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Kojima says horror game OD is as “experimental” as Boktai, so here’s a quick overview of solar powered gamingThe Metal Gear man’s latest may “go against the current of the times”
The Metal Gear man’s latest may “go against the current of the times”
Image credit:Konami
Image credit:Konami
“For me, the most experimental game was ‘defeating vampires outside your house’ using actual sunlight around you,” Kojima went on. “It was met with fierce opposition from the staff and even within the company. In that sense, ‘OD’ is just as different.”
OD - TGA 2023 Teaser TrailerWatch on YouTube
OD - TGA 2023 Teaser TrailerWatch on YouTube
OD - TGA 2023 Teaser Trailer
While I would agree with Kojima that Boktai is a thing unto itself, videogames with a solar energy component have been around for years. Among the oldest is Bandai’sLCD Solarpower handheld rangefrom the early 1980s, which came with a front-facing strip of photovoltaic cells and allowed you to play simple arcade titles with static “painted-on” LCD graphics, such as Terror House. Unlike Boktai, these devices ran entirely on sunlight.
Kojima Production’s OD is said to make use of Xbox cloud technology, which might mean that it can run on smaller, mobile devices with key processing handled remotely. If that’s the case, Boktai would be a useful precedent not just for being comparably “experimental”. The act of playing it involved interacting with your surroundings to find the best lighting conditions, and I can imagine a modern cloud-based game that builds on this - it’s the same broad principle behind many a mobile alternate reality experience, after all.
Boktai - E3 2003 TrailerWatch on YouTube
Boktai - E3 2003 Trailer
Speaking of server-based experiences, other developers have looked into the possibility of solar-powered distribution platforms - not just server farms that plug into a third-party solar energy grid, but servers with their own local solar panels.Ritual of the MoondeveloperKara Stone, for example, has set up asolar server, which hosts “low-carbon” games that try to minimise power consumption. Again, the server’s limitations in terms of, say, file size and the number of logins it can support are an incentive to test some novel approaches: Stone’s debut solar project,Known Mysteries, makes use of compressed and dithered stock video that is both aesthetically distinctive and less hardware-intensive.
It’s always tempting to fall into overweening green utopia rhetoric where projects of this kind are concerned, and it should be noted that solar panels emerge from the same exploitative and polluting global production chains as other “dirtier” technologies. But they are, at least, a chance to pick at our assumptions about videogame development and design. What do you reckon?
PS. This being a post about Boktai, here’s an obligatory shout-out to fan-made spiritual sequelKura5. It doesn’t make use of a solar sensor, but it does feature a weather system that reflects your real-world location.
