The concept is ingenious, and reminds me of the classic gameplay at work in the likes of the Lemmings franchise, and the forgotten classic Lost Vikings. In those games you would have to dedicate your various player-characters to tasks within the world simultaneously in order to achieve success. Only when each in turn were rightly occupied -- barring a door, digging a hole, fending off an attacker -- would the path to success be revealed. I am not a fan of games that give you too much to do simultaneously, and so create a sense that you are fire-fighting rather than succeeding (for instance Viva Pinata). I think in the case of the 360 title, in moments where creature in-fighting, neighbourly invasion and disease all hit my homestead, I felt that a crucial sense of balance and control had been lost, at the expense of my investment as a player.

A simple and inexpensive game like Cursor*10 holds a light to the paucity of gameplay innovation on our contemporary consoles. In a recent blog entry examining Mario Galaxy, the designer of God of War Derek Daniels has posted some thoughtful commentary on the design of Nintendo's flagship Wii title. He highlights the way in which the much lauded innovation in many respects enable Nintendo to sidestep some of the most pressing problems in contemporary games design. For instance he writes:

Camera? Well - what are the problems with camera? Walls, collision, etc so lets just get rid of those problems by making the play space spherical! Anytime the world isn't spherical the camera breaks down SUPER fast. The bootleg go into first person mode to look around was a crutch that didn't even work 1/2 the time for me.

Level Design? I could make some comment about how the small worlds keep the fun focused but in all honesty this game has pretty damn good Level Design. Especially the 2d'ish worlds with the gravity going all crazy.

Level Pacing? I think they did kick this one out for sure. Usually going from point A to point B requires keeping the trip fun for the player. Sometimes it's just having level 1 dudes to kill along the way. Mario Galaxy totally gets rids of this problem by jumping from one plane to the next via a star. The problem I have with this is most of the time I really don't know where I'm going - I just jump in because there is no where else to go. In some instances it's really hard to go backwards also - in case I didn't have enough star bits for the first section and needed to collect more.

There will certainly be a large number of people who will flock to Nintendo's defence, since the title stands alone as a good game, full of inventive, well balanced gameplay, a sense of ongoing fun, and familiar iconography established during the 20 year reign of Princess Peach. But there is something about Derek's criticism (which you can read in full in the original post) and my recent exposure to Cursor*10 which gets me thinking about how very simple mechanical changes might help the development community to break into the increasingly homogeneous standards of gameplay design across many genres.

If you play Cursor*10 through you will notice that by the time you reach the last third of the game something interesting has happened, you have inadvertently built a frenzied scene, as each cursor goes about its business. You know logically that each of those cursors was you playing a matter of seconds ago, but nonetheless the complexity gives a thrilling sense of complexity. Compare to that scene the 'haunted' streets of downtown Rabanstre in Final Fantasy 12, where barely a soul walks; those that are there stand still or walk well-trod circuits around the nearest fountain. It's a troublesome realisation that, while the gameplay takes a leap forward when in combat to create that crucial sense of havoc and forever end the line dance of turn-based role-play gaming, being in a city in any Final Fantasy is still like post-war Paris. Desolate.

We forgive these game cities their emptiness for a number of reasons. First and foremost, our attention is on the player-character, npcs are just there to dish out potions, gloves, swords and punch-lines with the usual aplomb. They simply facilitate our connection to the progression of play, since we have learnt to expect nothing more from them. Likewise, by the time a game like FF12 has come out on a platform like PS2, we aren't the demanding bunch we once were -- the new consoles are here, lets enjoy the last days of a mighty machine without attempting to leverage any more flair from its dusty CPU.

