Neal Stephenson kickstarts realistic swordfighting game

Neal Stephenson and the good folks at the Subutai Corporation are looking to raise $500,000 on Kickstarter to fund CLANG, a rich, detailed and faithful swordfighting game. I've heard tell of the Stephenson swordfighting practice sessions, and particularly of the incredible swordfighters in his orbit. The idea of a game that is as faithful to the sport as its creator is fascinating.

In the last couple of years, affordable new gear has come on the market that makes it possible to move, and control a swordfighter's actions, in a much more intuitive way than pulling a plastic trigger or pounding a key on a keyboard. So it's time to step back, dump the tired conventions that have grown up around trigger-based sword games, and build something that will enable players to inhabit the mind, body, and world of a real swordfighter.
CLANG will begin with the Queen of Weapons: the two-handed longsword used in Europe during late medieval and early renaissance times. This is a well-documented style that has enjoyed a revival in recent years thanks to the efforts of scholars and martial artists worldwide.
At first, it'll be a PC arena game based on one-on-one dueling (which is a relatively simple and attainable goal; we don't want to mess this up by overreaching). Dueling, however, is only the tip of the sword blade. During the past few years, we have been developing a rich world, brimming with all manner of adventure tales waiting to be written--and to be played. In conjunction with 47 North, Amazon.com's new science fiction publishing house, we've already begun publishing some of those stories, and we have plenty more in the hopper. Once we get CLANG off the ground we intend to weave game and story content together in a way that'll enhance both the playing and the reading experience.

CLANG

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: crowdfunding • Games • happy mutants • kickstarter • science fiction

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http://www.facebook.com/nikolaj.mariager Nikolaj Mariager

They should’ve picked someone more interesting for that video. His voice was so dull I couldn’t watch the whole clip.
- http://goodsharer.com/ Aloisius
  
  I would have thought Neal Stephenson would have developed some sort of awesome dramatic voice while doing book readings after all these years. He sounds a bit tired.
  
  That said, he’s pretty famous so it makes sense that he would do the video.
http://excelsior-station.wikidot.com Sarge Misfit

I want to see Obama and Romney go at it!!

Wouldn’t this make a great replacement for the Primaries? *laughs*
- PeterNBiddle
  
  No comment on the political merits, but *Michelle* would destroy Romney in a sword fight.
  - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FOC22ASOR22OMA5U2ACKXG3CCA ew
    
    I’d pay to see Michelle vs Hillary. No telling who wins that one.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Michelle’s reach might be longer, but Hillary’s scrappy.
koko szanel

Add horses, 200 man servers and Im in. Or better yet – just port it to Warband.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FOC22ASOR22OMA5U2ACKXG3CCA ew

Maybe he’ll be good at swordfighting games. He wasn’t that great at writing, just at pandering to current tastes with internet-virtual reality stories like Snow Crash.
- OgilvyTheAstronomer
  
  It would be more accurate to say that stories like Snow Crash brought virtual reality into the current taste. As for whether he’s a good writer or not, without some examples of what you like it’s difficult to judge. In my opinion, he’s a great writer.
- http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch
  
  Well, OK, Mr. Grumpypants. You’ve earned your nick.
- http://www.facebook.com/jaime.allsup Jaime Colin Allsup
  
  Yep, that Neal Stephenson. Pandering to ‘current’ tastes with Snow Crash, published 1992. Almost as cutting edge as your spin on what’s current today. Oh, cutting edge. See what I did there?
- Rindan
  
  He wrote Snow Crash in 1992. You are either a moron or were born sometime after the 80s and have an utterly delusional concept of technological progression. He wrote Snow Crash before Windows 3.1 was released. The world wide web literally did not fucking exist and modems were rocking 2400 baud. I can’t even find an internet usage before 1995 because the numbers were so small. Doom hadn’t yet come out and Wolfenstine 3d was released the same year as the book.
  
