Built to Play

Built to Play is amping up the disappointment, as we take on failure. That's a failure to play and a failure to learn, starting with why play video games in the first place. 

From Takeshi's Challenge.

We suck at video games, as a species. Yes, some of us are amazing at Street Fighter, and that Chinese team won five million dollars in Dota 2, but on average most of us lose more than we succeed. In Call of Duty, you likely failed more levels than you won. In Super Meat Boy, people come close to throwing their controllers across the room in frustration. Rage-quitting is a word most players recognize and have experienced. So why do we play?

Jesper Juul, author of the Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games, says that it comes down enjoying the game's basis, while being able to dismiss it. It's just a game after all. But that's not entirely true either. If people really didn't care about video games, he explains, they wouldn't groan when they lose, or throw the controller across the room after a bad run in Dark Souls.

Jesper tells us all about being a sore loser in Starcraft, why the New York Post thinks soccer is a dumb sport, and how games rarely ask us to fail. Starts at 26:30.

_Actual Sunlight_is about Evan Winters, a 30-ish year old man working in communications. Evan has depression, and continually makes terrible choices. He can't help himself a lot of the time, and ends up stuck in a rut. In Actual Sunlight, you're forced to encounter his decisions, and then succumb to his inability to correct his own mistakes. Evan is in many ways, a failure. Actual Sunlight's designer, Will O'Neill, joins us to talk about how games treat characters who are stuck in their ways, and aren't world-saving heroes. 

Will tells us about Actual Sunlight's expression of realism, his own experience with loss and depression, and why there's still hope underneath it all. Check in 40:20.

**Actual Sunlight is available on Steam and on its website. **

This week we used music from the Free Music Archive, including "Spring Solstice" by Podington Bear, "Pause for a Side Change," by L'homme Manete, "Everything is Broken or Not" by Bleak House, "The Beach, The Beach" by Holy Ghost, "Detective" by Krowne, and "The Wrong Way" by Jahzzar. Our opening theme was "Halluzination" by Tozo.Games used: Super Meat Boy, Red Dead Redemption, Actual Sunlight, and Russel Harder's Authentic Trivia.Header Image from

the "Atari: Game Over" Documentary Trailer.The show was written by Danielle Rosen and produced and edited by Arman Aghbali.  Special thanks to Jesper Juul, Will O'Neill, Russell Harder and the Cunning Stunts. 

**If you have any comments, criticism or impressions, let us know.  We'd love to hear your opinions on the show, plus any reviews on iTunes or Stitcher or written in the sky by a biplane help more people find the show. **

First up,Majesco did a reverse stock split, raising their stock price back to $2.56 from between 0.50-0.60 during the last few months. Masjeco is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange which requires a minimum of a $1 value per share, and so the company needed a maneuver that would raise the price before they became a penny stock.  

By using a reverse stock split, Majesco essentially reduced the total number of shares available, raising the market price, but lowering the number of potential investors. Despite all the good the company has been doing with the Midnight City publishing arm, it's been losing money for quite a while. So we explain why it might be smarter to leave the stock market entirely.*

Then in Finland, we assume that Hearthstone is a full-contact competitive sport. Otherwise the recent ruling from the Finnish Assembly, which filters players into the International eSports Federation world championships, that women and men had to compete in separate tournaments would be complete nonsense and sexist. While most know Hearthstone as the Blizzard trading card game where you buy fake cards, slide them on a touchscreen or with a mouse, and take your time to contemplate your next Magic the Gathering cosplay, in Finland it must something entirely different. We're guessing it's like lacrosse but with more fire. 

Meanwhile, the province of Quebec has lowered the amount of tax credits available to video game companies.In the June 4 budget, the Liberal government decided to cut the tax credits by 20 per cent. Major studios like WB and Ubisoft are safe until 2019 because of agreements made with prior governments. We talk about how that might impact future jobs and why moving to Toronto so we can be best friends is your best move.

At the same time, Nintendo's having a crisis of its own, as its shareholders seem to fundamentally misunderstand the company's brand and structure. Thanks to an underperforming Wii U and three years without profit, Nintendo's stock has been shrinking. Which has unsurprisingly made a few shareholders angry, asking questions like: Can the 3DS be twice as big and focus on gambling? Can I have some free stuff? Why are we even talking about video games?

