Sly Cooper and M Plus One

I spent one magical week buried deep in Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. I voraciously tore through the game's story and worked myself to the limit to clear the game's extra challenges. When I beat the game fully, I was rewarded with developer commentary unlocked for each stage. Whatever possessed me, I decided to take a listen. The Journey I took through Sly's development only made me appreciate the game all the more and introduced me to a fascinating concept: "M plus one."

For the uninitiated, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus is a platforming game that challenges the player to win through stealth rather than combat. You play the role of the titular Sly Cooper, infamous thief, as he slinks, jumps, and swings around a wild variety of creative and stylish stages. In this game, the equally titular Thievius Raccoonus, a book containing the secrets of the Cooper family, has been stolen and separated page-by-page all over the world. Sly - and you - must use his family's legacy of skills and know-how to recover the pages, reassemble the heirloom, and thwart the ambitions of the villainous guilty party.

And I repeat, this is a stealth game. You are given a complex, hallway, building, etc. and your goal is to reach your target without being seen. All of the stages have tight security, so you'll be sneaking through the shadows, above everyone's heads, and taking shortcuts that keep you out of plain sight.  Therefore the environment design is very important not only to this game's presentation, but how it plays. Every power line, window, rail and pole is free game for getting around. And don't think this is all optional, because being caught or trying to engage an enemy head-on is recipe for disaster. You are a capable fighter able to single out targets, but you won't last long in a really hot area. Besides, it just feels cool to take secret paths and leap around rafters in a borderline parkour fashion.

You'll want to stay up and above this guard

I came for the story, the characters, the setting and the gameplay, and I stayed for the time trial challenges. Beating levels unlocks challenge versions of those stages. They aren't any different, but you'll be racing a strict timer. Beat the timer, and you beat the challenge. Beat the challenge, like I said above, and developer commentary is added to the game. And this isn't simply audio that you hear in a menu. The game actually places an object at the beginning of each stage that begins the audio log. If you're so inclined, you can play through the stage while the audio is playing. You can play the game and learn about the development process at the same time!

I essentially played the game three times. One for story, two for challenges, and third for the commentary. I am a complete sucker for any behind-the-scenes look at game creation, so I had no problem coasting through a third time with a developer talking in the background. Every stage had something new to note. The developer would talk about designing stages, character, enemies, the world, the story, and the gameplay. I distinctly remember one stage where the developer talked about how a stage's lighting worked for style and visibility. Sure enough, I looked around at the stage while I was hearing about the lighting and could absolutely see what the developer was talking about.

One topic that came up in the commentary was a concept called "M plus one." As described by the developer, M plus one is the design practice of introducing new concepts into the game and training the player to be proficient in those new concepts. "M" stands for "mechanic," and the "plus one" stands for the way which the game will gradually make the concept more challenging. This way, it forces the player to get better at that concept and prepare them for the puzzles and bosses ahead.

This game also has collectibles, colorful characters, great design, and more. I could go on but I can only fit so much in an article

Let's look at Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus as an example. If you want to get onto a higher platform, you jump to gain that height. However you can also jump to cross over gaps that you can't run over. Meanwhile, Sly has a cane that he uses in combat and as a way to operate levers. There are also poles that Sly can use his cane on to swing from and cross larger gaps. Now imagine instead of a gap, you're leaping off the side of a cliff and trying to land on a platform that is moving. See how M plus one works? You have these simple concepts, you hone them through a series of challenges, and then you combine these concepts to make all-new challenges that still fit with what you know about the game and the world.

Hearing it plainly like that is one thing, but where and when they place the commentary for their explanation could not be more perfect. You see, the explanation of M plus one comes relatively late in the game, when we've already had experience learning concepts and combining them without a name for it. In comes this developer talking about M plus one. At this point I am exploring around a casino-like stage while the developer rattles off examples of M plus one. And I kid you not, he talked about what I was doing at that exact moment.

In the casino stage, I was jumping between platforms. The platforms were actually large roulette tables, and they were spinning. This made it a little more difficult to jump properly since the very ground beneath me was moving me around. At the same time, there were bars of electricity that I had to jump over. When the roulettes weren't trying to spin me into those bars, they were spinning in the opposite direction of where I was trying to go so I would have a more difficult time jumping over the electricity! And right when I am dealing with this situation, the developer is talking about that very stage that I'm playing, that very obstacle I'm up against. I felt a connection with the developers at that moment. It really drove home for me that amount of care and planning went into this game.

