Oh! Well I never! Was there ever...

Okay points for whom ever can actually name what the title of this post comes from.  Additional points if you can score me tickets to a show done by the creator... or even better yet, a good performance of Lés Misérables.  Okay since I'm giving out points for no reason even more points to anyone who can say what Lés Misérables means in English and who knows how to properly pronounce it.  And finally for the biggest brownie of all (ha ha! a change up!) who is the best singer IMHO of the lead role?

Okay now that were past the musical portion of this post shall we move on to more important things?  In the past I have mentioned how certain aspects of a video game are more crucial to game play.  I have also noted that its when they all come together that you get a truly classic game. To review IMHO there is a holy trinity for games:  Storyline and Characters,  Music and Sound, and Visual Appeal and Visual Distinction.

Of the three I haven't mentioned much a bout Visual Appeal.  Why?  The answer is more simple then you might think.  Generally speaking today games have become so graphics intensive, that visual appeal is almost a null point in "can they get it right".  However I will admit that companies get it wrong, or intentionally go out of their way to make their product appeal to different sections of the population.  A fine example would be any game with large amounts of blood, and gore in them.  I have no real interest in discovering what the entrails of a Gromgarian slug look like, much less what they appear to be when splattered on my screen... much less that of a human.

One aspect here that is vitally important however and often overlooked is the distinction of visual style that different production houses have.  This is true no matter what the production house is, be it Disney, Studio Ganiax, or Square Enix.  This is because the artists that they have are different from one another and thats a good thing.  If all games looked alike they would quickly grow boring, so think of that next time you complain about how a game looks.

Sound is important.  If all your creatures go "kree!" every time they attack then gamers will turn off the sound, movie goers will mute their TVs (or walk out of the theater), and book lovers will think your vocabulary is seriously lacking.  Sound ties in too with dialog, and that in turn ties in to the appeal of the world, the more immersive it is the more time people want to spend in your world.  However beware of the booby trap that is a lexicon.  If you have to spend more time looking up specialized terms, then participating in the media, then you've lost your audience.

Notice I say media.  This includes pictures, shows, movies, books, magazines, games,  you name it.  The rules I have here are finite and far reaching, they touch on every media known to man.  Each band has its own sound its own world their music belongs in, each panting is a window into that artist's view of the universe, and each book is a part of a person's soul and a look into how they see our world.

The final part of the trinity Storytelling and Characters seem simple.  Make an interesting story and make interesting characters and your golden right? Wrong.  If your characters are cold and people can't relate they can't get into your work, that's true, however more importantly people have to feel that your characters and storytelling are realistic.  If you don't know what it is, read here for what deus ex machina is... you'll thank me later.  This is arguably a huge problem in video games right now. 

Let me provide an example.  I suck at FPS titles like Halo, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, and pretty much anything with a gun and shooting mechanics... if I'm using a controller.  This means that I am relying on the storytelling to get me though games like COD MW2 when I play them so I notice holes in the story telling, like the enemy leader knowing your character is a double agent, when there's no indication of him doing so previously.  True this is a bad example on my part since I never played though much of the game, but to have him suddenly turn around and shoot my character dead left me pulled out of the game going "What happened?", in short I no longer was connecting with the game as it continued the story didn't work for me.

My point is simply this, every character needs balance, both in the story and in the character itself.  That's why you have a character who can do incredibly powerful magical spells they are usually physically weak.  I think the question of games getting easier isn't answered though the difficulty its through the use of save points and deus ex machina.  Games are training us to play them better and thus more skill is coming to the table when we do beat a game, just keep in check the bosses who can do impossible.

I hope this will be my last post about the trinity.  I'm sure you are all bored with it... and so as a way of saying thank you for sticking though my exposition I would invite you to a  little contest.  I would love to get a picture that I can use as a background for a home page that I am considering building for a website.  My general concept follows my name "Tech Magi" or "Blue Tech Magi".  For those of you who don't know  a magi is a magic user or wise man.
 
My initial idea is a technified version of the black mage from Final Fantasy, or a version of Vivi (from Final Fantasy 9) with some tech some how involved.  Of course you can't just rip off Square Enix ... I don't really want a lawsuit on my hands thanks.  Anyway once I create the website the winner's picture will appear as a background, with all submissions being linked or presented in an art section of the page.  Feel free and go wild.  I'm not sure when this will close but I do intend to build the website once I have a computer with the oomph to handle graphic applications without looking at me thinking I'm BSC (Bat Shit Crazy).  Submit your ideas though email or comments, and hopefully with in the next few months, I'll have a web presence, and you'll have a piece of art you can show off online, just remember that once submitted all pieces of art will belong to the website, unless linked though a web site, and the background will belong to the website.  Thanks everyone.