Me personally, I prefer the closed story type thing that TLOU and MGS have, where the story is set in stone and the player cannot make their own decisions. Moments like you and snaccum mentioned are why, because the writers can truly focus on a climax or unique moments. I feel it carries more weight when you see a character make a choice.
But I also understand why people like games where you are supposed to be the character, and you make certain choices, like in the style of the mass effect series. I don't particularly enjoy those kind of games for the story, and I think they tend to have less punch in them emotion/story/impact wise, because in these cases the main character can have no real personality (otherwise they would overwrite the player feeling as though they are in control) but they are certainly interesting to play.
didn't read everything but Journey... hands down. At the end of the game you feel this connection with the other player even though you don't know their name, gender and quite possibly don't even speak the same language. It made me get a bit misty eyed at the end without being a sad story that pulled at the heartstrings - which is one of the rarest of the rare experiences.
It's kind of interesting to explore existing codified systems of conduct -- one serious game I played was called Mr. Travel, which was designed to teach travel protocol to businesspeople. It had a lot of goofy characters and time travel to exotic places, but they were all thinly veiled versions of actual places. I beat the game, and I felt better off for playing it
But I also understand why people like games where you are supposed to be the character, and you make certain choices, like in the style of the mass effect series. I don't particularly enjoy those kind of games for the story, and I think they tend to have less punch in them emotion/story/impact wise, because in these cases the main character can have no real personality (otherwise they would overwrite the player feeling as though they are in control) but they are certainly interesting to play.
I can see the strengths and weaknesses in both creating a strong, well developed character (which usually narrows down possible player choice) and letting the player decide who exactly the protagonist is. The former, as you point out, can lead to specific points of great writing but risk alienating the player (if you don't sympathise with the protagonist then making you care about them / the story becomes MUCH harder). The latter lets the player be who they want (increasing immersion) but makes it harder to predict how different players will respond to certain events; this is my preferred of the two approaches. You can of course try for both a strongly designed character and player choice (Geralt of Rivia, Adam Jensen) but you risk getting the downside of both and the advantages of neither.
Ok I can see how this thread got a bit derailed in semantics. If you've seen the majority of posts I've made here, yeah I am a sucker for semantics. Sorry.
Regardless I see the follies.
The tone of this theme is subjectively against the subject - that games invariably have low impact or emotional resonance. Then asks what we could do to address it.
It's a bit like saying: "I think Coca-Cola tastes bad. What could we do to make it taste better?"
Of course then we'll get a load of people coming in to say that Coke doesn't taste bad. I'm simplifying it a bit but yeah.
it's the act within that experience of sympathizing with a character that changes us, and games simply don't bring that sympathetic experience to the table. Not that they can't, but they dont.
That's what got things started for me, ysalex. An absolute like that in a subjective discussion. Many of us who came out to praise interactivity in games were just trying to explain the value and potential the medium has beyond character and narrative. Otherwise people who want to make good art or communicate other ideas may as well just write a book or make a movie.
What I AM saying, is that this thread is about how to purposefully and with intent, deliver an impactful experience to an audience. One of my opinions is that if your goal is to provide an impactful experience, then you need to have a plan that is more than simply hoping that the audience will find something randomly impactful in your game.
Yeah I think that's where we've misunderstood each other.
Firstly - we weren't trying to infer that random gameplay was a good cause for impact. Just that gameplay itself was quite effective in providing potential for impacting experiences over just viewing it.
Secondly - that it is just a disagreement that we have over whether impact is something that you can aim for when you're not making some kind of dry psychoanalyic effort. (like sales go up when Coke tastes nice)
I see this as a sorta silly thing to say. There are are plenty of ways to predict things/story elements which will are more likely to impact someone.
Well that's not what we're saying. Of course there are tactics and elements of storytelling that are effective in getting a dependable response. We're arguing that allowing your creative vision to hinge on whether that response is a given, is a recipe for disappointment.
I read that little story by Ken Lui and it was nice and full of all of those heart-touching stuff. I couldn't really tell you if it impacted my life in any meaningful way, I didn't cry or anything. (Alas, it is a problem with reading it in the context of the criticality of this topic) But I'm given the impression that the writer did not write it with the crucial intent that my mind would be blown when reading it. Instead I think he just wanted to write a good story with emotional depth, some realistic experience, with good communication.
It reminds me of the old trope of the artist who is aggravated that viewers don't 'get' his art and allows it to consume him. While those who managed to gain recognition were pleasantly surprised that their art was that meaningful.
*Edit*
TL:DR
I think making a game with desire for being a good game vs. with the desire to impact is like the difference between telling a story and teaching a lesson. The lesson needs to have the correct reaction to have value, the story just needs to absorbed by the audience and allow them to react as they feel. I believe audiences these days prefer stories over lessons.
