Whether you think Gamerscore is relevant or not, X360 Achievements are now part of the console gaming landscape. Yeah, they can be gamed, and no, a Gamerscore is not an indication of anything besides time spent playing games. But there’s something strangely satisfying about seeing the words “Achievement unlocked” pop on your screen.

Myself, I admit to being driven by Achievements when they are well thought out. If an Achievement prompts me to accomplish something I consider fun or challenging, I will go out of my way to get it. What I won’t do is pick up a game solely for its easy Achievements (although I did play Peter Jackson’s King Kong - the easiest 1,000 Gamerpoints I got), or go out of my way to get a difficult Achievement.

I played Half-Life 2, Episode One, Episode Two and Portal on PC, and I finished them all. Recently, however, I purchased The Orange Box, in the hopes it might get Helene to play Half-Life 2, since she’s not a PC gamer. (Yeah, it means I paid twice for the same game package, but Valve deserves it, I guess.) Anyway, I found myself playing through Portal again, for the fun of it… And then I started getting Achievements.

The Achievements alone made me play through the entirety of Half-Life 2 and both episodes. They’re that well-done, in my opinion.

The way I see it, the Achievements of a game play two key roles:

• Provide small, incremental reinforcement as a player progresses through the game;
• Encourage the player to toy with elements of the game off the golden path, such as easter eggs, or simple yet rewarding exploits.

With that definition in mind, I believe The Orange Box has the best Achievements available on Xbox 360.

When playing Half-Life 2, Episode One, Episode Two and Portal, the core of The Orange Box‘s Achievements constitute a breadcrumb trail that rewards you in a small way whenever you reach a key point in the story. The Achievements laid out on the main path are always there at key moments where you accomplished something a bit tricky or intense. Beat a boss, or resisted a major assault, and the “Achievement unlocked” message adds to the reward of having accomplished that particular segment of the game.

Then there are the secondary elements of the game that are rewarding in their own right; these are not necessary to accomplish the game, but they’re clever and rewarding, and the Achievements encourage you to seek them out. These include killing 30 enemies with thrown physical objects, running over enemies with your car, stealing a grenade from a Zombine, fall 30,000 feet in Portal… the list goes on.

These Achievements have pretty much defined my playthrough on the Xbox 360. Whenever I got to a new section of the game, I brought up the Achievement list to see if there was something there I could accomplish. Some of them made me aware of small easter eggs in the game I would have otherwise missed, such as the Half-Life HEV recharging plate in Eli’s scrapyard, or the infamous garden gnome you can actually launch into space in Episode Two.

Add to it the constant reinforcement of the breadcrumb Achievements, and I was hooked from the moment I re-entered City 17, to the final moments of Episode Two. Even worse, I’m considering going back to pick up some Achievements I missed. How’s that for Achievements enhancing replay value?

Another thing that Valve has done exceptionally well with The Orange Box is the in-game Achievement list, complete with pop-ups that show you progress at key points. For instance, let’s say you’re going after the Achievement where you kill 30 enemies with physics objects; at 10 and 20 enemies killed, you’ll get a pop-up notifying you of your progress in that particular Achievement.

Truly, whenever the topic of X360 Achievements comes up on games I produce, I’ll have to keep The Orange Box in mind. Its Achievements are simple yet very thoughtful, and they contribute to my overall experience with the game. We’ve come a long way from the “Here’s 1,000 Gamerpoints for finishing our game”. I’m looking at you, King Kong.

I don’t know about you, but there are days I wake up and feel like I’m living in my own future.

So lately I’ve been plagued with gum problems because of plaque. My dentist recommended I get an electric toothbrush, as they help remove plaque deposits. Yesterday, after my dentist appointment, I decided this might well be the solution that would help me improve my dental health. So I splurged.

“This is the most fancy model,” the receptionist told me.

“I hope it’s also effective,” I said with a smile. She assured me it was.