  You don’t have to like Neal Stephenson’s writing, but you have to be a moron to point to Snow Crash and declare that be a me too book pandering to “current tastes”.
- krazmo
  
  Don’t feed the troll
http://grumer.org/ Avram Grumer

I assume he’s going to sneak some back doors into the code so he can be the greatest sword-fighter in the Metaverse.
http://twitter.com/sfrazer Scott Frazer

The video on the actual Kickstarter page is more interesting. And it features a cameo by Gabe Newell.

I’m not convinced this wil work as a product, though. There will always be that moment of weirdness when you swing your physical sword representation right through the virtual thing which you’re fighting on screen. There’s no way to make it bounce off.
- http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch
  
  Iaido is all about attacking an imaginary opponent by means of a sword, and I’ve never had a problem with my opponent being imaginary. To be good at it, you do have to almost convince yourself that the opponent is real, but that’s what video games are about.
- edgarhjelte
  
  Also, if it’s realism you’re after you need a way to conway pain, fear and exhaustion into the player’s mind. A real sword fight would be just as much about those factors as about equipment and fighting style. You can’t really separate them. Swinging a plastic stick in your boxer shorts, possibly risking the death of your character, and pausing to grab a hamburger when you like to, has little in common with charging over your dead comrades across a battlefield, wearing heavy armour and a heavy sword, possibly nearly starved and knowing this may very well be your last day on Earth. Until we can stick a cord into the player’s head and fool the brain completely we will merely be playing games, and games usually have fun as the primary goal. For some, this fun may involve “historical accuracy” in some way, but don’t sell it as realism. Personally I very much prefer credibility as a goal, rather than realism.
  
  Maybe they can make some fun out of the swinging of plastic sticks, but I fear it will just be another Wii game, possibly with a flavour of Die by the sword, which incidentally was a kind of cool game.
  - ROSSINDETROIT
    
    It would be slightly more realistic if the controller was built into a 48″ section of iron pipe. But then people would cheat. And how about a feedback jacket that hit you with a Taser shock when your opponent landed a blow.
    - Sparrow
      
      Not pipe, rebar. This is the author of Snow Crash we’re talking about.
  - Zapbeeb
    
    Yep, i loved Die By the Sword, i’m surprised it has not been cited before.
    Chopping heads and limbs was quite fun, even if a little frustrating.
    It will be interesting to see what they will do with modern technologies.
- freefall127
  
  they’ll probably develop away to put motion censors in a punching bag and on a weighted weapon so that the game could model your motions and those of the bag or possibly an opponent.
Tynam

I’m torn. On one hand, I’m not sure it’s possible to do this right – martial arts are tactile.

Pete Molyneux – not exactly a designer afraid to experiment – declined to put swords in Kinect Fable for exactly that reason. And that was just computer-game swordsmanship. In a real longsword bout, feeling in the bind is crucial.

On the other hand, I’ve wanted a proper longsword game since gesture recognition became possible, and this is the best chance for one I’ll see.

Decisions, decisions.
- Ultan
  
  I designed a haptic sword controller in 1995. There were no cheap accelerometers or gyros then – it relied on a proof-mass and conductive foam bits for the accelerometers and sensing a fixed magnetic field for the gyro-equivalents. The feedback was to be through vibration – a piezo for the small/fast vibrations and a solenoid for the hits. I also considered using a Duck-Hunter style optical system for the fine motion control and really wanted a high RPM reaction gyro set to simulate the mass of the sword, but that would have made it too expensive. I’m sure that making something good enough for cheap enough is much easier today.
http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Agenbroad/100002463876063 James Agenbroad

Hmm.. The difficulty of using a handle-only controller like the one that we see in the video is that it doesn’t have the mass and momentum that a sword or axe does. Put simply you can swing it much faster than an actual sword. And the choice between fast (say a typical one handed sword) or slower and harder hitting (say an axe) or in between say a falchion is fundamental one, to say nothing of the very slow two handed weapons. If you tune the physics engine to make the on screen weapon slower to move than the controller it will be perceived as irritating “lag” by the player. It’s possible that you could make somethinng that you could plug a wii controller in that had a series of spots for varied weights. And then when your blow is blocked, what happens? How do you re syncronize the controller position the the virtual weapon position.
- Rich Keller
  
