Built to Play

Danielle and Arman examine the relationship between the gun and the gunslinger in Westerado. We talk about Konami and the decaying world of Japanese games. We chat with Nick Montfort about his Trope Tank. And Miriam Verburg takes us back to Junior High.

Built to Play explores the legal realities of games preservation, the utter nonsense around Metal Gear Solid V and why we love to feel vulnerable.

Subscribe (Stitcher)Subscribe (iTunes)

Every year or so we release a horrifying blooper reel. Contained in this audio are our numerous follies and questions pertaining to the X-Men and Canadian media. At least there's nothing potentially libellous in here this year. I edited that out. 

We examine the modern role playing game as they come out in Bloodborne and Pillars of Eternity and how the games compare.

Built to Play focuses on four space-themed stories all about exploration and self-discovery

Space is a weird place to go. It's wondrous, potentially beautiful, but it's not quite worth the price of omission. Send astronauts up to the moon, fly a rover to Mars, speculate about a colony on Venus, and you'll still have the problem that it's mostly empty and extraordinarily expensive. Yet, we still want to go there, as science fiction authors will tell you along with everyone who signed up for the Mars One reality show.  Video games have been a part of that fantasy since the medium's inception, andour collective fascination seems to be resurging. That desire for some great voyage beyond our current horizons speak to our innate curiosity as a species. 

Games focused around space travel seem to tell us more about ourselves than they can about their setting.It's rare that we'll learn something new about space travel from games. Thanks to Star Wars, most games represent space warfare like a World War II dogfight. Plus, if you're looking for a realistic simulation of a spacecraft, even the most technical games won't show you the extreme scarcity up there. Dogfights are fun, and worrying about supplies isn't, so that's fine, though it does tell you that we aren't truly looking to explore the "final frontier." 

We want spaces to delve into fantasies and potential futures. Elegy for a Dead Worlddrives you to explore through creative writing. Star Citizen provides the ultimate libertarian dreamscape. Spacewar!would have been impossible without examining the limitations of computing itself. And sometimes games surprise us in where they go and what they remind us. 

In this episode you will hear the following stories:

• Ziba Scott talks about how to get people to start writing and why he's ecstatic about Alf fanfiction. (00:00 - 11:25)
• Travis Day explains economy and fantasy when building an open world space simulator. (11:25 - 21:20)
• John Sharprevisits thehistory of video games, and how its relationship with space travel began. (21:25 - 34:40)
• Dave Shayler and Tristan Donovan tell us how Tetris visited the stars and why even odd space voyages are worth it. (34:45 - 51:30)

Notes: We say Ziba Scott's name wrong, constantly. Sorry about that! It's ZAI-BA not ZEE-BA. Also the astronaut audio in the final segment is from the Soyuz-TM 15 trip, not TM-17. We couldn't find any for TM-17 so we stuck a bit of the earlier trip before we get into the story. Hope that didn't cause any confusion. 

THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR "Raro Bueno" by Chuzausen, "Waltz of the Stars valse des toiles" by Lee Rosevere, "little cloud (johnny_ripper remix)" by 水中,  "Goosedance" by Paperclip Galaxy, "Dark Matter" by Podington Bear, and "Enough of our Machines (johnny_ripper remix)" by son lux, "rush loop" by Adam Wrong.WE ALSO USED "Unanswered Questions" BY Kevin MacLeod, clips from Sven's Space Place, a Movietome Sputnik newsreel, launch of the Soyuz FG, and the Tetris Theme. 

BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF MET RADIO IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND DANIELLE ROSEN.

IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.

At PAX East we found expert space explorers, monster hunters, attack musicians, and mood setters.

We wrap up our second day of PAX to chat about procedural generation and visual novels.

Built to Play visits PAX East and decides to talk about roguelikes and their friend in a bind, the MOBA. 

PAX East is our one big trip of the year. We can't afford planes, trains or automobiles, so we really try to go to a convention where we'll see a lot of new ideas and fascinating approaches to gameplay. One of the big trends we noticed on our first day, however, was gameplay based on two genres, the roguelike and the mobile online battle arena. They like like fairly different genres, but tend to be implemented for the same reasons: People like them, and they make money. That's not to say that these genres have been implemented poorly, but stretching the idea of both a procedurally generated landscape can only go so far, and often results in a more generic experience than a replayable one.

