This seemingly creates an issue in the storytelling, which is that the players’ John Marston may in fact be very different from the John Marston of the cut-scenes. This issue is seemingly caused by the objective and subjective storytelling aspects of the game. Where you have the objective storytelling of the cut-scenes and scripted moments, where the player is not in control of Marston. And then the subjective storytelling moments which is basically ever other moment in the game where the player is in complete control over Marston’s actions.

But this issue doesn’t seem to actually occur, because while the player is seemingly given carte blanche over the game world while they playing the game between those scripted moments, they actually aren’t. In fact they are actually rather limited in what they can do, especially when you compare it to the Grand Theft Auto games (post GTA3.) Specifically on one detail, prostitutes.

In the past GTA games one was able to have sex with prostitutes, which was one way to rejuvenate the character’s health. But in Red Dead Redemption, while there seems to be no shortage of prostitutes, it is impossible to procure their services in any way. While it could have been done simply to avoid the unpleasantness that sort of thing brought to the GTA series from people looking to blame society’s ills on video games, I think that rather this was done as a conscious storytelling decision.

John Marston is a married man, one incredibly devoted to his wife. So much so that he goes around hunting his old friends to make sure she is safe. If he weren’t so devoted he would have no reason to be doing the things he is doing. Thus if the player were allowed to have him cheat on his wife, it completely ruins his motivation for what he’s doing in the first place. Thus it is removed as a choice for the player, because it is impossible for Marston as a character to do it.

This is in line with Anthony Burch’s “suspension of agency” idea that a player is willing to give up some control/choice in order to have better immersion in the game. This is arguably what they are doing by taking away that option. By removing it they are making the player more in line with Marston then having the player make Marston like themselves, but by doing so they make the player more invested/empathetic to him and thus more immersed and engaged with the game.

Now I would argue that John Marston in the game is supposed to be a good guy, by that I mean he doesn’t go around shooting everyone, robbing banks, stealing horses, etc. Well perhaps not a “good guy,” but a reformed bad guy. One wanting to leave that life behind him, and not wanting to do the bad things he did when he was younger. Which is why I think that the choices there for the player to do bad things is not about giving the player a choice between a good John Marston and a bad John Marston, but rather a John Marston who wants to be good but can easily lapse back into doing bad things. The bad choices, (the things that give you dishonor,) are there to taunt Marston to coax him back into his old outlaw/bandit way of doing things, and thus are also there to tempt the player as well.

The “morality system” supports this by being made up of honor and dishonor, and not some version good or bad. The reason this is different from saying he is good or bad is because in order to gain or lose honor one first has to have set morality to judge actions as being honorable, or dishonorable from. In the game the actions that give him honor are good deeds, rescuing people, not killing a criminal when you can capture them alive, etc. While the actions that bring dishonor are stealing horses, money, killing innocents, killing your own horse, etc.

Based on what constitutes honor and dishonor, we can deduce that Marston is neither a good or bad person, although aspiring to be good (which is supported by some of the scripted moments.) This is because if he were a bad person, then the actions of killing and stealing would possibly be considered honorable, with the good deeds might be seen as dishonorable.

What this all means is somehow this team at Rockstar has managed to tell an objective story (one without any branching or multiple endings,) while still giving the player the feeling of agency (that they can do whatever they want in the world and aren’t unnaturally restricted.) Without making any of their choices inconsistent with the character and story they are trying to tell, while also immersing the player into the role of John Marston.  This is by no means a small feat, especially in an open world/sandbox game.

Essentially it comes down to two things: flow and balance. While both are important for multiplayer level design, each if specifically more important for one type of multiplayer. Basically flow is important for deathmatch/free-for-all game types, while balance is the important factor for team based game types.

Flow, or what I mean by it in terms of level design, is the way players travel through a level, but also it’s about controlling the areas where players will battle. Having good flow in a level is helps keep the players from getting lost, but also helps direct them towards their objective. Which in deathmatch games is to kill the other players, so it’s about directing them into places where they can have battles. These areas are typically more open than other rooms, and are designed for clusters of players to battle without it feeling too chaotic.

For good examples of flow in a free-for-all style map I would look at some of the Unreal Tournament 2004 maps, as well as the Quake 3 maps. These maps generally did the best job in regards to flow, because the levels were constructed basically as mazes that wrapped back in on themselves. This made it so that players, even if they got lost, would eventually find themselves moving from the smaller hallways of the level into the more open areas where much of the fighting took place. Additional those hallways served as places for players to escape to to restock weapons and health, but the more powerful weapons and power ups are placed in the open areas to draw players into those spaces.

Balance is a little easier to explain, level balance for a team based game is so that the level is constructed in such a way as to not give either team an advantage. Most of the time, in order to balance the game for the teams, the level itself has to be designed to favor one team over the other in order for the game to work as intended. For instance in a capture the flag type game where there is only one flag, one team might be designated to protect it and lose if the other team manages to capture it. In this case the map would need to be balanced to give the defending team an advantage in order to make it challenging for the other team to win, but not too advantageous that it is too difficult for the attacker.

The best examples of balance come from the maps in Team Fortress 2, specifically Dustbowl for asymmetric balance and Badlands for symmetric balance. With symmetric maps the balance is a bit easier then the asymmetric stuff, since the map is the same on both sides. So whatever one team has the other team has, whether that is a weakness or a strength in how the map is designed.