Lastly we revisit the world of eSports. We speculate on how to watch the Dota 2 world championships, The International. On a computer is the main consensus. We also do some speculation about the outcome of Evo.

What none of could have predicted is the series of come from behind victories that actually ensued. Louffy won the Ultra Street Fighter IV tournament, well ahead of our best bet, Diago. Justin Wong didn't win the Killer Instinct tournament like we expected, but instead beat Chris G in an amazing underdog victory to defeat the long raining champ. Mango won the Super Smash Bros Melee. tournament, which seems expected for a game about random characters punching each other with motorcycles. 

We also talk about our crippling addiction toHashteroids, Sony'sPS Now rental prices, a mysterious rich patron on Twitch,  andMighty No. 9's new crowdfunding campaign. And more on this news only Built to Play. 

_*Built to Play is not an authorised stockbroker. Do not take any financial advice given to you by fans of Ryse, or other games that replace "i" with "y." _

If you played something Japanese in the 2000s, chances are Alexander O. Smith translated it. Alex has translated everything from the Final Fantasy series, the novel All You Need is Kill, and the Dr. Slump manga. But here at Built to Play, there's really only one game in his long portfolio that matters: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. The game is a visual novel from Capcom and stars Phoenix Wright, a down on his luck lawyer living in Los Angeles, who has to solve all of his cases in only three days. It's a charming and often funny game that relies on its stellar translation, which is far from literal.

Though by changing so much, you often run into issues down the line. Gyakuten Saiban, the japanese name of the series, is set in Tokyo, which causes the brunt of the inconsistencies. A hamburger shop mentioned in the early games has to reappear as a noodle stand later on. That's a small issue, but consider that the designers recently decided that the newest game would star Phoenix's direct ancestor, a samurai living in late 19th century Japan. 

Back in good old North America, we talked to the author of the new book in the Boss Fight Series, ZZT. Anna Anthropy tells us about the history of an internet community and its diversity. 

1991's ZZT is a weird game to talk about. It's an adventure game built from ANSI characters, all numbers, letters and symbols. It had a limited color palette, and even more limited story. But that's not that part of ZZT people remember the most.

ZZT attracted a large community because it came with a level editor and a simple programming language that let you make your own games out of the ZZT engine. These games would then be shared online on message boards and forums, and covered a wide variety of genres and topics.

Anna Anthropy writes about that community and how it inspired her own growth as a designer and a writer. She met people who had the same concerns as her, and just like her, were trans. She says it's like a predecessor to the feminist-minded Twine community, which encourages everyone of every creed to make games. 

Anna Anthropy tells us all about the history of ZZT, why it matters, and reasons why you should check out ZZT games today starting at 17:00.

By the way, Anna gave us a couple recommendations that didn't make it into the episode, but here's a few: Ned the Knight, Kudzu, and Eli's House. For more, she has a whole list of great ZZT games to play onher website. You can pick up her book at Boss Fight Series page. 

Last month, no one could stop talking about E3, but that's not necessarily a good thing. Many have questioned whether E3 is lessening in importance, or if its actually bad for the industry as a whole. 

We've had 20 Electronic Entertainment Expos since its start, and whether they've been in Las Vegas, Santa Monica or Los Angeles, it's almost always been one of the most anticipated game-related events of the year.

We checked in with Daniel Kaszor, the editor of the Post Arcade at one of Canada's largest newspapers, the National Post. According to him, E3 probably won't be going anywhere, but with fewer big budget games coming out each year, the demographics are shifting. E3 isn't even the biggest show of its kind anymore. That would be Gamescom in Germany, where the public days attract hundreds of thousands.

Daniel tells us about the Post Arcade's coverage of E3, and whether E3 is even all that beneficial to big publications starting 32:40.

This week's music comes from the Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney soundtrack and the Free Music Archive. From the former, we used the song, "Pressing Pursuit -  Cornered Witness." From the Free Music Archive, we used "As Colorful as Ever" by Broke for Free, "Blue" by Podington Bear, "Hallon" by Christian Bjoerklund.