It's a bit like saying: "I think Coca-Cola tastes bad. What could we do to make it taste better?"
I think the premise of this thread is "I and others like soft drinks with a particular flavor. So, fellow lovers of this specific flavor of softdrink, what is a good way to accomplish creating that soft drink".
After that was said, I gave a suggestion - "I think this ingredient is key, and it's hard to find other soft drinks with it!"
Then a bunch of people rushed in screaming "WE LOVE COKE, WHY WOULDN'T YOU JUST DRINK COKE!!!"
Cue undertone accusations of elitism and defensiveness.
we weren't trying to infer that random gameplay was a good cause for impact. Just that gameplay itself was quite effective in providing potential for impacting experiences over just viewing it.
This isn't at all what was being said.
When I said that story was the most important method for creating an impression, I got shouted down with accusations that I was devaluing others experiences, that impact would naturally emerge from the simple act of gameplay. What's the point of shouting me down if you don't think that random emergence is a 'good cause of impact?' That was the only alternative being offered, and I still haven't heard a good case for it. I asked for examples, anecdotes, of people being affected by it:
"I'm willing to change my mind. Perhaps an example of a narrative-less game which has a predictable (i.e. someone designed it this way) impact, would really help."
Nobody answered me.
Secondly - that it is just a disagreement that we have over whether impact is something that you can aim for when you're not making some kind of dry psychoanalyic effort. (like sales go up when Coke tastes nice)
I never said it had to be a deconstruction of the players psyche, I said "it's the act within that experience of sympathizing with a character that changes us, and games simply don't bring that sympathetic experience to the table."
That doesn't mean you have to force a lesson on people, it justs means they have to have a reason to care - and caring requires a narrative.
It doesn't matter to me if that narrative is 'you are a block thing, you have a pickaxe, you must create a home for yourself in this world (ala minecraft), but it IS A NARRATIVE, and it does, very, very simply, give us a reason to care.
Well that's not what we're saying. Of course there are tactics and elements of storytelling that are effective in getting a dependable response. We're arguing that allowing your creative vision to hinge on whether that response is a given, is a recipe for disappointment.
This is the entire premise of making movies, or writing books, that you are capable of this - that you can pull a reader, a watcher, or a player, into your world. It assumes that there is some kind of payoff at the end,a climax. This climax doesn't mean that you learn a lesson, that your mind is blown, but it does require that you cared, and if you didn't, the creator didn't do their job.
If game makers are creating story driven games where nobody cares what happens to the characters, they failed. Same goes for a book, and a movie. This is how I feel about most story driven games. I don't give a shit. The characters are cliched, the story elements are there just to get me to the next firefight, and the endings are there because the game has to end, not because the story dictates a conclusion.
Now, some of these games, where the story is shit, I still love. For the world, for the mechanics, sometimes just because I like collecting things (like guns, not skin or teeth, my collection of teeth is very small), but the story still failed. A game can be good despite its story, but a good game without a story is very unlikely to cause an impact or impression, other than 'COOL!', which is a fine impression, but not what this thread is about.
I read that little story by Ken Lui and it was nice and full of all of those heart-touching stuff. I couldn't really tell you if it impacted my life in any meaningful way, I didn't cry or anything.
But did you care? Were you thinking about if things would work out for the character, or worried things would fall apart. Were you wondering why the mother could do what she could do, and did you feel bad for her when the kid pushed her away?
When you play a story driven game, these are the kinds of questions that should be pushing you on to the next part. But in modern games, the story is a backdrop, when you're playing you're wondering when you'll get the next big gun, or what the boss looks like.
Someone brought up the Last of Us, which is a great example of a story driven game.
SPOILERS!!!!!!
At the end of the game, you know what is about to happen to Ellie. I didn't care about the enemies, I wasn't searching for supplies, I b-lined for where I knew she was, because my mind was screaming, 'is she alive, have they started yet, what happens to joel if she dies?'
So much so, that I ran into an operating room full of doctors, saw Ellie on the table, and I blew away 3 surgeons and nurse out of rage that they would try to harm this character, because I'd spent time with her, and I cared about her fate.
That's a climax. That's extremely rare in story driven games. It didn't teach me a lesson, but it made a huge impression on me. The characters made an impression on me. I thought about Joels choice for a couple days afterwards.
I think making a game with desire for being a good game vs. with the desire to impact is like the difference between telling a story and teaching a lesson. The lesson needs to have the correct reaction to have value, the story just needs to absorbed by the audience and allow them to react as they feel. I believe audiences these days prefer stories over lessons.