However there is a bit more to it then just giving each side the same level layout. The way Badlands (control point gametype,) is designed is so that most of the battling occurs around the central map point (as you can see in the heat map of the level below, which shows the places where players die frequently.) It does this by making the second control point (which is the next point a team has to capture after the center point,) very difficult to defend as an attacker. So once it is taken by the attacker they need to move quickly to the last point before they lose it.

TF2 heat map of CP_Badlands

It is also not easy for the defending team to protect it either, at least not directly. Because the point is on a spire of sorts, it is higher up then any other part of the map that the player can get to. So even protecting it you can only shoot up at it. There also is not much room around the point itself, which makes it hard to set up a defense on the point, especially with sentry guns. Which makes it so that the defender is pushed to defend by stopping the attacker before they reach the point, and it laid out the map in such a way as to give them the ability to do so by making the area around this point very open. But they also provided the attackers with a more round about route to the second point which could allow the attackers to thwart the defense by flanking it.

Additionally the final point itself is even more advantageous to defend. Although there are a number of avenues for the attacking team to enter the room from, all of them are easily defendable with a few sentry guns. Now the need to give the defender such an advantage at this control point, and the previous one, is that the defender needs to be able to more then just defend they also need to attack. So by giving them an advantage in defending the expectation is that this will allow a few of the players to go on the offensive to try and take the attacker’s point so that they can maybe shift the momentum of the match.

Now with asymmetric maps like TF2′s Dustbowl (control point gametype,) one team is always on defense and the other is always on offense. Generally though asymmetric is a lot like a symmetric map once someone has taken the middle point, although there are some differences that need to be accounted for.

For instance the defending team doesn’t need to go on the attack at all, so having something like Badlands’ second point would be a poor choice for an asymmetric map since it was designed to have a lot of back and forth fighting over. Which is not something you have at all in an attack/defend map since once a point is taken in this mode it can’t be taken back. For that point to work in this type of game mode then it would need to be changed to allow the defender to actually defend the point directly, rather then be forced to defend in indirectly as I mentioned earlier.

TF2 heat map of CP_Dustbowl

So while there needs to be an advantage for the defender here, there also needs to be an advantage for the attacker. The attacker advantage is to give them a number of ways to get at the control point, but also to give them a place where they can set up to assault the next point. This area for a fire base is needed since the respawn area for Dustbowl doesn’t move during the round for the attacker. It also allows the defending team to have a more active defense that goes out to deal with these bases, rather then simply sitting and waiting for the attackers to make their move. This however is more about player psychology then level design.

Now while I’m specifically highlighting balance and flow as two major aspects that should be the concern of a level designer for a multiplayer FPS game, they are obviously not the only ones. Especially in regards to the type of game mode the map is intended for, or what unique gameplay qualities one game has over another. While those levels I mentioned before work in TF2, they probably wouldn’t if they were ported to a game like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, or Battlefield: Bad Company 2, because of the gameplay mechanics involved in those games.

And as I said across different game types even within the same game require different considerations. For instance in TF2 there is a map called Well which started as a control point map, not unlike Badlands, but then they created a capture the flag version of this map. The CTF version has been altered a good deal, taking a rather large chunk of the map away, and replacing it with some new terrain, because that area in the CP game was the central point and was a good place to setup a firebase or for one team to defend from. Which in a CTF game would quickly cause a map to fall out of balance since it would make it difficult not only to get through to get to the flag, but also for the player to travel back through to bring the flag to their base. While also making it easier for the other team to take the flag since most of the map would essentially be in their control.

So to wrap this up; flow is the most important aspect of level design for free-for-all deathmatch style games, since its about drawing the players into specific areas of the level where they can have interesting battles. Yet also provide them with ways to escape or regroup if they need to get away from a player or players. While balance is the most important aspect of team based games, because you want to make things as even between the teams as possible, such that the only factor in deciding which team wins a match is based on their skill, tactics and strategy.

Now gameplay wise its basically the best possible version of a Devil May Cry-style game. The combos are easy to pull off, and always satisfying. You always feel like you are doing something awesome. They removed the block for the dodge, which means you don’t get stuck in one spot to defend yourself, but rather are always moving around.

The game is very good about keeping things moving. The fights don’t typically last too long, or at least to a point where they feel like they are dragging along. The cut scenes are also generally pretty short, although they get longer as the game progresses, but after each one you are usually thrown into a fight. So even if you are bored by the cut scene you are thrown right back into the mix.

Now the thing about the game that most concerned me was the character of Bayonetta, and how over the top sexual the game seemed to be. However now that I’ve finished the game I don’t think it is a sexual game, its suggestive, but I wouldn’t call it sexy. Mainly because when it, “trying to be sexy,” its doing it in incredibly over the top and ridiculous ways. Which ends up making it silly, as opposed to sexy.

The key to this game is how ridiculous it is, and it was done purposefully, but not seriously. I’ve heard the game described as being “very Japanese,” because of how weird and sexual it seemed to be. Although I can understand that thought from some who hasn’t played it, or someone who has only played a little bit of it. It seems to me that what they were doing was trying to be, basically, campy. They wanted to be completely ridiculous and over the top for the purpose of being completely ridiculous and over the top, and they own it. Which they did.

Which in turn makes Bayonetta, the character, not a sexy woman to be ogled, but rather empowered woman who is in control of her sexuality. I think that had I played this before doing my top 7 women in videogames list, she likely would have ended up on the list. I’m really interested to see what they do with the character, let alone the series.