  I think that the thing to do would be to attach the controller to a weapon simulator.
  - http://germanwotd.com Amelia_G
    
    Have a “heavy” game mode where the player can duct-tape the controller to a heavy stick, getting the same workout described for Hiro Protagonist using rebar.
- http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch
  
  It would be fun to strap the controller to a bokken. Not so much fun for the lamps and furniture around you, nor the ceiling, but hey, innovation has its price.
dr_awkward

Infinity Blade II already seems to cover this, albeit without the PvP.
Tribune

I have to say I am very tempted by this but while the various controller advances I have not seen anything that produces the proper feedback for collision.
Rich Keller

Okay, he’s getting a couple of bucks from me. Not because I play video games, but because learning longsword is a beautiful thing.

The slow motion bottle cutting was great to see.
copperwatt

While I applaud the ambition, and the “family tree” of sword types gave me geeky tingles, I think maybe this project is going in too literal a direction.

There is an almost “uncanny valley” like aspect to gaming controls, where the closer your movement gets to its real-life equivalent, the more demanding our senses get, and the more small things missing feel jarringly “wrong”. Skateboard controllers anyone?

Mouse/keyboard based shooters can still feel really satisfying, even though the motions are nothing like actually running around and holding a gun. The required hand/finger movements are different and “metaphorical” enough for the brain to forget about them, and let what is happening on screen become an extension of your nervous system.
- OgilvyTheAstronomer
  
  Strangely enough, I’ve found that, after a period of adjustment, I prefer a controller to play shooters, even on PC. Of course, if I were playing competitively online, or a really difficult game, I’d prefer keyboard and mouse, but if the game is forgiving enough, I find the built-in imprecision of the controller and the physical motion of pulling a trigger a lot more immersive.
  - copperwatt
    
    Yeah, controller vs keyboard/mouse is debatable, and I have never owned a modern console so I never got used to a controller. However, both control options are nearly equidistant from the movements associated with actually running/shooting. Swinging a controller is far closer to swinging a sword. The shooter equivalent would be a light gun. Why are those not more popular? Is it the character movement control problem? I.e., how do you run/turn?
    
    As another example, does anyone have experience with motion control tennis vs traditional controller tennis games? That seems closer to sword fighting than any other game I can think of.
http://germanwotd.com Amelia_G

Neal Stephenson is a wonderful communicator, a great observer, good at analysis, telling stories, making use of the Pepys diary… why does he feel so separate from humans? Humans are fun.
I’m so grateful to him for his books, which amuse and instruct.
ROSSINDETROIT

When you say swordfighting game, you actually mean swordfighting video game or computer game, right? How could that possibly be detailed and faithful, except in a relative sense? One style of flapping your arms in your living room may be more realistic than another, but none of them is at all like skydiving.
And don’t get me wrong, I love Stephenson and have read everything he has in print. His fight scenes are the best. Even the last 100 pages of Reamde. But a computer game about swordfighting is a computer game, not a swordfighting game.
- Charlie B
  
  Right, but it would be so much vastly better than what passes for swordfighting games today. I am reasonably good with a sword, after more than three decades of practice, but any tyro can beat me at the Wii swordfighting game, as long as they are gleefully unburdened by any understanding of how a sword actually behaves. In that game, the less you know the better off you are. Adding any trace of realism would be nice!
  
  Of course the Holy Grail of simulated combat would be a game that realistically simulated the behaviour of an axe. No system has achieved this – not SCA, Markland, NF&PS, Dagohir, nobody. There are things you can do with an axe, like hack through a shield and shatter the arm under it (or cleave through a blocking blade, helmet and head with a single blow) that remain unsimulated in any combat sport I’ve tried (and I’ve tried a lot). Back in the day we used to do tests with real helmets & breastplates, and believe me axes can deliver vastly more power than any sword. Spears are impressive, too – you can poke a good spear through 12 gauge steel – but they get stuck and/or snapped off much easier than axes do.
  