Somewhere along the line, people got paranoid I was trying to teach people a lesson. I can feel all the words falling out of my mouth. There is a pool on the floor now, and I don't see any words that I actually said.
OP used the phrase 'advancing the human condition'. I used it once, and I used it in the context of making a connection between the player and the game character for the sake of creating empathy in the player. This comes without lessons, or with.
I argued, once, that "There [are] vast, vast, vast quantities of media created with the intrinsic goal of presenting a viewpoint or propagating an idea. Using media to do this, using sympathetic characters who learn and change, is arguably the most persuasive method available."
I never argued that this is the most important way to 'impact' people. I never argued that in order to impact people, you would have to teach them a lesson, OR that writers should even try for this type of effect. I just said that's how it's done, when it is done.
Whoa. okay. Shame on me for trying to explain my reasoning. I realise now that I must be a terrible communicator if I still managed to get it so wrong, then I dunno.
Shorthand edition then I'll just shut up.
You said games don't have ingredient. I disagreed, and then postulated that games didn't need ingredient. tried to explain my position.
You poo-pooed certain things that some people liked, claiming they lacked said ingredient. We pointed out that this is subjective and if people say it has that ingredient then it certainly does. No matter how weak.
We we're claiming that gameplay adds value and examples of how.
Zwebbie mentioned Chess.
We clearly disagree on what impact or 'furthering the human condition' is.
IMO you can't make caring happen.
My bit about lessons wasn't about your argument, but the intentions of the creator of a game/movie/book.
I'm willing to change my mind. Perhaps an example of a narrative-less game which has a predictable (i.e. someone designed it this way) impact, would really help.
If by 'predictable impact' you mean 'message', then I'm short on answers. Let me bounce the question back to you: if you're having as much difficulty as I am with finding a piece in which the gameplay provides the impact, why do you insist that games are a medium that have the possibility of impact? I mean, you can't play a narrative, because play is interaction while narrative isn't, play happens now and narrative is a re-telling of things that have happened in the past.
Is the emotional value of The Last of Us the result of its gameplay or of its cutscenes and voice-overs? As far as I can tell, it's the architects scribbling a story of bonding and loss over the square brick structure of shooter gameplay. It might be touching, but is that elevating the medium of architecture, or of games?
There's a talk by Jonathan Blow about this very issue. His conclusion is that "the message model of meaning is insufficient" for (video) games (you could be a post-structuralist and argue that the same thing holds true for all other media, but let's not). Now personally, I'm all for the message model and I quit trying to expect things from games and started writing stories.
As far as I can tell, it's the architects scribbling a story of bonding and loss over the square brick structure of shooter gameplay. It might be touching, but is that elevating the medium of architecture, or of games?
I don't get it. You say you're a writer, but you don't even recognize one of the most common formats of storytelling ?
Action and reaction, or action and reflection. It's the same in movies, books, and story games. You have a moment that sets up action, you have action, repeat. Even the most action fueled movies have this setup, even the most dry film festival movies have it. Books have it. It is taught as a basic structuring method in creative writing classes.
In games, the action is what you are calling 'the play'. TLOU was no stretch. It was a well written action piece. Setup, action. Setup, action.
It is a beautiful model for a lot of games, since it automatically structures the narrative and gameplay aspects into alternating compartments, the same way it has been used since people started writing books. You're not poorly adapting a model used in books and movies to games, you're using it exactly how it has naturally evolved in story-telling, in a new medium. That's not bad, that's GREAT.
No, not all games have it, because not all games are story games.
I also don't get your analogies. How exactly is TLOU writers using a typical story structure 'scribbling over a square brick structure', and why does it matter if people two thousand years ago prefered chess over citizen kane?
____________
But look, in the end, I'm just a guy who wants everyone to have to sit through a sundance film before they get to shoot aliens. I apologize for that, I do.
I have been working on a game in my spare time where you watch movies interactively by pressing X to trigger the next movie. There is an easter egg where you are forced to read classics in latin at gunpoint, but in trying to keep the story out of the game, the shooter has no motivation and the main character has no brain to be shot out. But it's a really cool gun, and the graphics are fantastic, so I think people will like it.
Is the emotional value of The Last of Us the result of its gameplay or of its cutscenes and voice-overs?
Sarcastic ramblings aside, why can't it be both? Why is it important that these things remain pure of one another? Why if someone does both, and does it very well, do you have to denigrate that by saying they don't fit together, when most people who played the game truly enjoyed it.
As for Mr. Blow, I didn't have time to watch the whole thing. It's 5 am and I have to get some sleep, but unless I somehow missed something, I simply don't agree with the argument that a message model is pretentious, and I think arguing that gamers reject art games because they were force fed literature in high school is ridiculous.
