GameFile: How To Get Good At 'GTA'; Xbox's Big Week And More

Jane Pinckard is not a professor of video games, but if she were, her final exam would involve "Halo."

A couple of weeks ago, GameFile asked Pinckard and a handful of other passionate gamers in the industry about the prospect of establishing a game-competence curriculum. The problem, as it was put to them, is that games are hard for non-gamers to experience. So let's say someone wanted to play a "Grand Theft Auto" on a PS2, just to see what those crazy kids are buzzing about. And let's say they barely have the skills to zap a Space Invader. How could they get a handle on things?

They'd need to take lessons. They'd need to go to Game School.

Game School doesn't exist, of course. But maybe it should. With the recent release of "Bully," a game sure to be criticized by many who won't be able to play it, the question seemed relevant. Recent mainstream press on gaming included an Atlantic Monthly story last month in which the writer lapped up the hype for "Spore" but then tried to play some "NBA Live" on the Xbox 360. He wrote: "As I stabbed at the unfamiliar buttons, I could barely control the ball." These people need help.

It isn't just the gray-haired, critics and novices who could be facing these kinds of problems. The skills needed to play modern games change constantly. In just two weeks Nintendo and Sony will want gamers accomplished with buttons and control sticks to control games with gesture. Who's to say who will be left out next and what new game will catch the eye of someone who has no idea how to handle a controller?

So back to Game School, "professor" Jane Pinckard and the problem of getting a novice to figure out how to play "GTA." Pinckard used to be a reporter, covering games for 1up.com. Today she is a conference manager at CMP, the group that runs the annual Game Developers Conference. But if she had to teach class, she would.

Pinckard would make the first day of class a breeze. "I like the idea of starting out with other games that, because of graphical limitations at the time, were only able to depict situations symbolically. There is no narrative — only action. Some of my favorites are 'Centipede,' 'Asteroids' and its modern equivalent, 'Geometry Wars.' These games are easy to learn but difficult to master, and very compelling." She said she'd push people to "Katamari Damacy" next because it's a simple fun game with really colorful characters. Some "Mario Kart" might also get the newbie gamer going.

"At this point the student may be ready for greater emotional investment in a game — and greater time investment too. We'd warm up with a little 'Mario 64' or [the 'Legend of Zelda' game] 'Ocarina of Time' — fairly simple games with action and [role-playing] elements, growing increasingly complicated as the games go on."

But "Professor" Pinckard apparently would be the kind of teacher who piles the homework on thick. She would enforce some lessons in first-person shooters, starting with single-player "Doom II" and "Quake" to get people used to mouse-and-keyboard controls for PC games, then have them hook their computers together for some multiplayer action. Somewhere around here a compassionate educator may have instituted a breather or even a midterm exam. Not so with Pinckard, who has grander goals in mind: "It's time to step up," she said, advocating "Halo" and the Xbox role-playing game "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" for the final round of skill-sharpening: " 'Halo' because there's a lot going on at once that a gamer must control, and 'KOTOR' because the game challenges you to willingly step into its fiction, which we have no problem doing for films but sometimes have hesitations about doing for games.' " Then they'd be set. Or exhausted. Or both.

Game designer Eric Zimmerman hesitated when he first considered this whole line of questioning. The co-founder of indie games studio GameLab and the author of textbooks on game design, he surely would have some tips. But he spotted a monkey wrench. "I think it is much more than a matter of learning hand-eye coordination and becoming familiar with game-hardware inputs. First, there is the mindset of someone who plays a game — the idea of engaging with a system, solving dynamic problems, and accepting the pattern of failure and success that comes with playing a game. You might call this 'gaming literacy' — it is the necessary mindset of a game player, and it can take hours or days or years of game-playing, within a shared social context, to acquire it." Plus, he observed, some people think playing games is a waste of time.

Jenova Chen, the young designer whose grad-school game "Cloud" became an online hit last year and whose thesis project "flOw" is being turned into a downloadable game for the PS3, produced a curriculum that knocked out some of the classics. "Playing abstract classic games like 'Pac-Man' and 'Tetris' might not be an easy start," Chen said. Instead he recommended that prospective gamers start with games that are close to real-life, like driving and sports games. His starting point for a "Grand Theft Auto" curriculum would be "Gran Turismo," which, he said, would help people "learn the difference between driving a real car and a virtual car, and how to use [the buttons]."

Then he'd throw some chaos their way with some driving games that sport an added action element. "If they played 'Gran Turismo,' now it's time to play 'Crazy Taxi' or 'Twisted Metal.' The students will become more agile and more used to the exaggerated content in video games." Chen says he would then throw some of the earliest "GTA"s at his students, since they're presented in a more straight-forward fixed-camera overhead layout. "This will teach the students what 'GTA' 's fundamental elements are and not necessarily overload their brain." Once that's accomplished, there's nothing holding people back from the PlayStation 2 classic. "And now is time to play 'GTA III.' "

Video games aren't easy to learn. They aren't easy to master. So could a class help? And maybe most importantly, what would people taking this class do to procrastinate from completing their assignments? Math problems and textbook-reading, no doubt.

More from the world of video games:

The summer was slow. The fall sped up. This week brings a new "Final Fantasy" (#12, give or take a couple of spinoffs) and a new "Grand Theft Auto" (the eighth, counting the seldom-seen "Game Boy Advance" version). Next week marks the point when the flow of new games will finally threaten to break the dam, as the Xbox 360's two biggest games, "Gears of War" and "Viva Piñata," hit store shelves. In the meantime, the DS sees the release of one of its top titles, "Elite Beat Agents," and the PSP gets a new "SOCOM." The new "Tony Hawk" and "Guitar Hero" sequels will also hit — and that won't even be the biggest gaming week of November. That's the week after, when PS3 and Wii launch. Oddly, Microsoft has undercut the significance of next week by hyping Sunday the 12th as "Emergence Day," an unofficial holiday for "Gears of War." But the game is out earlier, hitting stores closer to the 8th, if not sooner. Don't be fooled. ...

Gaming blog Kotaku recently reported the discovery of a Sony-created dossier containing the biographies of several game journalists. (Check the Kotaku post out here.) Located by the blog at Sony's PS3 event in San Francisco, it proved to be a disappointment. "For the record, none of these particular dossiers seemed to contain the least bit of dirt," wrote Kotaku's head reporter Brian Crecente. In the spring, however, GameFile found a slightly dirtier dossier sitting atop a garbage can two blocks from the Los Angeles Convention Center, where the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, had just let out. It included bios of every reporter scheduled to see the upcoming "Left Behind" computer game that follows the successful series of books about the Biblical end of the world. Dennis McCauley of GamePolitics.com was said to be "interested in the Christian gamer angle." Steve Butts of Imagine Games Network was reported to be "more interested in the content of the game ... rather than jumping in and fighting." Kotaku as a news entity — no reporter's name given — was blandly referred to as a "leading in-depth video game blog that covers news, previews and reviews." No dirt there. But there was one smudge. That would be regarding one of MTV News' Top 10 Most Influential Gamers, Jerry "Tycho" Holkins of Penny Arcade (see "Playa Rater: The 10 Most Influential Video Gamers Of All Time"). "Jerry Holkins is an industry veteran and influencer," it began. "He prefers to play the game/see game play and move on to the next booth as opposed to talk more in-depth with game developers." His dossier indicated that he would ask "tough questions." "Penny Arcade has a rocky past with [gaming critic] Jack Thompson and they do not play friendly." There's some dirt, sort of.