The actual M plus one commentary - starts at about 1:38 in the video

My friends, I love this concept. It's one way to learn and I am pretty sure it's one of the most commonly employed methods of learning out there. But now we have a name for it, and a pretty cool name at that. The more I think about it, the more I realize it's good to have a name for the way we're learning and to really break it down. After all, what is one of the most common pieces of advice for tackling a large task? To break it down into smaller tasks. Good advice, but I know it's hard to do such breaking down when I'm flustered. The issue in my case is that I'm going the wrong way for my personal style. To break a big task down into smaller tasks, I'm still faced with making any sense of the daunting large task.

Using M plus one, however, the focus is on what I am capable of and how it equates to the end goal. For instance, I'm currently learning programming and have been tasked to make a bunch of programs from financial report generators to simple games. Often when I get these assignments, I look at what's required and my mind just burns out trying to figure out how to get there from a blank page of code. When I take inventory of what I know and how to use what I know to build up a program, I'm better able to calm down, find my center, and get to work.

If I want to make a calculator app, let's start from the ground up. I know how to make the program perform math functions. I know how to make the program take numbers from the user. I know how to make the program tell if the user puts in letters instead of numbers. I know how to make the program show the result of the equation. And so on and so on. From there, it's a matter of taking these things I know separately and combining them in a way that creates a program that acts like a calculator.

With some confidence and mastery of your basics, you too can be cool just like this speed runner!

This is a simple example, but it gets my point across. The real important part is to find where you are comfortable starting in your planning process and use that to its fullest effect. There are plenty of projects where you'll need to start from the top in order to spread the work among a team. But eventually, you will have to start and you will start from some sort of bottom. If you're too focused on the top to do your job or do it well, then M plus one will help you gain that focus. In that sense, we may think of M plus one as a jumping-off point for a task or project rather than a full guide from start to finish. I know it helps me out to, at some point, look directly at what I am holding in my hands. Just like Sly Cooper planning to snatch a treasure starting off with just his cane, wits, and agility.

How about you? Does M plus one ring a bell? Or do you have your own learning experiences with games you'd like to share? Perhaps you have your own project or task that can benefit from a little bit of M plus one planning. If you do, I want to hear about it.

Dark Cloud 2 and Zealotry

Ah, Dark Cloud. This series has been on the sidelines of gaming culture since the days of the PlayStation 2. Far too long in my opinion! My passion for the series was recently reignited when I came into contact with a fellow video maker and I saw he has Dark Cloud videos on his channel. All of this remembering Dark Cloud reminded me of a story I want to share with you all!

For the uninitiated, Dark Cloud is a series of action/adventure games where the player takes control of a number of characters on a quest to save the world. Part of saving the world requires the player's party to venture into multi-floored dungeons as part of the storyline. The second game in the series differed from the first by featuring only two playable characters. But it made the most of those characters! Max, an inventor, is able to jump in a giant robot to completely whoop on enemies. Monica, a magic-using princess, is able to transform into monsters and use their abilities. And there is where my story begins.

At one point in the game, the player needs an item called the "Sundrop" in order to progress. The only way to get a Sundrop? Transform into the "Himarra" monster and talk to a Himarra. That's right, while your character is transformed into a monster, she won't be attacked by monsters of a similar type. You can even talk to your fellow monster as if they were a friendly non-player character. When you obtain the Sundrop, you even hear the Himarra's voice! I don't know about you all, but I got attached to the Himarra I talked to. Did I mention that you can just pick any Himarra wandering around the dungeon? That's right, the game doesn't just give you a monster to talk to. You actually have to find one yourself. That made the mission all the more personal to me.

This is a Himarra. Isn't it adorable?

That's why I was shocked at what happened next. After obtaining the Sundrop, I naturally thought "No reason to stay as a monster anymore," and transformed back into Monica. Imagine my surprise when the Himarra I was talking to moments before starts attacking me! "What's going on?" I thought. I pleaded to the screen, "Why are you doing this? It's me! We were talking a minute ago! You helped me!" but the Himarra would not - or could not - listen.

Eventually, I had to act. Putting on my best action movie drama face, I muttered, "Don't make me do this." But I had to. I forced Monica to cut down this monster that she had been fraternizing with moments before. Monica herself didn't even flinch to destroy the monster. She acted with the same neutral conviction that the monster had. I alone harbored this connection that didn't even involve me.