With the series I think they definitely can’t just release the same game with some improvements, which is what the Devil May Cry series has basically done. I think that the next Bayonetta, or DMC, has to almost completely reinvent the gameplay in order to do something better then what Bayonetta has done.

Games of the Year List:

• inFamous
• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time
• Flower
• Left 4 Dead 2
• Assassin’s Creed 2

Best Game of the Year:

• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

It’s not a good game.

I mean the world of the game is really cool, the dialogue and characters are very good. But overall it’s really not good. The story has good moments, but the actual threads that connect those moments seem poorly constructed. For instance one character totally flips their opinion for another character, and it doesn’t come off as set up well and feels very contrived.

Now gameplay wise I think that it’s really trying to do too much. It wants to be an action game, and an RTS, and it does neither as well as they could be. On your own surrounded by enemies it becomes very apparent that you need a jump or dodge button. Otherwise you just stand around holding block so you don’t die.

The open world is way too cramped with stuff, so much so that it feels way too busy, and I found it hard figure out where I was going or what is going on around me. A lot of the really important things don’t really stand out enough, and just sort of blend into the surroundings.

The game also doesn’t really explain a lot to you. While they do explain the major bits, and do a pretty good job teaching the RTS stuff. The smaller things like changing the faces on the mountain, freeing the dragon statue things, or even opening the portal things to the Guardian of Metal, aren’t really explained to you. They are things that you can just completely miss without realizing it.

I do plan to finish the game at some point, and maybe my opinion will change by then, but right now I’m going to go play something else.

By which I mean that as consumers we have the right to resell books, movies, CDs, video games, and the like that we had bought previously. It’s a surprisingly important, and little known right that everyone in the US has (outside the US I’m pretty sure it’s not always the case.)

Even so there is something of a unique problem (of sorts) with the video game after market that doesn’t exist for any other kind of media. Now when you are looking to sell a used book you go to a used book store, maybe a pawn shop, eBay, or maybe you sell it at a yard sale. Same goes for music or movies, you would go to a used music store, or used movie store, pawn shop, eBay, yard sale, etc. With these forms of media there exist stores specifically designed to buy back your books, or music, or movies, and sell only these used ones. You don’t see a Tower Records store selling used CDs, or a Barnes & Noble selling used books. Yet for video games we have a big retailer in GameStop that not only sells new games, but used as well.

I’m not saying it’s something they shouldn’t be doing, but rather it was a rather ingenious business plan. The problem with this though from the stand point of the industry is that GameStop looks to sell you used before new, and when people are not buying new games they are not able to accurately count what games sell, but it also takes money out of their pockets when you make it so easy for consumers to purchase a cheaper used version over a new more expensive copy.

But the industry can’t do anything about it really, because they don’t hold enough power over GameStop to make them stop selling used games. And of course GameStop has no real reason to stop doing something that is so profitable for them.

So what’s the solution to this? Well the solution has to do a few things: 1) it has to allow GameStop (or any other secondary market retailer) to continue to sell used games, 2) it has to give the games industry some money for the used games that are sold, 3) it has to not violate consumers’ right of first sale. This seems to be like a pretty tricky set of guidelines to slip a solution into, but I think I have determined something that does.

Basically it is this, the industry writes up an agreement with GameStop and other used game sellers that give the industry a cut every time a used game is sold (some percentage of the sale price.) In order to get these stores to agree to this the industry agrees to sell games to these stores at a discounted cost, so that the new retail copy of a game would drop from $60 to $50.

So why would this deal work? Well the game industry gets what it wants, and starts to pull in some money off these used sales, but in doing so it also is good for the consumer because it will give them better metrics for tracking these sales. Which means that games that maybe did poorly new, but do much better as used titles might see sequels or their development teams might see more financing for other projects. The benefit to GameStop for this concession is that the lower cost of new games at their stores means that they are likely to pull consumers away from their other competitors that are forced to charge the higher price for the games. This is of course a boon to consumers (especially in the tough economic times we have now,) by making gaming a cheaper cost. And the game’s industry should be able to make up what money they lose on selling the games at a cheaper cost, through the money they get from the percentage they get from the used games sales.

Also the prices of used games should stay generally about the same as they are now since there would be a slight increase in their cost due to the industry taking a percent, but then because the cost of the new copy is also decreased the cost of the used should as decrease and cancel out the rise in cost from the industry’s percent.

“We find that what we miss most in the otherwise very respectable world of online console gaming is the dedicated server – but as a function of community, instead of performance. Peer to peer systems work well enough for the business of matching player to group, but the “Cheers” dynamic is largely unknown.

Visiting a named server is alike to visiting a known locale, with all of the rules and idiosyncrasies and (most importantly) personalities found to apply in that sovereign space. We’re not offering suggestions on how to migrate a generation of hardware away from peer-hosting, of course. We’d just like to give a nod to the differences, and to point out how nice it is when everybody knows your name.”– In-Game Chat episode description for The Dedicated Server Episode.

The idea of dedicated servers as places for community was something I hadn’t thought of, but once they started talking about it I started to think back about my own experience in team based first person shooters, where I would find a server or two that I liked, and as I frequented more I got accustomed to the players that played there and their reputations while also building up a reputation of my own.

The dedicated server community though should not be thought of as something like a facebook, or even a twitter or message board. It’s not a place where you go to meet and talk to people and establish new connections (intentionally.) Rather goes along more with the In-Game Chat guys’ analogy of them having a “Cheers” dynamic, and being more like a bar. It’s a place made up of people from all walks of life, but where what you do outside of the game is of no importance. What’s important is that you play the game, and work together with your team.