His whole deal seems to be conceptualizing games as some pure higher power form of being, where a player can become so immersed that instead of a message, they simply "absorb intent".
That basically reads like new-age techno-dreaming. One day we won't even have to turn on the game, we will have advanced storytelling so far that we literally absorb the content through predictive-neuro-interface.
He ends with the conclusion that "But if we work hard, for a long time, we can get there. Maybe."
So what's the point in even bringing it up, if the guy talking about it can't even conceptualize how it would work beyond "Its multidimensional and fuzzy," and is so far off that he uses the word 'long' twice?
So, tell me when this impossibly high-minded form of gaming is more than just random new age words like 'multidimensional'. When it gets here, we'll have a good conversation about it.
While many people consider it to be a bit of intellectual wank, it conceptually arises thanks to the unique meld of gameplay and narrative. What do people think of that? It surely is a pitfall for any devs wanting to make these kinds of games.
Alas. It seems that we'll continue to get the less deep forms of games as long as people who want to make narrative experiences write a book/script and people who want to make games make games with rules and stuff.
At the moment the industry pretty much goes: "Lets make a good game!" And we do, because we have some real gems out there. But I don't think we really know what a 'good game' is; and replicating it seems to be akin to catching lightning in a bottle.
I don't think we really want to separate games/narrative. It's just that they are a lot easy to understand that way. We know how to write a good story and we know how to formulate good rules so if we analyse them separately we might get them down. Unfortunately though we can't discount one for the other, otherwise we throw it all together into an unintelligible mess that does no justice to the medium.
Even Planescape: Torment is practically a visual novel. in terms of immersive gameplay.
@Ysalex: I personally don't feel the action-reaction scheme is the same as it is in media. A book might move between quiet and action moments, but it's all text. A piece of music has softer and more bombastic parts, but it's all music. In games, the action is handled by means of game, but the reflective parts are handled by movies, voice overs or text. It's a necessity of the message model; you can't convey the feeling of love through play, so a movie has to take over. To me, that feels awkward; to a degree, it's even condescending, because it puts in an actor to fulfil the role that we as players can't, and it regularly gives us moments of shooty action because we might get bored if we'd go without the narcissism of achieving something every ten minutes. That's how it feels to me. If you can find meaning in that kind of structure, that's an admirable quality, to be sure, but I fear I'm too cynical for it.
Now I haven't actually played TLoU, which you regard highly, but I think I've played more than a handful of games of its ilk. Chris Franklin has a video on his feelings about that game which mimics what I think of the genre and would, I don't doubt, think about The Last of Us (well, he's far too optimistic about games for my tastes, but he highlights important problems): http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/?p=525
Since I know you're a busy and productive man, its last sentence sums it up quite well:
"We are the game's pistol. We are the game's lead pipe. We are the game's smoke bombs and its bow and arrows. But no matter how much we might want to pretend otherwise, we are not this game's characters. They exist immutably, in their own movie universe. A universe without us."
Again, I'd like to stress that I don't mean this in any negative way, and if you feel positively impacted by the combination of narrative and game, who am I to say you're wrong? But to me, it feels like the two are in conflict with each other. Games are increasingly restricted by the need to be realistic or coherent, which is quite concretely visible in the shooter genre; many people prefer Doom's quick strafing gameplay to modern cover based shooting. That style was possible because Doom didn't have to take into account anything outside of how well it played. And that's just within the same genre; would anyone have invented Tetris if narrative were a primary goal? From the other side, the stories are always limited to taking place around a situation with a lot of conflict. The story keeps ignoring that you died multiple times, and the gameplay keeps ignoring that a person can only take one bullet wound, or that Ellie is a real, visible person.
I apologise if my analogies are too confusing I tend to do that a lot. What I meant was that architecture is considered to be an art form, but not because of its narrative qualities. We value architecture not as being able to get a message across, but as a means of instilling emotions and feelings by the manipulation of space. And we all agree and accept that architecture is a very valuable thing even though it doesn't tell stories. Yet, game designers are by and large not willing to accept that games would have value without telling stories. So instead of focusing on instilling emotions by means of play which is what I think games do they try to find ways to get a narrative in there somewhere. Often to the detriment of the actual gameplay. Isn't it odd how you can tell a stories of regret and redemption (BioShock Infinite), coming of age (Tomb Raider), bonding (The Last of Us) or war crimes (Spec Ops: The Line) all with the same gameplaymechanics of clicking on dudes? The meaning of these works isn't instilled in their gameplay, it's in their art, their sound, their cutscenes, and what-have-you. It is, to me, the same as architects who use one common and not particularly interesting shape of building for everything they need, and adapt them to the necessary functions by writing something different on the walls. And just as a building with a really moving story written on it wouldn't be called a greater piece of architecture than the cathedral of Chartres which is great because of its use of space so I think that a game with a really moving story told in its non-game elements will not be a greater game than chess, which is great because of its use of play. But this is obviously entirely personal.