Contemporary games design seems to be committing to one of two options in the future stakes of the player-character and npc. Games which feature a modest number of playable characters seem now to feature less and less; deliberating between Axel, Blaze and Adam in Streets of Rage seems rather modest in comparison to the orgy of destruction that comes with the epic selections available in any of the Dynasty Warriors, Suikoden or Marvel versus Capcom franchises, where democratic elections are necessary just to know who is worth playing. Large numbers of player-characters are becoming increasingly fashionable in games, as a means of extending gameplay and thus create that crucial sense of longevity to leverage cash from the increasingly frugal games consumer. In the case of games which have come from well-known franchises, for instance the excellent Naruto: Rise of the Ninja series, the full spread of characters is necessary to demonstrate a commitment to best expressing the depth of the source material.

It isn't just about the party happening in the living room, what about the lonely stoners out on the backdoor step? Like The Cure on tour, games are now stuck with the melancholy loner archetype. Everywhere, from the redesign of our sun-kissed prince in Sands of Time, to Max Payne and his numerous imitators, if you aren't part of the tour bus then your out on your own. The contrast between huge numbers of playable characters and a sole protagonist is now more pronounced than ever. It seems reducible to how developers want to best use the hardware and thus evidence their competency to the playing public and their peers. Do you go for the infinitely-shallow yet hugely-populated panoramas of Warriors Orochi or N3, or instead save all that processing power and memory for a richly developed and sophisticated egomaniac like Altair/Desmond Miles in Assassin's Creed.

The implementation of player-character in current games seems reducible to offering a hugely diverse menu of options or a single lovingly prepared delicacy. Do we fill up and move on or ruminate on the richness of a single bite?

The problem of player-character implementation doesn't take us beyond the crucial difference between player-character and npc. Since the player is solely focused on the player-character for the vast majority of gameplay, how might we effectively make npcs rich, dramatically sophisticated, emotional beings, rather than two-dimensional mannequins?

At this point revisit how the gameplay functions in Cursor*10, as you play each 'session' your activity is recorded and layered up in the level, to a point where numerous layers of intelligence mix to create the solution.

With this in mind, think to the streets of Rabanastre, or the potential city spaces of the latest Grand Theft Auto, The Outsider, No More Heroes or (the hopefully not vapour-ware) Heavy Rain. In each of these games comes the thorny riddle of how best to implement a storyline, while at the same time centring ones attention on a player-character. Enemies need to be complex, allies need to be plausible. There needs to be an emotional web at work connecting each player together. In the competition to define the gold standard for next-gen games design, what will be the key? Will it be animation, where more sophisticated motion capture facilities with experienced techinicians will be able to get more from savvy performers. Perhaps it will be in the sound design, dialogue, modelling and texturing which, when patch-worked together, create the space in which we play.

Asset creation will certainly play its part, but my contention is that games design needs to shoulder the work needed to move things forward, and transcend the limitations of a highly solipsistic player-character, which certainly works when you are Ryo Hazuki looking for his father's murderer in Shen Mue. But do we always have to see things this way, blinkered by the limitations of point-of-view? Hypothetically, what would a film like Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia look like, if turned into a game?

Imagine a meeting you might see in a film, for instance the scene at the beginning of The Bourne Ultimatum where several characters meet in Waterloo Station, London. In that scene, a newspaper reporter, a sniper, several members of the general public, and Jason Bourne himself all come together in a moment of explicit tension and then sudden action as the reporter is assassinated. In a conventional gameplay sense, we would only see this scene through the eyes of Bourne. Imagine for a second, like Cursor*10, that the player 'builds' this scene in their own way. Walking the shop attendant to work, bringing the reporter to the location, aligning the sniper, sneaking in Bourne. Who triumphs would be up to the player, since they would be working against both the npcs and a layer of complexity they have added themselves.

For many contemporary designers, such as David Braben, there is a desire to make a truly next-gen title and transcend the linear trappings of conventional storytelling. I find it incredibly interesting that the mechanic of a little flash game might outline a potentially superb way forward for big budget games design. Such a mechanic has been touched upon in the groundbreaking Forbidden Siren on PS2. But for it to happen in real-time, action layering up into a real, emergent drama, rather than a polished puppet show -- now that would be truly next-gen.