So as one visits the server more and more over time, the other players that frequent the server begin to take notice of you, especially if you are a good player, or if you are helpful in helping the team win. And all the social interaction that takes place was, until recently, done completely through text in the server’s chat window where you are able to communicate with either everyone, or just say something to your team. But even recently with games adopting the use of voice chat within the game, the chat window still seems to be the main place of conversation during these multiplayer games.

As one frequents the server more, they build up reputation based on how they play, but also connections with the other players. These kinds of connections can be from finding another player on the server that you work well with when you are on the same team, or can be a player that you like to play against. The player vs player connection usually derives from games where there are multiple classes, and where certain classes on opposite teams tend to butt heads in one on one combat, rather than in team combat.

The most frequent example of this is the sniper duel, where opposing sniper class players will constantly try and counter-snipe the other team’s sniper by out thinking them so that they are able to get a clear shot on them without the other player noticing them. Between two skilled snipers this can build up a bit of a camaraderious relationship of mutual respect between the players. Plus it adds an additional layer of challenge and enjoyment of the game.

Back to the bar analogy, what is interesting to note is that once a player leaves the game, returning to the real world. There is no further connection with those players. Their connection only exists within the space of that server and that game. Unless they are in a clan with message boards, then it’s very unlikely that they will communicate with each other outside of the game, or possibly communicate at all after that. You may play, and connect with a player on the server one day, but then they never appear again. This seems to be in a similar dynamic to how bars can act as communities, but when people happen to be there at a certain time and place to meet each other, and establish a connection that may only exist within the confines of the bar environment.

Best Videogame Writing:  Jerry Holkins (“Tycho Brahe”) - On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episodes 1 & 2

Best Videogame Art Direction: LittleBigPlanet – Media Molecule

Best Videogame Direction/Director: Hideo Kojima & Shuyo Murata – Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

Book(s) of the Year: The Prince of Nothing series (The Darkness That Comes Before, The Warrior Prophet, The Thousandfold Thought)* by R. Scott Bakker

Movie of the Year: Wall-E

Comic of the Year: Sky-Doll

TV Show of the Year: Avatar: The Last Airbender

Internet Thing of the Year: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Gadget of the Year: Kindle

Download Game of the Year: Braid

Multiplayer Game of the Year: Rock Band 2

Single Player Game of the Year:  ?**

*They didn’t come out this year, but I read them all this year. So that’s what I’m counting.

**This one I haven’t decided on yet. I was torn between Metal Gear Solid 4 and Fallout 3, but I just started playing Yakuza 2 which could (from the 45 minutes I’ve played it,) take this spot instead. So rather then name something now, I’ll finish Yakuza 2 and then decide.

Introduction:

Team Fortress 2 is an online team based first person shooter, (FPS,) where players battle each other as either members of the RED team or the BLU team, in order to achieve an objective that allows them to win the match. The objective is dependent upon the game mode in which the players are playing in, and what game mode is being played is dependent upon which map, or level, the match is taking place on. Possible game modes include capture the flag (CTF,) control point (CP,) payload (PL,) and arena.

Aside from choosing which mode, map, and team the player wishes to play, the player also has the choice of nine different combat classes to play as. Each class has its own unique abilities, weapons load out, and attributes. Thus no two classes play the same, and in fact each class fills a specific role within the team. Finding the right combination of classes for a given map, at a given moment, is one of the key strategic problems each team has to deal with while playing.

Formal Elements:
Through the use of Fullerton’s structure for dissecting a game into its formal elements, one can better understand the game, how it is structured, and how it is to be played. As well as provide us with a basis for understanding the choices players make when playing the Badwater Basin map, and the choices Valve made in how they designed the map.

Objectives:
As mentioned before Team Fortress 2 (TF2,) is a team based game, where players are put on one of two teams: RED or BLU. Over the course of the game players must work co-operatively with their team mates in order to achieve the game winning objective, (or objectives,) while also competitively playing against the opposing team. In order to prevent them from completing their winning objective, which may or may not be the same as your own team’s.

Badwater Basin is a payload style map, which means that the objective of the map is for the BLU team to push a bomb cart from their starting point through three checkpoints to a hole in the RED team’s starting area. In order to do this the BLU team has to have one or more of the players on the team to stand near the cart which causes it to move forward.

For the RED team they are trying to prevent the BLU team from getting through the check points, and from ultimately dropping the cart into the hole in their base. In order to do this they have to halt the carts progress by keeping the BLU team from getting near the cart long enough to move it. They have to keep this up until the timer for the match runs out.

Players:
The role of the player while they are playing is up to them. There are nine combat classes which the player is able to choose from. Each is uniquely outfitted with weapons, and abilities. Generally though the choice of which class to play is influenced by how skilled the player is with that particular class, and by what class the team needs at that moment in time. Typically a player will choose the class they are best at using, but when it becomes evident that the player’s team is losing, or their progress is being stifled, then a player is likely to switch to a class that will be more beneficial to their team. Even if it is a class that they are not generally skilled in, or enjoy playing.

The nine classes of TF2 are divided into three basic categories within the class selection screen: offense, defense, and support. The offensive group is composed of the Scout, the Soldier, and the Pyro. The defensive group is made up of the Demoman class, the Heavy, and the Engineer. And finally the support class includes the Medic, the Sniper and the Spy. Although these classifications are not necessarily true in practice during the game, they do provide a basic understanding for new players to get a grasp of the kind of strategies they should be using with a given class.