And so, I got home with my Oral-B Triumph, not realizing I had just added a very techno-geek gadget to my collection.

First things first: yes, this is a very effective toothbrush. I used it for only a day, and I’m amazed at how clean it leaves my teeth. Most of the reviews on the web agree, having seen a major improvement in dental health after 6 months use. So this makes it a very useful toothbrush to have. But is it fancy also? Hell yeah. This is a toothbrush for nerds.

How nerdy is this toothbrush? It actually has wi-fi. In the manual are instructions for turning off the radio signal for, say, boarding a plane. Ladies and gentlemen, I now possess a toothbrush that is forbidden to use during takeoffs and landings, or around pacemakers.

The wi-fi signal is used to hook to a gizmo called the Smart Guide. This is a wireless, battery-operated device that monitors your brush’s use when in range. It tells you things such as remaining battery power, and brush setting (clean, gentle, massage and some crazy all-out super-cleaning setting). It also tells you if you’re pushing too hard on your teeth with the brush, and, of all things, monitors your time spent brushing to make sure you spend a good 2 mins cleaning your teeth.

And so, unwittingly, I’ve gotten myself the perfect combination of useful tool, and absolutely unnecessary gadget. You know the kind that makes your girlfriend frown, but then you explain that honey, you absolutely need to have a PDA Phone with a videoconference camera, and how did we ever live without one?

Cleaner teeth through feature creep: that’s dental hygiene, the geek way.

I don’t know what took me so long, but I finally got around to reading the classic Ender’s Game. It’s an amazing book, and I’m glad I finally read it. Please check out my review!

A really cool and nifty novel, that a good friend of mine, Alain, recommended to me. If you’re looking for a quirky, fresh yet tone-perfect take on the superhero genre, I strongly recommend Austin Grossman’s Soon I Will Be Invincible.

I developed a financially unhealthy habit of taking cabs in Shanghai, and have been unable to shake the addiction once in Montreal; even here in Edmonton, I still cab on occasion. Thing is, I love taxi drivers. They meet all sorts of interesting people, and often lead fascinating lives themselves.

Last week, in a moment of weakness, I took a cab home. The cab driver was in his fifties, and spoke in a slow, relaxed voice, smiling easily. And he felt he should pitch me his marketing genius right then and there, in the event that I might have a spare million to throw at him.

It went something like this:

Cab driver: “So, what do you do?”

Me: “I make videogames.”

“Ooooh… You must be making millions!”

“Heh. I wish. If I did, I’d stop working.”

“How do you distribute your games? How do you sell them?”

Definitely not a videogame player, then… I explain to him how videogames are sold: in boxes, on the shelves of stores. But that’s not what he was asking about.

Him: “Thing I don’t get is how you convince people to buy them. With music, it’s easy: you hear a few seconds of a song, and you know if you like it. For movies, you can watch a clip on YouTube. But games? How you sell the game itself?”

Ok, he’s got me there. This is actually a pretty damn good question. I explain to him how there are demos, but they take a long time to download. How some specialty websites become trusted sources of judgement on gameplay, so people look at previews and reviews to judge a game without ever playing it.

Him: “But you see, that’s not for people like me. I don’t want to go to a website, read a review, then buy a game and play it at home. Videogames are for nerds and weirdos!” Haha, ouch! “I can’t sit at home and play games, my wife will yell at me.”

At this point, it’s painfully obvious that this guy is not part of my target audience, as it may be. But I always find the perception of non-gamers to be very interesting, so I listen politely and nod.

“What you need to do is set up your games in bars. Like Pac-Man! Or those old pinball machines.”

This, ultimately, is my taxi driver’s master plan: bring back the arcade to bars. At this point, I thought he was insane, and whenever I try to explain that there are still, in fact, arcade games out there, he talks to me about Pac-Man again.

Except I have this annoying habit of really giving the people I talk to the chance to be heard out, and I try to ask myself, what if they’re right?