Okay, perhaps I'm embellishing the drama of this anecdote. A little. Especially considering I know why things turned out the way they did. In reality, the monster was nothing more than a construct of a game. It was a set of pixels on the screen programmed to behave in certain ways under certain circumstances. In this case, the monster was programmed to be hostile to the player unless the player assumes the form of a similar creature. In no capacity is the monster able to observe, learn, think, and defy its original programming. There's just no need for that in the game.

And yet, I still reacted this way. Who am I to be feeling this way, anyway? If this mission didn't even exist in the game, I wouldn't have second-guessed chopping down that Himarra in the first place. And that certainly didn't change anything afterward. What is it about connecting with that one video game enemy that's getting me to think so hard? I dove into the very core of the human condition to find an answer and I have come up with something.

At 14:45 you see the player get a Sundrop from a Himarra

You see, I humored the idea of the Himarra as a free-thinking being and went from there. The question then became why the Himarra would choose to attack me as soon as I presented myself as a non-Himarra creature. And, well, perhaps I'm not giving Dark Cloud 2 enough credit. What I'm chalking up to game mechanics may, in fact, be something more complex and tragic.

Where I'm more open to friendship, the Himarra may be more discriminating. After all, it lives in the wild where survival instincts take hold. The Himarra knows it can trust its own kind and probably has experience that tells it that there is no such guarantee with other types of creatures. Thus it stands to reason that when I transformed back into a human, the Himarra had a logical negative reaction. It could have thought that I was a spy amongst its ranks, or, even more heart breaking, it could have felt a sense of betrayal at seeing this new friend lie about who they are. Heck, this Himarra probably knows that humans are the most dangerous, destroying monsters left and right with ease. With this logic, the choice to attack as a pre-emptive defense is understandably obvious.

I got a little scared thinking this way. In a matter of seconds I took a course of action that was based on false assumptions, but phrased it in such a way that anyone would agree it was the right thing to do given the circumstances. I'm even more scared now because I am all too familiar with that way of thinking.

Attack-on-sight mentality of very common in our world, both in instinct-driven creatures and deep-thinking individuals. You do have the people who use pride in their identities to strengthen their roots and improve their character, but history shows conflict is in the blood of any culture and "us versus them" has been a time-tested mantra for unifying people, albeit of specific ideologies, for better and worse.

I remember when the first Dark Cloud was called a "Zelda-Killer." At least it gave us this great art!

Showing hostility as a roundabout way of showing support makes sense from a passion standpoint, but is flawed and stunts a person's growth as a cultured and free-thinking individual. For instance, I remember when Harry Potter was in full swing and I saw a news report on the series' exploding popularity. One interviewed mother said that she didn't care about Harry Potter nor will she bother reading it. The reason? Her family were already fans of A Series of Unfortunate Events and she resented Harry Potter for taking the thunder of her preferred series. Whether you prefer either book series, imagine that. A person willing to turn away from something new just because it was more popular than what she already knew.

There is a word for this sort of uncompromising conviction: Zealotry. Don't get me wrong, one can be a zealot for good causes and work their zealotry for the betterment of the world. But in general, I feel there's something uncanny about being too sure of yourself. This comes from personal  experience. Throughout my life I've found groups I can identify with and do well to fit in until I was expected to join in on badmouthing other groups or ways of thinking.

For instance, I talk to people all the time about watching what I eat. I do believe that a good life includes indulgence, and at the same time I'm still open to new things and trying the "less is more" approach to eating right. A few people I talk to, however, are deeply entrenched in one or the other and are very passionate about playing down the other half. I'll tell a calorie-cutting friend that I really enjoyed a meal out with a group last night and be told in return that I should stop letting my company coerce me into unhealthy eating habits. On the other side, I'll try getting water with a meal instead of soda to see how much I really miss it. Seeing this, my more wining-and-dining friends will tell me I'm acting like one of "them." I assume "them" refers to the insufferable sort of fitness enthusiasts who often go on record condemning common eating habits. Even if my friends don't mean to tear down the other side, their word choice still reflects that sort of mindset.

Without staying specific to one group, you can still see where I'm coming from. People can love what they love, but when they try to love through hate, that's going a bit far for me. If it gets to the point where someone could say "You're one of THEM," for any reason, then we're no better than the Himarra who's only following his programming.

I planned on putting in video game zealotry, but my search turned up nice consoles so I'm going with that instead. Found here. I really want to credit the source.

We're going leave this off on a community note. Let's share our own zealotries and see how or identities shape us. As for me, anyone can tell I'm zealous about video games and further the study of video games as a serious cultural medium. I may not agree when it comes to all criticism of video games, but only because I prefer to talk things out. Behind every piece of criticism is a story and a topic to explore further. If we just take the criticism at face value, that's no good. How about you? What are you zealous about? Games, movies, sports, comics, food, exercise, or even your work?