With payload maps like Badwater the Scout can be helpful in moving the cart, since when they are near it they count for two people, which helps speed up the cart. But generally they are not particularly effective or useful in this game type.

The Soldier is the work horse of a team. Armed with a rocket launcher they are able to be greatly effective at dealing damage at any range. Although he moves slower than most of the other classes, he has a great deal of vertical maneuverability due to his ability to rocket jump (which is when the Soldier jumps and fires a rocket at the ground below him causing him to be propelled further through the air due to the explosion of the rocket.) Although the rocket is a powerful weapon, it travels rather slowly, which makes it easier for more maneuverable classes, or enemies who are far away, to dodge it.

On Badwater the Solider is very effective for both sides. Even though they are slow, and not very maneuverable in the open spaces of the map, they can be incredibly useful when moving the cart since they can deal a lot of damage to opposing players, and they can also be very effective in destroying enemy turrets and other buildings. For the defending side the splash damage created by the rocket’s impact/explosion can be very helpful when the pushing team surrounds the cart to move it faster.

The last of the, “offense,” classes is the Pyro who is armed with a flamethrower, which can be both a very useful and a very powerful weapon. Unlike the other classes’ main weapon, with the flamethrower you can actually hurt enemies without even hitting them, this is because once the Pyro hits an enemy with his flame they catch on fire. And they will stay on fire for a set amount of time, during which they are slowly taking fire damage from, well being on fire. As such the Pyro can be an incredibly annoying class to fight against, especially if you are a Spy, (but I’ll talk about that more in the Spy’s section.) They also recently added the ability for the Pyro to reflect projectiles with an air blast from their flamethrower. Which is an incredibly useful ability against Soldiers and Demomen, since it lets you hit them with their own weapons. But it is most useful in protecting you own teammates, and especially your team’s turrets since they are unable to dodge incoming projectiles, being stationary and all.

During Badwater the Pyro is one of the very helpful classes in disrupting the movement of the cart for the RED team. Due to the various side paths in the map it becomes the Pyro can usually sneak around behind the BLU team as they push the cart and attack them from behind, which can be very disruptive and also draw a lot of fire from their team making it easier for the main defensive force to stop the cart. While pushing the cart the Pyro has a much less effective role to play. They can’t generally be as effective as if they were on the defensive side due to the wide open nature of the map, and that the defensive team doesn’t bundle up on the map like the pushing team does.

Moving onto the defense classes we have the Demoman, who is the explosives class. Armed with two varieties of explosives, pipe bombs and sticky bombs, the Demoman is not particularly effective in a straight up fight with any of the classes since their weapons are more suited for splash damage kills, and the destruction of the opposing engineers’ buildings. The most effective way use of the Demoman is using the sticky bombs for setting traps since they are bombs that stick to any surface, but can be detonated whenever the player chooses. Thus making it a useful weapon for setting traps.

This trap aspect of the Demoman’s class can be the most effective strategy for using them in Badwater from the defensive side of the map. Putting the stickies on the track or on the cart can really impede the opposing team, especially if a good amount of the team happen to be near them when they go off. But they can even be a psychological distraction if they are able to see them on the cart since they either have to risk getting killed by them, or find some way to remove them from the cart. On the pusher/offensive side of the map the Demoman is really only effective on two stages of the map, which are the second checkpoint and the last checkpoint. They are very effective at these points because at these stages of the map they are able to get into these high up positions where they can rain their explosives down on the defensive side. And of course doing so can be a big distraction for the defensive side, and cause them to deal with something extra before they can go back to try to stall the cart again.

The Heavy class, aka the Heavy Weapons Guy, is the slowest class in the game, but one of the most feared. Although he is the slowest class, and the biggest target, he also possesses the most health, and can deal a whole lot of damage if you happen to end up within his line of sight. He is armed with a large chain gun which is able to unload a large amount of bullets over a fairly good sized area, but not particularly accurately. The downside to his gun, aside from its general inaccuracy, is that the gun takes a little time to spin up thus it means that when playing as a Heavy the player has to anticipate the appearance of an enemy within their attack area. The Heavy is also only effective in a close to medium range capacity, because the farther something is away from him the harder it is for him to hit. Because of his immobility he can become easy prey for Spies, Snipers, Soldiers, and Demomen, but when combined with a Medic many of the issues with his vulnerabilities become much less an issue.

On payload maps many of the Heavy’s downsides are much less apparent, especially on the BLU side of the map. This is because the cart generally moves fairly slow, (slow enough for the Heavy to keep up with it,) and the cart also provides health and ammo to the BLU team members near it. So it’s a common strategy for a Heavy to stand on top of the cart, and continues to shoot regardless if an enemy is around or not since their ammo will be replenished by the cart faster than they can get rid of it. On both sides of the map the Heavy/Medic combination can be used to great effect in stopping the cart if you are on the RED team, or breaking through a blockade when you are on the BLU team, but more on that later when we talk about the Medic.

The Engineer is the unsung hero of sorts of the TF2 team, when they are doing their job right no one really notices, but if they aren’t doing their job then it becomes very obvious very quickly. The Engineer is one of the few classes whose job isn’t to directly kill members of the opposing team, but rather it’s to build turrets that do that for him, as well as build ammo/health dispensers, and teleporters. Although they are listed as defense their role is truly more of a support one, what they do makes life easier for the other members of their team, whether that’s providing them with a quick teleport to the frontlines, or if its placing a sentry turret near a control point so that a another teammate doesn’t have to babysit it.