**As always, this weeks episode was produced and edited by Arman Aghbali and written by Danielle Rosen. **

Built to Play visits E3 from our living room. We talk about Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, EA and Ubisoft. Plus we discuss our favourite games, like No Man's Sky, Valiant Hearts, Bloodborne, and The Division stage play.

As part of our localization month, we're going to recount the history of EarthBound' release in North America. That means we're going to look at everything from EarthBound Zero to the fan translation of Mother 3. But first, what's an EarthBound?

You play as a kid from the suburbs, Ness. Ness lives in Eagleland, and recently an alien crash landed near his house. At the crash site, a bee from the future tells Ness that ten years from now the world sucks, but Ness can change that. He can travel across Eagleland, to the big cities and defeat the evil alien Gygas. The world was definitely not our own, but the monsters were street punks, and to save you had to call your dad. Originally released in 1995, game designer Shigesato Itoi wrote the game to be a bit of an oddity. There were no empires to defeat, like in Final Fantasy. And there was no great wizard to find, like in Dragon Quest. You were just a kid with a bat who wanted to make a few friends and occasionally got homesick. 

So you'd think the game would be this great success, like those games were. Well, not really. For that we talked to Jeff Benson.  Jeff is working on a documentary about EarthBound called EarthBound USA.Jeff grew up with the game. He played it alongside his father and his brother, and even made an embarrassing home movieabout it.

But Jeff's family was only one of a few who picked that game up. According to Jeff, both the marketing and the price seemed to push people away. For instance, the tagline was "This game STINKS," and all the advertising was based around that one line. 

Nintendo of America probably didn't think this one through. Throw 'em a bone. It was the 90s.

EarthBound, at $60, was also a little expensive for the time. Nintendo included the strategy guide in the box, which made the box bigger, and $10 more than the average SNES game. It didn't help that they used scratch and sniff cards that reeked of gym socks to draw kids to stores. 

That didn't stop the people who did pick it up from forming a community around it at Starmen.net. Jeff eventually became part of that community, and over time grew so fascinated he's working on a full length documentary all about it. He talks about the game, the marketing campaign, and why he made a terrible home movie about it starting 28:00.

A prototype cartridge of the original Earth Bound. Courtesy EarthBound Central

EarthBound wasn't the first time Nintendo tried to bring over Shigesato Itoi's work from Japan. They'd tried before with Mother, the first game in the series. Mother was Itoi's first major RPG and was a minor sensation in Japan. Partially it's because Itoi wrote really catchy advertising copy. In the 80s, Japanese people quoted his ads like they would a pop song. It was also the first role playing game to not focus on swords and sorcery for the Famicom game console. But the game never made it over to North America, despite Nintendo having essentially finished localizing it. It would have been released on the Nintendo Entertainment System, but with the SNES less than a year away, they didn't have time to market it. So it sat in someone's drawer for four years.

Steve Demeter, better known as Demiforce, is a fan translator who got his hands on a copy of a late prototype of Mother, then called Earth Bound (note the space in the middle). A few prototypes had escaped from Nintendo, and ended up in his lap. That version only needed a some light editing, so in 1998 he copied the game off the cartridge and fixed it up. Then it was just a matter of uploading it to the internet for people to see as EarthBound Zero. To hear more about how he found one of four known copies of Earth Bound, and why he dumped it online, tune in around 35:00.

For plain old EarthBound, Marcus Lindblom had that job. In 1995, Marcus was a software analyst in Nintendo's game group. Software analyst is a fancy name that meant he worked on the localization team for a couple games. These games didn't require much text outside of the menus. Games like Wario's Woods don't really provide much opportunity for creativity. So when they suggested he work on the localization of Mother 2, Marcus leaped at the chance. Here was a 10 hour long game that needed new jokes and new dialogue. 

Marcus teamed up with an ex-Ape employee, Masayuki Miura. Miura translated the game line by line, then handed it over to Marcus who'd make each line more palatable to an English speaking audience. Together they created a memorable translation that referenced the Beatles and included lines like "Aiiiiiie, I screamed 'cause I didn't know what to do."

Courtesy  KurkoBoltsi on DeviantArt

But Marcus picked an awkward time to get into localization. There were no tools to make the translation process simpler. Miura would read out each line and Marcus would offer an edited version. Then Miura would copy that into the code. For a while, they didn't have a functional version of the game to see the context either.