You criticise Jon Blow for dreaming of greater things yet to come. So do I. He has been asked what the meaning behind Braid was, and he replied that if he could have expressed it in words, he would have but he could only express it in gameplay mechanics. Now, I don't know about you, but I have no idea what the message behind Braid would be, and as far as I have been able to gather in the last few years, nobody does. I believe Blow actually got depressed as a result of the failure of the audience to grasp what was meant by the mechanics. The thing is I'm sceptical. I think he could have expressed his thoughts in words, certainly better than he did in gameplay, which nobody understands.
The question of this thread is how to make a game that impacts the lives of people. I think that's entirely the wrong question. The correct question would be, when you have a specific impact you want to make, whether games are the correct way of making it. And if you have a message to the world that is best conveyed by clicking on people, bless you, go make that game; but I don't think that's how Jonathan Blow set to work and I'm fairly sure that's not how the dev team of The Last of Us set to work.
You know, I spent most of my childhood behind the TV or behind a monitor. I've spent a lot of time and money on games, and I'm fairly familiar with a good number of them. I can talk with people about Dys4ia, Pathologic, Planescape: Torment, Howling Dogs, Dear Esther and a bunch more obscure art games. I've got Koster and Salen & Zimmerman on my book shelf, I've read Huizinga, and over the years I've read dozens upon dozens or articles and ten times as many forum threads. I've spent a year in game design school. I have invested quite a bit of my life into games, and I think that's true for a lot of people these days. And when I wanted to creatively express myself, the fact that I'd make a game was a given and then I'd come up with some kind of point I'd want to make. Thing is, when I get down to it, I have nothing to say that I think can be expressed by mechanics and if-then routines. It took me a long time to drag myself away from it, because I've got so much baggage for game making; but when I wrote some short visual novels last year, I was thrilled by what I could do; I explored my Catholic guilt, its relation to creativity, I thought about sexism and dehumanisation. In truth, I've learned more about myself in a year of thinking about stories that were not restricted by gameplay, than I have in ten years of thinking of them in combination with gameplay mechanics. That's not a universal truth, it needn't be true for you; all I'm saying is that you shouldn't let your investment dictate what you create. Game should never be the starting point; your meaning ought to be the starting point.
But no matter how much we might want to pretend otherwise, we are not this game's characters. They exist immutably, in their own movie universe. A universe without us.
Yep. I don't know why you're giving this guy points for a very surface level observation. Personally, I love narrative like this, and I love it especially in game form. I think the mix of story and play is fantastic.
I don't know why or how the trend arose where if a game has a story, it is somehow 'impure', and unworthy. I don't care either, if people want to sit around and masturbate about the future of games being 'multidimensional and fuzzy', that's fine. You can discount a good experience when one is presented to you for the sake of the high-minded, yet fallacious (or should that be fellatious? In this context?) reasoning that until games achieve this un-achievable pinnacle, that we will ignore those attempts which dirtily mix story with play.
Go for it. In the meantime, I'm going to have more realistic expectations, since nothing that you wrote, or any of these people you have brought have, can seem to give any way to penetrate into this purity. They might as well be talking about their chakra, walking around telling people they're not going to have a conversation until their astro-symbology is in line with the 'multidimensional fuzzyness'.
Done with this thread, thanks for all the discussion.
I made a non-linear narrative for a game that other people thought was meaningful, so I'm personally convinced it's possible.
An example of a story that had choices that was much better than almost all game stories I have seen was the one in Telltale's Walking Dead game.
I often find the most impactful aspect of a game to be the nature of it's simulation. It may not shock you with "gee whiz" plot twists like a movie can, but it can give you an intuitive grasp of complex systems dynamics that is unique to games, which i think is neat.
Or, you can just have some easy, simplistic shooting galleries bookended with little TV quality videos. I guess that's fine if you just want to vegetate.
Oh yeah, I'd suggest giving Dear Esther a try. It's no fair comparing Paper Menagerie to Call of Duty or the like, I could flip the tables and compare Dear Esther to 50 Shades of Grey or Twilight and declare that video games are a superior medium.
Hey everyone, just remembered this old thread. Thought I would share the game I'm now working on that will hopefully grab some of the stuff discussed in this thread - www.snegame.com
Thoughts on the game and how to use it to be moving is totally welcome!