  You could weight and shape the controllers, but cheating’s going to be a big problem.
hughstimson

I don’t think the goal here is to exactly recreate the experience of sword fighting in your living room. I suspect it’s to make a much better sword fighting game than currently exists.

If it succeeds on the latter criteria I believe I will find it in my heart to forgive it for failing on the former.
Daemonworks

For me the magic-enchantment method of customization that he dismisses is exactly what I’m interested in. If I wanted realism, I’d just go out and learn to do this stuff in real life.

That said, I do know some people who’d love that sort of realism in a game, provided it was well handled.
- Rindan
  
  You could call modern shooters “realistic”. Are they truly realistic? Not really. They incorporate a lot of elements of realism though. The gun kicks, you have different sites, cover has meaning, and in general good coordinated tactics (at least in some games) will rule the day. It isn’t perfect realism and doesn’t try to be, but it hits the high points.
  
  Games with melee weapons hit no high points, which is his point. I don’t think they are going for perfect realism. I think they are going to try and get it to be the point where they are like shooters and are at least interesting. Melee combat is dull right now.
  
  If some day they get it good enough that it is an accurate simulation with a motion controller… awesome! You might find the idea of sweating your ass while wildly swinging about in your underwear to be horrible, but that sounds bad ass to me. It beats the shit out of Wii tennis, if nothing else.
  
  Hell, a total jerk off fantasy for me is an MMORPG which trashes stats and just uses motion controllers. Getting a workout while slaying hordes sounds bad ass.
Mister44

THIS – but with light sabers.
Eric Hunting

Two words: Bartitsu module…
andygates

Could this be the swordfighting (lightsaber-duelling?) arena game I’ve been waiting for since the Wii came out? And then since the Wii Motion Plus came out? And then…

ohpleaseohpleaseohplease
http://codeflow.org/ Florian Bösch

Cool idea, saw the campaign yesterday. And if Kickstarter was available where I live (Switzerland) I’d maybe think about supporting.

So sorry Neal, if you’re looking for funding on a platform that excludes me, though luck. But you might want to try Rockethub, IndieGoGo, Buzz Bank, etc.
- http://germanwotd.com Amelia_G
  
  Kickstarter geht nicht in der Schweiz?! Wieso/pourquoi?
  - http://codeflow.org/ Florian Bösch
    
    Only US-residents can make Kickstarter campaigns. The payment service (amazon payments) that Kickstarter uses, you cannot sign up to receive money with it as a non US-resident.
SamSam

Looking at all the body movements involved in the real sword fighting in his video, I can’t understand why they don’t seem to be going with Kinect as the technology for reading sword position, instead of the simple wii-style accelerometer in the “sword” handle.

Advantages:
- Whole body movement. Duck or sidestep by actually moving, instead of pushing buttons
- Use your other hand for a shield or to push the opponent
- You could actually integrate a full-length (plastic or foam) sword, so that a player with a long sword will swipe more slowly than a player with a short sword
- Much more accurate sword position calculation, instead of merely guessing by the accelerometer

This whole thing seems absolutely made for kinect. Using an accelerometer alone seems to negate everything that Stephen says about realism — how are you going to move around, if not by button presses?

(I donated $25 anyway.)
- Tynam
  
  I agree completely, and I made the same assumption when I first saw it. But… Kinect is laggy, and has no haptic feedback at all. The lag is trivial in a dance game, mildy annoying in adventure… and almost certainly crippling for martial arts.
agreenster

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword already does this pretty effectively. Although theres no multiplayer option. But the gameplay/sword combat is pretty great and satisfying
http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki

anyone see Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story? It’s like that war choreography scene.You’ll get the players excited with the idea of watching Guts go up against Vlad Tepes but end up with a boring lecture on how great swords are traditionally used to disarm pole-arms.