What this guy’s point was, he isn’t being reached at all by the videogame market. But he was, once, a long time ago: back in the times of Pac-Man. For all the talks about casual players entering the fray, this guy is the most casual of casuals. He’s never gonna sit at home with a controller to play a 20-hour game, however “accessible” I make it. I don’t think the Wii or the DS cut it either.

So what’s the way to reach this audience with videogames? Thinking about it, he’s already reached, but perhaps he doesn’t know about it. Perhaps he throws the occasional coin into a video-poker machine. Or perhaps he picked up that plastic rifle at the pub and shot a few bucks. (Yes, we have hunter arcade machines in pubs in Edmonton. Not the most un-redneck thing around.)

The truth is, when we talk about videogames, we talk about a very small subset of electronic entertainment, even when we start including casual gaming. We’re talking about home entertainment, distributed for use on the PC or some form of handheld or home console. There’s an entire segment out there that reaches people that never heard of an Xbox. Heck, even the quiz machine at the pub downstairs is a form of electronic entertainment.

The arcade is a dying form, relegated to the dark corners of shopping malls. What happened to it? Most of the games nowadays are less-than-stellar, involving either simple beat-em-up gameplay, or some sort of plastic gun. Is there a way to bring better gameplay to these? And what is “better”? Do better graphics matter? Does it matter than the game does little more than tease you long enough for you to throw a few quarters at it?

I don’t really know. All I know is that videogames are not ubiquitous as music, partly because we have a very specific way of thinking about them, and the hard thinking about alternate means of distribution is left to the video poker and bar quiz machine makers of this world.

As for my taxi driver, maybe he’s the marketing genius he tried to sell himself as. If that’s the case, he’s years ahead of the game. Or years behind.

Or both.

One of my purposes in creating this blog has been to write about my work. I have been doing very little of that in the last months, and there’s a simple reason for this: I’m working on an unannounced project, which means every little piece of information could be damaging in the long-term to the marketing of the game I’m working on.

It’s not to say I won’t ever talk in details about my work… I did so back in Shanghai, in the last year of Splinter Cell Double Agent, and the reception both from friends, readers and people at Ubisoft was very positive. This will come much later, though, for in the meantime, this is completely a black operation. I can only tell you what my project is not: it’s not Dragon Age, and it’s not the MMO.

That being said, I do want to tell you a bit about my work at BioWare.

I’ve been at BioWare in Edmonton for 5 months already, and it pretty much feels like home. Since my project is in its early stage, I have a fairly small team, which means I get to build it from the ground up with the team culture I want. People on my team are enthusiastic, hard workers, and extremely talented. Our project is ambitious and exciting and everyone believes in its potential.

BioWare itself is a fantastic organization. The purchase of BioWare by EA has affected some of the administrative practices of the studio, but we remain completely independent from a creative standpoint. So no, you won’t see Madden RPG 2009 come out of BioWare… Hehe. On the contrary, being part of EA’s extended family means we have access to incredible technical resources. There’s a world of technologies and resources out there to leverage. Good stuff.

When I first visited BioWare, I had a feeling that things were different here from other companies I had previously seen. The last five months pretty much confirmed this impression. It’s both a testament to the vision of its CEOs, Ray and Greg, but also probably due in part to Western Canada’s open and honest culture; but BioWare is a company filled with humble yet ambitious people who try and work things out together. My work environment has been pretty much drama-free since I got here.

That’s not to say the studio doesn’t have some issues… What matters most is the way people decide to address them, with humility and a genuine drive to produce great games. I don’t have a lot of bad things to say about BioWare, to be frank; part of it might be that I’m still in the “honeymoon period”. Maybe. But as far as first impressions go, this work environment makes me feel I made the right decision to move to Edmonton. We’ll see how I feel about it in a year!

I recently had the chance to reread the dystopian novel Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. Did you know that it was written in 1932? If it had been written in the eighties I would have found it pretty good satire, but from the thirties, this story of a future world where babies are born in bottles, and everyone is drugged into happiness, is chillingly prescient.