Replies
But I also understand why people like games where you are supposed to be the character, and you make certain choices, like in the style of the mass effect series. I don't particularly enjoy those kind of games for the story, and I think they tend to have less punch in them emotion/story/impact wise, because in these cases the main character can have no real personality (otherwise they would overwrite the player feeling as though they are in control) but they are certainly interesting to play.
I can see the strengths and weaknesses in both creating a strong, well developed character (which usually narrows down possible player choice) and letting the player decide who exactly the protagonist is. The former, as you point out, can lead to specific points of great writing but risk alienating the player (if you don't sympathise with the protagonist then making you care about them / the story becomes MUCH harder). The latter lets the player be who they want (increasing immersion) but makes it harder to predict how different players will respond to certain events; this is my preferred of the two approaches. You can of course try for both a strongly designed character and player choice (Geralt of Rivia, Adam Jensen) but you risk getting the downside of both and the advantages of neither.
Regardless I see the follies.
The tone of this theme is subjectively against the subject - that games invariably have low impact or emotional resonance. Then asks what we could do to address it.
It's a bit like saying: "I think Coca-Cola tastes bad. What could we do to make it taste better?"
Of course then we'll get a load of people coming in to say that Coke doesn't taste bad. I'm simplifying it a bit but yeah.
That's what got things started for me, ysalex. An absolute like that in a subjective discussion. Many of us who came out to praise interactivity in games were just trying to explain the value and potential the medium has beyond character and narrative. Otherwise people who want to make good art or communicate other ideas may as well just write a book or make a movie.
Yeah I think that's where we've misunderstood each other.
Firstly - we weren't trying to infer that random gameplay was a good cause for impact. Just that gameplay itself was quite effective in providing potential for impacting experiences over just viewing it.
Secondly - that it is just a disagreement that we have over whether impact is something that you can aim for when you're not making some kind of dry psychoanalyic effort. (like sales go up when Coke tastes nice)
Well that's not what we're saying. Of course there are tactics and elements of storytelling that are effective in getting a dependable response. We're arguing that allowing your creative vision to hinge on whether that response is a given, is a recipe for disappointment.
I read that little story by Ken Lui and it was nice and full of all of those heart-touching stuff. I couldn't really tell you if it impacted my life in any meaningful way, I didn't cry or anything. (Alas, it is a problem with reading it in the context of the criticality of this topic) But I'm given the impression that the writer did not write it with the crucial intent that my mind would be blown when reading it. Instead I think he just wanted to write a good story with emotional depth, some realistic experience, with good communication.
It reminds me of the old trope of the artist who is aggravated that viewers don't 'get' his art and allows it to consume him. While those who managed to gain recognition were pleasantly surprised that their art was that meaningful.
*Edit*
TL:DR
I think making a game with desire for being a good game vs. with the desire to impact is like the difference between telling a story and teaching a lesson. The lesson needs to have the correct reaction to have value, the story just needs to absorbed by the audience and allow them to react as they feel. I believe audiences these days prefer stories over lessons.
I think the premise of this thread is "I and others like soft drinks with a particular flavor. So, fellow lovers of this specific flavor of softdrink, what is a good way to accomplish creating that soft drink".
After that was said, I gave a suggestion - "I think this ingredient is key, and it's hard to find other soft drinks with it!"
Then a bunch of people rushed in screaming "WE LOVE COKE, WHY WOULDN'T YOU JUST DRINK COKE!!!"
Cue undertone accusations of elitism and defensiveness.
This isn't at all what was being said.
When I said that story was the most important method for creating an impression, I got shouted down with accusations that I was devaluing others experiences, that impact would naturally emerge from the simple act of gameplay. What's the point of shouting me down if you don't think that random emergence is a 'good cause of impact?' That was the only alternative being offered, and I still haven't heard a good case for it. I asked for examples, anecdotes, of people being affected by it:
"I'm willing to change my mind. Perhaps an example of a narrative-less game which has a predictable (i.e. someone designed it this way) impact, would really help."
Nobody answered me.
I never said it had to be a deconstruction of the players psyche, I said "it's the act within that experience of sympathizing with a character that changes us, and games simply don't bring that sympathetic experience to the table."
That doesn't mean you have to force a lesson on people, it justs means they have to have a reason to care - and caring requires a narrative.
It doesn't matter to me if that narrative is 'you are a block thing, you have a pickaxe, you must create a home for yourself in this world (ala minecraft), but it IS A NARRATIVE, and it does, very, very simply, give us a reason to care.
This is the entire premise of making movies, or writing books, that you are capable of this - that you can pull a reader, a watcher, or a player, into your world. It assumes that there is some kind of payoff at the end,a climax. This climax doesn't mean that you learn a lesson, that your mind is blown, but it does require that you cared, and if you didn't, the creator didn't do their job.