On Badwater the Engineer is really only a useful class on the RED team, this is because of the nature of the map more than anything else. Since the RED team knows exactly how BLU has to travel with the cart, it becomes an obvious strategy to setup ambushes, or bottlenecks, where they will have to run through a gauntlet of turrets, and continually resupplied RED troops thanks to dispensers. It is possible to use the Engineer effectively as BLU, but it becomes less about using the turret, and more about setting up dispensers, and teleporters, so that there are fewer breaks in the waves of attacks/pushes, giving RED less time to regroup.

Moving onto the support classes we start with the Medic, which is essentially the poster child for what a support class is. The Medic’s main job is to heal his teammates. That’s kind of it. He has a saw, and a needle gun which he can use to hurt enemies, but those are only used in the rare situation of the medic being alone with an enemy, and having no teammates around to heal. While the Medic heals though he builds up a charge, once the charge is full he is able to make himself and whatever teammate he is healing at the time invulnerable for a short amount of time. This class ability, combine with the Heavy or the Pyro, can be a devastating technique against the opposing side.

So of course thanks to the Medic’s abilities, and specifically the invulnerable charge, they are an incredibly effect class on Badwater both offensively and defensively. On the defensive side the Medic will generally attach themselves to a Heavy, which can be very useful in stopping the cart from moving forward. On the offensive side although doing the Heavy/Medic combo is effective, thanks to the cart healing as well the Medic is more free to heal other members of the team who are not huddled around the cart. So since the Heavy is likely to stay around the cart, he can heal the other classes that are trying to clear the way ahead of the cart.

The Sniper is the only true long range class, but they are also effective in the close range (not as much as other class though, as for them it is mostly for defense.) The Sniper is armed with a single shot sniper rifle allowing the player to scope in, see, and hit enemies from a long distance across the map. To keep the Sniper from being too powerful though there is a reload period between each shot the player takes, and in order to do the most amount of damage with the rifle the player has to stay scoped in for a long enough period to charge the shot. This keeps the sniper from being an out of balance class, as compared to the others, which tends to usually occur in other first person shooter games that contain the ability to be a sniper. The weakness of the Sniper is that they are really only effective in open maps, where they have a large area to observe, and their other weakness is that while scoped into the rifle they are basically defenseless. So any enemy that happens to get near or behind them can kill them can pretty much kill them without any recourse from the Sniper.

Since Badwater is a fairly open map the Sniper can be a very effective class for both sides. Although it is not a pivotal class for either team on the map, it can definitely be a helpful class in helping impede the cart, or helping clear out the areas ahead of the cart. Generally though the Sniper is only effective on the first part of the map for the BLU team, after that point the map becomes more close and medium range battling, which makes it more difficult for a Sniper to be as useful and effective as it can be. For RED though the Sniper is useful for most of the map, except for the second to last point where they are not able to get the range they need to be useful, but unlike the BLU side they are able to be near the lower end of their optimal range.
The Spy is the final class, and perhaps the most hated of the classes. The Spy has a very unique set of abilities, he is able to turn himself invisible, he is able to disguise himself as a different class from the opposite team, he is able to place devices on the Engineer’s buildings which stop them from functioning and eventually destroy them if they aren’t removed, and they are able to instant kill enemy players by stabbing them in the back. But as powerful as their abilities are, it can be fairly easy to identify a Spy from among your teammates. Since they are on the other team they are able to be damaged, so using this you are able to set them on fire as a Pyro. Which leads to Pyro’s checking their teammates by shooting them to make sure they are not a Spy. This also works when they are invisible, which then makes them somewhat visible thanks to them being on fire. Also in order to perform the instant kill the Spy has to be visible, and if disguised he loses it instantly once he attacks.

Thanks to Badwater’s open spaces, and numerous side paths to get to the points, it allows the Spy to be incredibly effective on the map. All the map’s nooks and crannies allow for the Spy to have places to hide from enemies who see them, or allow them to spring surprise attacks. So as such the Spy can easily slip behind the opposing side and almost run ramped if the other team isn’t expecting it. For the RED team you can sneak behind the cart and quickly eliminate those players pushing the cart, or they can take out any annoying enemy Snipers without them noticing. On the BLU team the Spy can be very useful in scouting ahead and seeing what traps, bottlenecks the enemy is creating, and then finding ways to sabotage them at the worst possible time, or to at least become an annoying hindrance, by causing the other team to have to deal with the Spy before being able to deal with the rest of the team.

Rules:
I have already spoken somewhat on the rules of the game, and of Badwater Basin so far, but that was in the more of the general concepts (i.e.: you are on one team or another, you try and push the card by having players near it, or try to stop it, etc.)

To be more specific Badwater Basin has three check points, and the final point, that the cart needs to cross in order for BLU to be victorious. As BLU tries to push the cart, RED is trying to delay them until the match’s time timer runs down to zero, but the BLU team is able to add more time onto the clock. They almost have to since the amount of time provided at the start of the round is usually not enough to get the cart there, even if the other team was not trying to stop them. So BLU is able to add time to the clock by getting the cart through a check point, which is why the battles can become heated and tense when the clock is running down and the cart is near a check point.