I played Portal for the first time a few months back, and loved every bit of it. This weekend, however, I found myself playing it again after I showed it to my friend Flint. I sat by him as he played through the game once, occasionally asking me for hints; then I played it through on my own in an hour. Then I played it again.

Running through the game a second time in a few months, I’m struck by the brilliance of this game. This may well be the best pure videogame experience of the decade. I’m convinced this is one game that will stand the test of time, and still be highly enjoyable even once the graphics are severely outdated.

Portal is a game technology achievement. The portal mechanism, rather than being a gimmick, is one of those game mechanics that is both technologically impressive, and a paradigm shift in gaming. After playing through a few levels of Portal, you find yourself gauging your immediate environment not in terms of distance, but in terms of portal mobility. Suddenly, a high wall is not an obstacle, but an opportunity to jump a great distance, if you can only find a deep enough hole to fall down into before opening a portal at your feet. Portal is one of these amazing games that actually forces you to rethink a map’s topology in terms that are unique to the game. In other words, it makes you think differently.

Far from being a tech demo, however, Portal is also an incredible story. The story of <insert test subject name here>, the unknown and quiet prisoner of Aperture Science, is expressed subtly, through the one-way relationship the character develops with GladOS, the psychotic, passive-aggressive AI. The pathetic begging that GladOS deploys to convince the player to turn around and die a horrible death is simply priceless, and full of pathos.

For all its simplicity, the Portal universe is actually pretty well-realized. The game never, EVER needs a cutscene to expose its universe; you wake up in the lab, and are given the promise of cake at the end of the 19 tests. And that’s it. The rest is told through quick glimpses into the inner workings of the laboratory, including hidden corners where human lab rats have hidden, as well as Aperture Science Powerpoints. The intensity with which the survivors write “The cake is a lie” over and over on the walls is a quiet testament to how surreal and oppressive the lab environment is meant to be. Talk about driving the point across without the need for a cutscene.

Back to the gameplay mechanics themselves, I was stunned, watching my friend Flint play through, to see how progressive and rewarding the whole game is. Sure, some of these puzzles are pretty wicked, requiring clever thinking, but also some decent skills with a controller. But these puzzles are constructed in a sequence that gradually gives you the tools needed to solve the more complex puzzles, and makes you practice the techniques you’ll need. What’s left is an intense sense of satisfaction when you solve a challenging puzzle.

Overall, Portal is one of these rare combinations of technological, gameplay and storytelling innovations, all rolled into one neat, unpretentious and focused game experience. In my mind, the craft and creativity that went into making such a game makes it stand head and shoulders above the top tier of positively-reviewed games such as GTA IV or Halo 3. This is what videogames should be, and as such, Portal needs to be celebrated.

Bravo, <insert Portal game creator here>! You must really be the pride of <insert game creator’s home town here>!

I was originally reticent to pick up Call of Duty 4. I felt giving the cinematic shooter a modern setting would be pushing it squarely into the realm of glorification of war. But as the reviews started pouring in, I couldn’t help myself. Yeah, it’s another game that contributes to the fantasy that wars are exciting events that pit Americans against the forces of evil in the world; but at the same time, it was a pulse-pouding, no-holds-barred cinematographic experience, and quite possibly the best game I played last year.

Call of Duty 4 did the extraordinary thing that previously only Resident Evil 4 had managed: offer a new installment in the series which managed to both stay incredibly true to its roots, and yet offer something completely unique and riveting. Truth be told, we attempted that in Splinter Cell Double Agent, but ultimately did not pull it off. CoD 4, along with RE4, should be held in high esteem by any team wishing to inject a new dose of excitement in a long-running franchise.

That being said, I’m puzzled by the decision of Activision to go back to World War Two with the next installment in the series, Call of Duty: World at War. They had originally hinted at a new theater of war, but it turns out we’ll be going back to the Second World War, going to such exotic and original locales as Nazi Germany Berlin, and the Pacific. Wow, how compelling.

