to be explored in the most primitive sense. But many factors help to evolve this journey into more than just walking around a virtual space. The visual aesthetic, the factors of randomization and the audio composition all work together to make “Proteus” evoke something greater than surface-level enjoyment.

Perhaps the most stunning aspect of  “Proteus” is the retro 8-bit visual style, which is distinctive in every screenshot. Not noticeable in stills, however, is the mix between 1-D, 2-D and 3-D objects. Some objects are fully rendered in 3-D, but tree leaves are animated such that they are always facing the player (similar to enemies in “Doom”), and tree trunks are two cross-section images that are independent of your orientation. All of this contributes to an effect called the “uncanny retro,” coined by Key, and the result is a strange effect of motion that makes every tree stand out as you move and every object more noticeable from the background. The simple act of movement transforms images of an abstract retro, 8-bit environment into a bizarrely realistic world that turns these colored pixels into a surreal reality.

The randomized creation of every island also provides a more organic gaming experience. When all the elements blend together and the music is perfectly timed to the sunset, everything feels more magical when you know that this is the result of circumstance. While a designer can produce a predefined experience, an experience that is original and specific to the player is far more interesting. There is a certain faith in the game randomly generating levels that are always interesting, and it mirrors a certain faith established between Key and the player. Instead of forcing the player to see certain events at certain times, the game gives the player freedom to completely handle his own exploration.

Complementary to the visuals is the music, which reinforces the freeform nature of “Proteus.” Kanaga’s philosophy behind the music was dynamic in nature, blending environmental sounds from the game’s natural scenery with the score. The music itself is a soothing match to this world you wander, but small events in the environment, such as running into stones or chasing frogs, mix another layer into the soundtrack. The inclusion of orchestral notes in addition to many retro chiptune-based tones adds another element to this “bizarrely realistic” world, penned by Kanaga.

What “Proteus” ultimately adds up to is the construction of a surreal virtual world, more realistic than the settings in “World of Warcraft” or “Second Life.” Derived from this tradition of bringing the abstract into reality, “Proteus” translates Key’s experience exploring the rural landscape of England into its purest essence. Ultimately the dynamic nature of “Proteus” is what makes it work, and that dynamic nature is inherent in video games.

However you define “Proteus,” it exploits one of the main strengths of the gaming medium, which is systemically rooted in discovery. This aspect of pure play without caveats, whether they be goals, rewards or skills, may call into question the definition of video games, but even then “Proteus” is much more than a statement about just video games. For a generation that grew up exploring worlds and universes represented by pixelated blocks, “Proteus” emulates this abstraction into something grounded in reality, and it’s done so well that categorizing “Proteus” is an insignificant matter.

Contact Art at asiriwatt@dailycal.org.

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