As for the length offering creativity, turns out 10 hour games take a long time to translate. By the time Marcus had the job, 10 per cent of the work was already done. Nintendo wanted the project done before June, however, and with most of the dialogue unfinished and items unnamed, he needed to work about 14 hours a day. Marcus took one day off in February for the birth of his daughter, and then worked for the next few weeks non-stop.

When they wrapped it all up, Miura printed out the script for Marcus to read over. Page laid on top of page, it was about six inches high.

And then in June, the game flopped. There was that misguided ad campaign, and EarthBound didn't review well. It was the 90s, and EarthBound's cheery tone didn't sit well with a lot of critics. In a few months the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn would be in stores. Who wanted to play an rpg on their SNES with new consoles on the way? Marcus didn't really talk about EarthBound for the next 10 years. To hear what happened next, tune in around 38:45.

For a long time, that seemed like it would be the end of the  Mother series. It didn't sell well. Nintendo cancelled Earthbound 64, the sequel for the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive. Fans had gathered on Starmen.net but there wasn't much to do. They petitioned Nintendo to continue on with the N64 game but the disk drive was another Nintendo peripheral that just didn't sell.

Then in 2006, Mother 3 landed on the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo's handheld gaming platform. Fans cheered for it to be released across the pacific, but it was too late. Like EarthBound Zero (and EarthBound to a lesser extent) it came out at the end of the platform's life. The new system, the Nintendo DS, had been out for two years already. Who was going to buy a GBA game in 2006?

Jeff Erbrecht would. Jeff, known online as JeffMan, found someone in a forum willing to share a copy of Mother 3. It was the day before that game was supposed to come out in Japan, but the ROM was real. Jeff immediately set out to translate the game and so that people could play it. The main problem was that he was in tenth grade in an Ontario high school, and didn't know much Japanese. So he teamed up with a few friends online who knew a little more, and became their main programmer. 

Clyde Mandelin had the same idea, except he was a professional translator during his day job. He translated anime for Funimation, like Gunslinger Guns. Clyde loved EarthBound and helped to build the community around it on Starmen.net, where he was known as Tomato. He built his own group, bringing together a who's who of fan translators, like Steve Demeter. Jeff's group eventually fell apart due to some laziness and bad blood, so he joinedClyde's.

He again settled in as the programmer, and every night, after he finished his homework, he'd work on bringing to life the last game in the Mother series. It took them three years to finish it, but along the way the Mother 3 translation brought in tons of new fans and a new respect for the series. Or you can hear them tell it starting 50:50.

Courtesy the CAPS LORD.

As always, this episode was written by Arman Aghbali and Daniel Rosen, and edited by Arman. 

You can find everything mentioned above at Starmen.net, and another incredibly valuable resource, EarthBound Central. 

If you have any questions about the show, want to comment or critique us, comment below or send us an email to [email protected]. If you've heard your music used inappropriately on our show, be sure to send us an email. 

We visited Toryuken last week to chat with Justin Wong about the role of small fighting game tournaments. We finish off the Bit Bazaar with N++ and famed narcissist Jon Remedios. And our localization month continues with Steve Demeter reminding us of Radical Dreamers.

Colin Williamson joined us from Seattle to discuss the process of localization. Colin used to work for Square Enix as a localization expert back in the mid-2000s, and helped retranslate some of the oldest Final Fantasy games, even going back and correcting the work of industry legend, Ted Woolsey.

Woolsey's work was flawed, though not for a lack of style. He did the translations largely on his own, couldn't communicate often with the design team, and had crazy deadlines to finish them. Colin meanwhile worked in a team, not too far from where the actual designers worked, and he started the translations while the game was still under development. Those circumstances also helped him codify all the language currently used in Final Fantasy games, like "Phoenix Down" over "Phoenix Feather." A lot has changed since Woolsey worked for Square, and Colin tells us all about it, starting 21:30.

**Want to learn more about the history of Final Fantasy? Check out our 1, 2, 3 part history specials. **

Colin also gave us a couple games that are particularly great examples of localizations. For our own list, take a look at our primer. 