If game makers are creating story driven games where nobody cares what happens to the characters, they failed. Same goes for a book, and a movie. This is how I feel about most story driven games. I don't give a shit. The characters are cliched, the story elements are there just to get me to the next firefight, and the endings are there because the game has to end, not because the story dictates a conclusion.
Now, some of these games, where the story is shit, I still love. For the world, for the mechanics, sometimes just because I like collecting things (like guns, not skin or teeth, my collection of teeth is very small), but the story still failed. A game can be good despite its story, but a good game without a story is very unlikely to cause an impact or impression, other than 'COOL!', which is a fine impression, but not what this thread is about.
But did you care? Were you thinking about if things would work out for the character, or worried things would fall apart. Were you wondering why the mother could do what she could do, and did you feel bad for her when the kid pushed her away?
When you play a story driven game, these are the kinds of questions that should be pushing you on to the next part. But in modern games, the story is a backdrop, when you're playing you're wondering when you'll get the next big gun, or what the boss looks like.
Someone brought up the Last of Us, which is a great example of a story driven game.
SPOILERS!!!!!!
So much so, that I ran into an operating room full of doctors, saw Ellie on the table, and I blew away 3 surgeons and nurse out of rage that they would try to harm this character, because I'd spent time with her, and I cared about her fate.
That's a climax. That's extremely rare in story driven games. It didn't teach me a lesson, but it made a huge impression on me. The characters made an impression on me. I thought about Joels choice for a couple days afterwards.
Somewhere along the line, people got paranoid I was trying to teach people a lesson. I can feel all the words falling out of my mouth. There is a pool on the floor now, and I don't see any words that I actually said.
OP used the phrase 'advancing the human condition'. I used it once, and I used it in the context of making a connection between the player and the game character for the sake of creating empathy in the player. This comes without lessons, or with.
I argued, once, that "There [are] vast, vast, vast quantities of media created with the intrinsic goal of presenting a viewpoint or propagating an idea. Using media to do this, using sympathetic characters who learn and change, is arguably the most persuasive method available."
I never argued that this is the most important way to 'impact' people. I never argued that in order to impact people, you would have to teach them a lesson, OR that writers should even try for this type of effect. I just said that's how it's done, when it is done.
Shorthand edition then I'll just shut up.
You said games don't have ingredient. I disagreed, and then postulated that games didn't need ingredient. tried to explain my position.
You poo-pooed certain things that some people liked, claiming they lacked said ingredient. We pointed out that this is subjective and if people say it has that ingredient then it certainly does. No matter how weak.
We we're claiming that gameplay adds value and examples of how.
Zwebbie mentioned Chess.
We clearly disagree on what impact or 'furthering the human condition' is.
IMO you can't make caring happen.
My bit about lessons wasn't about your argument, but the intentions of the creator of a game/movie/book.
yes, I think we must. I think that is where most of the argument and misunderstand is.
Is the emotional value of The Last of Us the result of its gameplay or of its cutscenes and voice-overs? As far as I can tell, it's the architects scribbling a story of bonding and loss over the square brick structure of shooter gameplay. It might be touching, but is that elevating the medium of architecture, or of games?
There's a talk by Jonathan Blow about this very issue. His conclusion is that "the message model of meaning is insufficient" for (video) games (you could be a post-structuralist and argue that the same thing holds true for all other media, but let's not). Now personally, I'm all for the message model and I quit trying to expect things from games and started writing stories.
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I don't get it. You say you're a writer, but you don't even recognize one of the most common formats of storytelling ?
Action and reaction, or action and reflection. It's the same in movies, books, and story games. You have a moment that sets up action, you have action, repeat. Even the most action fueled movies have this setup, even the most dry film festival movies have it. Books have it. It is taught as a basic structuring method in creative writing classes.
In games, the action is what you are calling 'the play'. TLOU was no stretch. It was a well written action piece. Setup, action. Setup, action.
It is a beautiful model for a lot of games, since it automatically structures the narrative and gameplay aspects into alternating compartments, the same way it has been used since people started writing books. You're not poorly adapting a model used in books and movies to games, you're using it exactly how it has naturally evolved in story-telling, in a new medium. That's not bad, that's GREAT.
No, not all games have it, because not all games are story games.
I also don't get your analogies. How exactly is TLOU writers using a typical story structure 'scribbling over a square brick structure', and why does it matter if people two thousand years ago prefered chess over citizen kane?
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But look, in the end, I'm just a guy who wants everyone to have to sit through a sundance film before they get to shoot aliens. I apologize for that, I do.
I have been working on a game in my spare time where you watch movies interactively by pressing X to trigger the next movie. There is an easter egg where you are forced to read classics in latin at gunpoint, but in trying to keep the story out of the game, the shooter has no motivation and the main character has no brain to be shot out. But it's a really cool gun, and the graphics are fantastic, so I think people will like it.