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to reading about how diverse this audience is!

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Tales of the Abyss and Mobile Storytelling

For the last two months of 2012, my Nintendo 3DS was more than just a portable gaming console. It was an interactive movie on the run. It was like a book with gamification tossed into the mix. At any time, I could open my system up and immediately be back in the world of Auldrant; either to train my characters or to advance the storyline happening within.

This may sound melodramatic, but it is accurate to how I felt about the game. So what did I do special that gave me such an in-depth experience? Nothing, really. I just carried my 3DS around and played the game whenever I was otherwise indisposed. I suppose it was just the fact that the game being so close to me physically allowed me to feel close to the game in a figurative way.

What I experienced with Tales of the Abyss is called "immersion." Immersion is somewhat of a buzzword in the gaming community that may have lost a little meaning because of how often it's tossed around. Immersion is the phenomenon of being so focused on something that you lose awareness of the world around you. I was immersed in Tales of the Abyss, and not necessarily only when I was playing the game. It sort of stuck to me as I went about my day. I would be thinking about the game's storyline or planning ahead which abilities I wanted my characters to learn next. If ever I had a moment, I could just dive right in and either push towards the next plot point or change my team around.

You see, Tales of the Abyss is a Japanese Role Playing Game. JRPGs tend to pack a lot of story content. Since I had that story content literally in my pocket, my book analogy is appropriate. Let's say that I played Tales of the Abyss on a home console. I would be setting aside time to play it and probably in long sessions. Because I played it mobile, I only played small bits of it at a time in situations where I didn't necessarily set out to play it. Rather than think of my ToA sessions as dedicated "game time," ToA was instead interwoven into my day. My routine. My life, even.

It doesn't hurt that the game itself is really good. The storyline takes place in a typical medieval fantasy setting, the world of Auldrant. The people follow a religious organization called the Order of Lorelei and live their lives according to a scripture called the Score. You follow the main character, bratty aristocrat Luke Fon Fabre, as he is wrenched from his life of luxury and sent on a fantastic quest to save the world. The game world is just full of interesting locations, the plot twists and turns to avoid being predictable, and the characters evolve in rewarding ways.

This crew will become family. Mark my words.

This stellar presentation is backed with very engaging gameplay. Most of the game takes place in 3D environments that you can run around and explore, but fighting takes place on specialized 3D planes. Combat in ToA is a mix between old-school RPG and fighting games. If you know what that means, you should be at least a little curious. If you don't, just rest assured that combat is fast, has a learning curve, and can be very rewarding when you do well. Your characters gain stats, learn new abilities, and develop the more you play.

Between the storyline and the game content itself, I could be sure that whenever I came back to the game, what I played would be rewarding. By the time I was watching the final scene of the game, I had built up enough investment in the game that I could fully appreciate the events of the game's climax. Once the credits were done and I could fully turn the game off, I just had a moment where I sat back and realized to myself, "It's actually over." I came to the realization that I didn't have Tales of the Abyss to come to for more adventure and training. I wasn't addicted, that game had just been such a consistent part of my days that not having it would take some getting used to.

This, my friends, is why I know that complex mobile games are here to stay. My creativity and zeal for life were kept at steady levels because of the fun and intrigue this game injected into my days. Games can be therapeutic in different ways for different people. The consistent quality of Tales of the Abyss is how it was therapeutic for me. Just having fun and satisfying gaming experiences peppered through my day kept me feeling fresh and chipper.

With an introduction movie this good, you know you're in for a good time.

And now, I want you to think about games which have had these effects on you. A game which you got completely immersed in. A game which helps you relax. A game which gets you fired up for the rest of your day. A game that didn't feel like "a game" when you played it. Remember that zen you feel when you're playing the game. Perhaps you'd prefer to call it "being in the zone." Either way, that feeling is great. If we could bottle that feeling and call upon it whenever we wanted, we would all be much happier with our lives and much more emotionally prepared for whatever may come.

If something comes to mind, feel free to share it in the comments below. Perhaps you'd like to ping me on Twitter, PM on tumblr, or mention on Facebook. I'm available on all social media and will be all too happy to feature your idea. I want to start discussions, not just have them with myself.

I also think I'll be settling into a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule with this blog. Perhaps I'll bring in other articles from around the web to feature on my off-days. Either way, I'm on a roll so you can expect another post by the end of the week. Until then, game out.