Also players are able to return to the game after they have been killed, also known as respawning, but the amount of time between when they die and when they can return changes through the level. At the beginning of the map the RED team will respawn at a faster rate than the BLU team. This is because each time the RED team respawns, their players have to travel a greater distance to reach where the cart is. As the level progresses and the cart moves closer to the RED base, the RED respawn time becomes greater and greater, while the BLU respawn time becomes smaller and smaller. This is mostly done as a balancing issue, because if RED is able to spawn too quickly at the end of the map then it becomes almost impossible for BLU to win. Likewise is BLU is able to respawn too quickly at the start of the map, it makes it impossible for RED to defend the initial check points, thus breaking the game.

Resources:
There are three major resources within the Badwater Basin level: each player’s health, and ammo, and the amount of time there is left in the match. Now the health and ammo are, for all intents and purposes, infinitely refillable. As such as the player starts to run low on one or the other, they have to decide how/where they are going to go to get it refilled, (perhaps from a Medic, or a dispenser, or from the medical kits and ammo packs placed throughout the level,) or if they want to fight on regardless of the limited amount of health and/or ammo they have. This makes it into a risk reward decision.

The other resource, time, is actually very limited. From the start of the match the BLU team only has so much time to get the cart through the map, but they are able to increase the amount of time they have by getting the cart through the three check points on the map. As the cart passes through the check point additional time is added onto the match’s timer. Which can lead to very tense moments where the match’s timer is running out, and the cart is very close to passing over a check point.

Conflict:
There can be something of a unilateral competition element to the game for some players, where a single player is competing against the other members of his team, and to some extent the players on other team, to have the best score at the end of the match. Although this form of player competition is not a formal part of the game, it is an emergent aspect of competition that arises amongst the players.

Boundaries:
Badwater Basin has defined boundaries in which the players are able to navigate and interact with the level. It is something that could be equated to a play pen of sorts, where the players are able to play as they wish within the given boundaries.

Outcome:
Within TF2 there are usually three possible endings: RED team winning and BLU team losing, BLU team winning and RED team losing, or a tie. On payload maps though only the first two outcomes are possible, there is not ability to have a tie. So either the BLU team is able to get the cart to the last check point, or RED stops them and time runs out.

Although this binary outcome possibility is logical given the gameplay style of the map, it can lead to sometimes breaking the game. When a team is losing, and it becomes apparent that there is no way they can win, all they can do is prolong the match a little longer, you are more likely to see player’s start to give in and let the loss come so that the match is able to restart quicker.

Without a tie mechanic this sort of occurrence is possible. This is because with a tie mechanic it gives the losing player still something to aim for. When it becomes obvious that the team cannot win, the tie can become the new winning objective for the team, because at least for them at that point if there is a tie at least they did not lose, and the other team did not win.

Modes of interactivity:
Cognitive:
Cognitive interactivity is defined as, “Interactions that occur emotionally or psychologically between the user and the system.”  Playing TF2 is can become apparent rather quickly that this form of interactivity is present within the game. This is mostly due to the immersive qualities of the game. As Murray defines it immersion is,

“The experience of being transported to an elaborately simulated place is pleasurable in itself, regardless of the fantasy content. We refer to this experience as immersion. Immersion is a metaphorical term derived from the physical experience of being submerged in water.”

The immersive qualities of the game are mostly present due to the first person view point of the game. Although this view point does not necessarily draw you into feeling immersed as if you were that character, but rather makes you feel immersed within the cartoony world of the game. Feeling like the character can be difficult in this game due to the player’s ability to change class, and thus change character, whenever they please which can break a lot of the immersion of being that character. However there are people who strictly play one or two classes, in which case they are able to, but more on that later.

There are two specific instances of cognitive interactivity that occur in TF2 I wish to mention. Firstly, the tension of time pressure that can occur. Which tends to occur mostly at the game’s check points, and final point; the tension is further multiplied as the match’s timer gets closer to running out.

“Although time is always passing as a video game is running, and fast action and careful timing are often relied upon to some degree, many games (dating back to early developmental models in 1967) also have ticking clocks or time counters of some kind to further accentuate the feeling of time pressure.” Mark J. P. Wolf (Time in the Video Game)

At these points in the game the players can become somewhat frantic, as they rush to attack or defend the given point. Which is proof of the pressure occurring at these moments within the game, since RED’s winning condition is tied to the clock as well as BLU’s losing condition.

The other instance is something that can occur due to the ever present threat of a good Spy player. A good Spy player can cause fear and paranoia amongst members of the opposite team. The strategy of the good Spy is psychological, and much like Sun Tzu’s sheathed sword concept.

“One of Tzu’s points is the concept of achieving victory with a sheathed sword. That is, achieving victory before the actual battle begins. After all, actual battle is taxing and produces casualties, and more to my point, involves the risk of defeat. Why risk defeat when it’s possible to win before the fighting starts?” David Sirlin (The Art of War, Part 1: The Sheathed Sword)

The job of a good Spy player is not necessarily to be able to kill large numbers of the other team, but rather to force them to play a different game. By which I mean force them to come after the Spy, or at least deter them from the use of certain strategies. For instance if the RED team’s Sniper keeps getting killed by the BLU team’s Spy while he is scoped into his rifle, he is likely to change classes since he is apparently unable to deal with the Spy as a Sniper. This opens up sniping for the BLU team since now their Snipers don’t have to be as concerned with looking out for counter sniping.

Functional:
On the other hand, functional interactivity is, “How interactions take place with the system’s material components whether they are real or virtual.”