It sounds totally illogical to take such a step backward when you consider CoD 4 sold a whopping 10 million copies so far. Yet it all becomes clear when you notice who is helming this installment in the series: this is not Infinity Ward’s baby, people; rather, it’s Treyarch’s.

It’s no secret that Activision is alternating between Treyarch and Infinity Ward when it comes to pumping out CoD titles. Heck, that’s how I got to work on Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow and Splinter Cell Double Agent, when these episodes were sent to Shanghai while Montreal spent their time on the odd-numbered titles. What sucks here, however, is that clearly, when Treyarch began their work on the fifth installment of Call of Duty, someone out there didn’t believe in Infinity Ward. There’s no reason to go back to World War Two if it isn’t to minimize the damage of a botched Call of Duty 4. If the fans had rejected en masse the modern setting, they would be confident that the fifth installment would be bringing them back to the wonderful world of Nazis and kamikazes.

In other words, Call of Duty: World at War is quite possibly the result of Activision heding their bets with the modern setting, and placing a bit of their money against Infinity Ward. I bet an executive producer somewhere must have shit his pants the day he saw CoD 4 pass the 10 million units sold mark, though.

As for CoD: World at War, I can’t find much in it that excites me. Darker, more survival horror approach to war? Meh. Integrating the innovations of CoD 4‘s multiplayer into the single player? Not sure how that’s innovative considering CoD 4 brilliantly took them from single player RPGs to begin with… Not to say World at War won’t be a good game; I’ll just wait to learn what’s next on Infinity Ward’s plate before I get worked up about the series again.

And Activision, for betting against your star studio when establishing the setting of the new CoD: bad publisher, bad!

I’m rarely, if at all, on World of Warcraft nowadays, which does feel a bit weird. The good news, though, is that my gaming habit – as opposed to my strict WoW diet – is back in full force. And two games are retaining my attention at the moment: Rock Band and Grand Theft Auto IV.

I’ve spoken about GTA IV before. I’m still of the opinion that it doesn’t offer much more than GTA San Andreas did, and I’m incredibly annoyed at the mission and saving structure. Every time I drive to a mission giver’s house, then drive to my objective, then start the mission and die… then have to go through the whole goddam tedious thing again, I want to scream. Fortunately, I found I can just get a cab from place to place. So I’m playing the game pretty much as a pedestrian, and I get to skip having to drive through Liberty City for the 200th time. It doesn’t overcome my frustrations, but it lowers the annoyance enough that I’m still playing this game, somehow.

If GTA IV is what I play when I’m alone, I kickstart Rock Band whenever Helene is in the mood. I tell you: it’s just an order of magnitude better than Guitar Hero. Personally, I was never that great with Guitar Hero… I made it to the end of Medium difficulty and pretty much stagnated there. Helene, on the other hand, kicks ass. She plays most of the Rock Band songs on Expert. The great thing here is that I can sing instead of playing the guitar, and as a result, we’re currently going through the Band World Tour on Hard. Feels like we’re on a bit more of an even ground.

The fact that you’re playing different instruments in the band is actually, I think, one of the most pleasant things about the game. It’s asymmetrical collaboration, if I can coin a silly game design expression: you’re all working towards the same goal, but you’re doing so in dramatically different ways. I love it. Case in point:

The other night, Helene and I were trying to finish a 7-song set when we ran into the hellish guitar solo of Molly Hatchet’s Flirtin’ with Disaster. After three tries, we decided the best strategy was to stock up on star power to get through the solo (Helene was playing it on Hard.) I kind of panicked and launched my star power too early, but Helene managed to power through the solo… only to die at the very end of it. And so, stressed like crazy, I hit two yellow lines… Enough to get the star power necessary to save her with the life bar an inch from the bottom. Whew!

As to the pleasure of playing on the X360 again, I have one thing to say: it’s good to be back.