Comics vs Games is a yearly event in Toronto where comic artists team up with game designers to create a video game. This year, the theme was 3D, leading to the virtual reality games Altar and Libraria. Altar, created by designer Daniele Hopkins and artist Gillian Blekkenhorst, allows you to briefly walk around the ruins of an alien civilization. While designer Kyle Dwyer and artist Adam Hines teamed up for the pop-up book adventure game, Libraria. 

(All photos from Attract Mode's 3D gallery. Clay models were all done by Ventla are long forgotten Nintendo characters that we can't name. The two prints are meant to be 3D with red/blue glasses. If you have 'em, try 'em.)

Each round of Comics vs Games is accompanied by a gallery curated by the fellows at Attract Mode, a video game art collective. This year they held a 3D gallery containing a selection of three dimensional 2D art, presented with old school red and blue glasses. We talked to Matt Hawkins, a long time member of Attract Mode about why they collect video game fanart, and some of beautiful renditions of Dark Souls and Year Walk, amongst numerous other games. You can hear from him, Gillian and Kyle starting 35:00.

Welcome to the Bit Bazaar at the Bento Miso on May 10. Mare Shepard shows off N++ right next to the entrance.

Emily Carroll and Damian Sommer talk about their development process on the Yawhg, one of the first Comics vs Games projects.

Vagabond Dog's Jake Reardon shows off Always Sometimes Monsters at his booth at the Bit Bazaar

Some wares, images, zines, and postcards for sale at the Bit Bazaar.

A volunteer from Snakes and Lattes shows off a version of the Machine of Death card game, based on Ryan North's anthology book of the same name. 

There's not just games for sale at the Bit Bazaar. You can get rare chocolates, cider, and sometimes pies on the top floor of the Bento Miso.

Conor McCreery was at the Bit Bazaar, a sort-of independent video game flee market, to show off the new prototype of the upcoming Kill Shakespeare board game. Conor is one of the creators of Kill Shakespeare, a comic where all of Shakespeare's works exist in the same universe. Imagine the Marvel comic book universe, but for Hamlet and Othello. With those sorts of mashups already on the table, their publisher,IDW, invited them to turn the three-volume comic into a board game. Conor tells us about how the game works, how they got involved, and why a Kickstarter does more than raise thousands of dollars. You can hear all about it, starting 51:30.

The prototype version of the Kill Shakespeare board game at the Bit Bazaar. 

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Simins talked about the power of video game zines at one of the panels at the Bit Bazaar. Elizabeth, an artist who occasionally does a comic for Kotaku with journalist Cara Ellison, told us about zine's appeal and their utility. For those who don't know, a zine is like a small handcrafted magazine made by only a few people. Elizabeth loves their physicality and so do the people who buy them from her, although she admits she probably won't get rich off a zine. Still, they enable her to discuss things like misogyny in games, like in "Ain't No Such Thing as Misogyny." If you'd like to hear more about video games zines, and a few of Simins projects, take a listen at 51:30.

Elizabeth Simins's video game zine that collects her artwork and comics regarding misogyny in games. Courtesy Elizabeth Simins.

*This music was all taken under a creative commons license. If you feel your music was used inappropriately, be sure to send us an email. 

We explore accessible arcades with AbleGamers founder Mark Barlet and U of T assistant professor Sara Grimes, examine user research with Anatole Chen from Xbox's natural user interface platform team. And we look at beautiful environment design with Kate Craig, the brick builder of Gone Home. Plus, in the news, Naughty Dog is leaking professionals, Microsoft boosts the Xbox One with TV shows, and a community manager decides to defend a racist.

Built to Play went to PAX East and came back with short interviews with far out games. We talked to Game Oven about their dancing game Bounden and Jordi de Paco about his point and click thriller Gods Will Be Watching. We took a glance into the fourth dimension with Marc ten Bosch's Miegakure and popped into the diversity lounge to check in on Toronto Gaymer's Samson Romero. Plus spam emails and hat-stacking in Max Gentlemen.

We're discussing lost worlds with Robin Arnott of Soundself, Frank Cifaldi of Lost Levels and lost neighbourhoods with Benjamin Rivers of Snow and Ryan Couldrey, director of the upcoming Snow film. Plus in the news, we talk Amazon Fire TV, the five year old who broke in Microsoft, and the nightmarish GAME_JAM