There is a significant amount of functional interactivity within TF2, although there may only be a few kinds of it. On Badwater Basin there are basically two, the ability to move and stop the cart, and the player’s being able to interact with/affect the avatars of the other players.

The second one is something which occurs generally across the board in all modes of the game. Not only by being able to kill, or destroy some of the other players, but player’s are also able to alter the movement of another player. Such as a Heavy from one team standing on the sticky bombs of a Demoman from the other, when the Demoman activates the bombs,\ it will move the Heavy significantly fast away from that point, if it doesn’t kill them first.

It is through these kinds of interactions the players can have with each other that affects the different strategies that players come up with while playing the game. This falls within the parameters of the definition of agency that Murray gives us.

“Because of the vague and pervasive use of the term interactivity, the pleasure of agency in electronic environments is often confused with the mere ability to move a joystick or click a mouse. But activity along is not agency. For instance, in a tabletop game of chance, players maybe kept very busy spinning dials, moving game pieces, and exchanging money, but they may not have any true agency. The players’ actions have effect, but the actions are not chosen and the effects are not related to the players’ intentions.”
Although the player is kept busy “moving game pieces” most of the time in TF2, the actions the player undertakes in the world against the other players, or with the other players, have effects that are related to whatever their intentions are.

Explicit:
While the third mode, explicit interactivity is a, “Type of interactivity that is most commonly thought of when discussing the subject.  Explicit interactivity includes choices, dynamic simulation, and other products ‘programmed into the interactive experience.’” Which is to say that forms of interactivity within the game that were designed to be as such.

In TF2 this would refer specifically to the player’s control over their character, and how much control they have, which is different from class to class. There are also the explicit choices presented to the player, like which map they wish to play on, which team they want to play on, and what class they want to play. Never mind the strategically explicit choices the player needs to make over the course of the game, like which weapon to use.

Beyond-the-object:

Finally, “Beyond-The-Object-Interactivity is concerned with the object’s effects on culture and culture’s effect on the object.” Of this TF2 has a lot. There is a culture that surrounds the game and its players, which are common with team-based first person shooter games, but the game’s cultural influence extends farther than that. This is very uncommon for this kind of game.

Especially at anime, video game, and comic conventions it has become fairly common to see a number of people cosplaying, (or costume playing,) as their favorite TF2 character class. This is due to people connecting on some sort of level with these characters, and those people when they play the game tend to choose a character strictly based on their personality as opposed to choosing them for strategic reasons. And although that perhaps is not the ideal way one is to play the game, they do it because it enhances their own experience.

“The transformative power of the computer is particularly seductive in narrative environments. It makes us eager for masquerade, eager to pick up the joystick and become a cowboy or a space fighter, eager to log on to the MUD and become ElfGirl or BlackDagger. Because digital objects can have multiple instantiations, they call forth our delight in variety itself.”

By playing as these characters people feel as though they are given the chance to act like them as well, which can really deepen their immersion within the game space.

James Newman explains how this transformation occurs within the player:

“Videogame play may then be seen as centered on the embodied experience with players using the equipment and capabilities that ‘Snake’, for example, offers them. During interaction, ‘Snake’, like ‘Mario’, ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ or ‘Lara Croft’, is a suite of characteristics rather than a character. During the interactive sequences of videogame play, it does not make sense to talk of player-characters as independent entities. There is no ‘Mario’ or ‘Sonic’ to the player – there is only ‘me’ in the game world and the functionality of the sphere of action via which the game’s narrative may be engaged with.”

Thus it is due to the somewhat blank slate of the characters, that the player is able to place themselves within the role of the character, and thus have this connection to them, which leads to all these memes that surround the game.

Conclusion:
After all this we are left with two essential questions that all video games must answer: Is the game fun? And is the game good?

“A good game, even one without an obvious “storyline” (or metastory), while being played, will tend to follow something that resembles the emotional curve of a dramatic arc.” Celia Pearce (Towards a Game Theory of Game)

By Pearce’s definition TF2 is a good game. As I mentioned before, (specifically under cognitive interactivity,) the game is constantly building tension due to the timer as well as emotional and dramatic moments of play that can occur. Moments where the player can be the hero of their team and do something that allows them to break through and win the match, or moments where they let their team down and they lose instead. Although these kinds of moments are occurring constantly for a single player, they are occurring with one of the players playing the game.

But Pearce’s definition has no mention of fun, so by her definition fun is not necessarily important in defining a good game. This is very unlike Raph Koster’s definition, which is primarily based on the player having fun.

“What’s fun is exercising your brain. Games are puzzles – they are about cognition, and learning to analyze patterns. When you’re playing a game, you’ll only play it until you master the pattern. Once you’ve mastered it, the game becomes boring.”

For Koster the definition of a good game centers around the idea of fun, and that fun can occur best in games where it is difficult to master the game’s pattern, or at least the pattern is ever changing so that mastering the pattern does not matter. The later is what occurs in TF2, patterns and ideal strategies can be found within the game, but once everyone knows the strategies new strategies arise to defeat those strategies. And in cases where these new strategies do not appear, the developer alters the game enough to either make that strategy no longer viable, or open up new avenues for potential counter strategies to emerge.

Based on the definitions of these two individuals I would say that Team Fortress 2 is a good game, and it is also a fun game. It has many qualities that perhaps make it an ideal example of the different aspects of a video game, perhaps not necessarily in the form of any sort of narrative within the game, but especially in regards to how a player interacts with a game world, and with other players within it.

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