The MOBA by comparison feels more like a blatant cash in as various companies are slightly tweaking the concept of heroes running at each other in an arena to target potential League of Legends players who have yet to pick up the game.  There has been some advancement in the MOBA The shooter equivalent the Team Fortress 2 replica or first person arena combat progresses the genre beyond the scope of the top down perspective. But even that seems to be copied frequently and without nuance.

THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR "Hundy Mil Tight" BY PODINGTON BEAR. BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF MET RADIO IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIELLE ROSEN.

IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.

We return to the Vector Festival to interface with the machine, dodge some lasers, and transform into our Sailor selves. 

Game controllers are often a player's lifeline. A player's familiarity with a  control scheme or a controller can determine the difference between success and defeat. Over time we've seen controllers become more standardized, from a simple joystick and a button to the four face buttons, four triggers, and two analogue sticks. We've had good controllers (Xbox 360), bad controllers (Nintendo 64), and plain ugly ones (Atari Jaguar), but eventually they all settled on the same thing. The Wii U's gamepad has screen in the middle,  but it's fundamentally the same layout as the PlayStation 2, and its simplified controller makes that clear. These controllers then form a connected language, where a player can move between all modern consoles and not dramatically change the way the games control. 

Yet, once controls become standardised they start to lose their nuance. Vibration adds potential, as does the Wii U's screen (not so much the PS4's touch nub) but they're just abstractions made for a select few games, usually focused on action. How do four face buttons and four triggers help you in a game where you're exploring or trying to solve puzzles? Most likely, half the buttons will go unused. Meanwhile there's not enough buttons for a flight simulator or many strategy games. Sometimes they also lack the precision and exact feel necessary for a game. We used to accelerate cars with the bottom most face button, but the back right trigger feels better.

Today's episode explores, every language has a learning curve and our current language is hardly the only one. 

With the necessary philosophical rambling out of the way, on today's episode you'll hear the following designers:

• Kieran Nolan, a researcher from Ireland, talks about_ Control_, a game about the way we interact with machines and the levels of abstraction it takes to play one. (0:40 - 10:30)
• In the news : Sony shrinks. Twitch gets a convention. Gamergate remains horrific. SpeedTree won an academy award. **(10:30 - 34:30) **
• Sagan Yee, Alicia Contestabile, and Nadine Lessio discuss magical girls, Sailor Moon,_ Punk Prism Power_, and giant plastic controllers. (34:30 - 44:50)
• **Daniele Hopkins and Kyle Duffield **explain how to explain a field a lasers, why'd they make for a terrible security system, and fighting a human boss battle. (44:50 - 53:20)

We've talked to Sagan Yee and Nadine Lessio a couple times now. The first time we talked to them together was for a game where you physically threw knives at a screen to make decisions. Nadine also worked on another game available at the Vector Festival called Sext Adventure, with Kara Stone.Meanwhile, Sagan's been teaching people about game literacy at Toronto's Reference Library. 

Sorry, if we didn't get your call. We were fighting evil. pic.twitter.com/cL3pigmWhB

— Built to Play (@BuilttoPlay) February 21, 2015

By the way, the Vector Festival's _To Utility and Beyond _exhibit is running at the InterAccessgallery until March 21. It's at Ossington and Queen in Toronto, so if you live in Canada, it's basically down the street. 

THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR "OLPC" BY Marco Raaphorst, "Algo Rhythm Natural" BY Podington Bear, "Erotic Robotics" BY The Polish Ambassador,  "Photosphere" BY Charles Atlas. OUR OPENING THEME WAS "As Colorful As Ever" by Broke for Free.THIS EPISODE USED CLIPS FROM Ocean's Twelve, Terminator 2, Videodrome, and Sailor Moon. We also used "Unanswered Questions" by Kevin MacLeod.BUILT TO PLAY IS MET RADIO PRODUCTION. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIELLE ROSEN.

IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.

We discuss a litany of space themed games, including Mass Effect, Eve Online, Asteroids, and FTL.