The All New and Exciting 2014 Game Frame Game!

Games
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We do this for movies, but not for games? Here at QT3? Time for that to change!

For those of you not familiar, the Movie Frame Game is a forum game where people post screen grabs from movies at specific points (20:20, 40:40…) and others try to guess the movie. What does the winner get? They get to pick the next movie, of course! Awesome, huh?

It occurs to me that QT3 should be doing this for games, but it also occurs to me that posting an entire screenshot may not be the best way to go about it as games tend to be more easily identifiable by their art styles, palettes, rendering, GUI elements, etc, etc. Perhaps more-so than a movies, from the perspective of a movie-slob like me, anyway.

So I propose we go about this a slightly different way. 4-5 snippets per game, all of the same screenshot, but starting small and working up to the full frame - 1/8 frame, 1/4 frame, 1/2 frame, 3/4 frame, full frame, etc. How you go about it is actually up to you - pick a GUI element, maybe an environmental asset, a weapon or other or art asset or texture. Something maybe distinctive of the title in question. The only real rule being that each successive frame includes the content from the first so we gradually reveal the full frame.

Need some tools to help with this? Use whatever your favourite screenshot tool may be - Fraps, Steam - heck grab a screenshot from the web if necessary (though shots you have taken would be preferred to give the game that personal touch). Then view it in your favourite viewer and take a segment of the shot as required. The common OS’s can do this natively - snipping tool in Windows and shift-command-4 in MacOS. Upload to your favourite hosting site and away you go. Only thing to remember - maybe zoom in on the first couple of shots before taking your snippet!

FYI, the tools I use for this sort of thing, which simplifies the process:

Greenshot - snipping and automated upload tool!
Imgur - free imagehosting!

Anyway, I’ll get this show on the road in the next post. Hopefully this is not a complete waste of time and I am not laughed off the forum…it would be a pain to find a new place to hang out…

For a compiled list of all submitted titles to date, please see this handy list kept current by CraigM.

Edit - For some rough guidelines on such things as posting frequency and guessing limitations, see the following:

  • Frame posting frequency - no hard and fast rule, but try to balance between letting the thread die and leaving enough time between frames for plenty of folk on the forum to get a chance to have a look. For example the Movie Frame Game typically posts a new frame every 18-24 hours or so.

  • Guessing limits - One guess per frame.

  • Franchise guesses - No guessing a complete franchise (ie ‘Assassin’s Creed’), you must identify the specific title. That said, this one is probably best left to the discretion of the current frame poster. They may decide to take a close enough is good enough guess if we are getting deep into a given frame round.

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And away we go! (hopefully)

snippet 1:

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This is a great idea. Since I moved to Kansas City in 2006, I only watch about 6 movies a year, so I was always completely lost in the movie frame game. Sometimes people would get the right answer and do it in a cryptic way and move onto the next movie, leaving me going “but wait, what was that last movie? But if I post asking that question I’ll look really stupid.”

But I know games! Looking forward to this.

One question: after you take your screenshots you have to host them somewhere, right? I used to have my own site many years ago, and I used to just throw any images I wanted to show on the forum in a folder on that server. But I don’t have that anymore. Where are you hosting your images? That’s an imgur link, so I guess imgur is not just a tool you mentioned but also a way to host images?

The crossbow shot there looks really detailed. So if it’s an older game it has to be some kind of cutscene. If it’s a newer game, it seems to have a very unique stylized art.

So my initial guess is going to be Dishonored.

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Fun! Good thinking, sharaleo!

Rock8man’s reasoning seems solid. I don’t have a better guess than Dishonored, but I’ll go a totally different direction and say Stronghold 2. I know it doesn’t get in that close generally, but maybe it’s from the title screen or a cinematic.

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Not Dishonoured, or Stronghold 2.

So, Imgur is a free and public image hosting site. Go to http://imgur.com/ and hit the upload button at the top. Select or drag your file from you computer and it will upload and give you a html link. You can also register and create you own albums, etc. The Greenshot tool I linked above automatically takes a screenshot of a selection of your screen, uploads it to the Imgur and copies the html link to you clipboard, ready for posting seconds later. It can also upload to dropbox, flickr and several others, if that is your preference.

In the interest of moving things along quickly to get the game rolling…

The crossbow shot there looks really detailed.

Or really big…

snippet 2

Snippet 3 will most likely give it away.

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My first guess when I saw the pic was Tomb Raider, but I never played it and have no idea whether there were crossbows in it.

Neat idea, sharaleo!

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Not Tomb Raider.

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Sniper Elite?

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Brothers.

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Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, the giant battle aftermath.

EDIT: damn ninja Giaddon!

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Maybe a Dragon Age game? I’ll say the new one, Inquisition.

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Dang, I had it too. Good call Giaddon and what a deceptive screenshot sharaleo!

This is a great idea for a thread. Now we just need a 3x3… ;-)

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one of the Fallout 3’s?

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Yep, I knew it after sharaleo’s hint, too. Good reflexes, Giaddon!

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Knew it at the second screenshot, before the hint. But offcourse I’m waaaaay to slow… ;-)

Great idea, will follow (and participate) with interest!

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And Giaddon takes the inaugural session!

Great game, with some truly memorable art and environment design - the giant landscape my favorite among them. Even if you don’t enjoy the eventual conceit of the control scheme, I think this one is worth it for the art direction alone.

snippet 3

snippet 4

Take it away Giaddon!

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And this is where this game frame game may differentiate from the movie 20:20 game. Growing into the full screenshot may give us all a chance appreciate the ‘little’ aspects of a game that stick with us, despite the full screenshot being a dead giveaway in many cases.

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This is awesome. Though, my favorite thing this thread has given me is “ninja Giaddon” though. That got a literal LOL out of me.

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What is really depressing is I still haven’t played Brothers, and I’ve owned it over a year now…

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You! Go! Now! Play!

But seriously it takes about 3 hours, and it is one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in the last year or so. Though I suspect you already have heard that.