Sarcastic ramblings aside, why can't it be both? Why is it important that these things remain pure of one another? Why if someone does both, and does it very well, do you have to denigrate that by saying they don't fit together, when most people who played the game truly enjoyed it.
As for Mr. Blow, I didn't have time to watch the whole thing. It's 5 am and I have to get some sleep, but unless I somehow missed something, I simply don't agree with the argument that a message model is pretentious, and I think arguing that gamers reject art games because they were force fed literature in high school is ridiculous.
His whole deal seems to be conceptualizing games as some pure higher power form of being, where a player can become so immersed that instead of a message, they simply "absorb intent".
That basically reads like new-age techno-dreaming. One day we won't even have to turn on the game, we will have advanced storytelling so far that we literally absorb the content through predictive-neuro-interface.
He ends with the conclusion that "But if we work hard, for a long time, we can get there. Maybe."
So what's the point in even bringing it up, if the guy talking about it can't even conceptualize how it would work beyond "Its multidimensional and fuzzy," and is so far off that he uses the word 'long' twice?
So, tell me when this impossibly high-minded form of gaming is more than just random new age words like 'multidimensional'. When it gets here, we'll have a good conversation about it.
While many people consider it to be a bit of intellectual wank, it conceptually arises thanks to the unique meld of gameplay and narrative. What do people think of that? It surely is a pitfall for any devs wanting to make these kinds of games.
Alas. It seems that we'll continue to get the less deep forms of games as long as people who want to make narrative experiences write a book/script and people who want to make games make games with rules and stuff.
At the moment the industry pretty much goes: "Lets make a good game!" And we do, because we have some real gems out there. But I don't think we really know what a 'good game' is; and replicating it seems to be akin to catching lightning in a bottle.
I don't think we really want to separate games/narrative. It's just that they are a lot easy to understand that way. We know how to write a good story and we know how to formulate good rules so if we analyse them separately we might get them down. Unfortunately though we can't discount one for the other, otherwise we throw it all together into an unintelligible mess that does no justice to the medium.
Even Planescape: Torment is practically a visual novel. in terms of immersive gameplay.
Now I haven't actually played TLoU, which you regard highly, but I think I've played more than a handful of games of its ilk. Chris Franklin has a video on his feelings about that game which mimics what I think of the genre and would, I don't doubt, think about The Last of Us (well, he's far too optimistic about games for my tastes, but he highlights important problems):
http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/?p=525
Since I know you're a busy and productive man, its last sentence sums it up quite well:
"We are the game's pistol. We are the game's lead pipe. We are the game's smoke bombs and its bow and arrows. But no matter how much we might want to pretend otherwise, we are not this game's characters. They exist immutably, in their own movie universe. A universe without us."
Again, I'd like to stress that I don't mean this in any negative way, and if you feel positively impacted by the combination of narrative and game, who am I to say you're wrong? But to me, it feels like the two are in conflict with each other. Games are increasingly restricted by the need to be realistic or coherent, which is quite concretely visible in the shooter genre; many people prefer Doom's quick strafing gameplay to modern cover based shooting. That style was possible because Doom didn't have to take into account anything outside of how well it played. And that's just within the same genre; would anyone have invented Tetris if narrative were a primary goal? From the other side, the stories are always limited to taking place around a situation with a lot of conflict. The story keeps ignoring that you died multiple times, and the gameplay keeps ignoring that a person can only take one bullet wound, or that Ellie is a real, visible person.
I apologise if my analogies are too confusing I tend to do that a lot. What I meant was that architecture is considered to be an art form, but not because of its narrative qualities. We value architecture not as being able to get a message across, but as a means of instilling emotions and feelings by the manipulation of space. And we all agree and accept that architecture is a very valuable thing even though it doesn't tell stories. Yet, game designers are by and large not willing to accept that games would have value without telling stories. So instead of focusing on instilling emotions by means of play which is what I think games do they try to find ways to get a narrative in there somewhere. Often to the detriment of the actual gameplay. Isn't it odd how you can tell a stories of regret and redemption (BioShock Infinite), coming of age (Tomb Raider), bonding (The Last of Us) or war crimes (Spec Ops: The Line) all with the same gameplay mechanics of clicking on dudes? The meaning of these works isn't instilled in their gameplay, it's in their art, their sound, their cutscenes, and what-have-you. It is, to me, the same as architects who use one common and not particularly interesting shape of building for everything they need, and adapt them to the necessary functions by writing something different on the walls. And just as a building with a really moving story written on it wouldn't be called a greater piece of architecture than the cathedral of Chartres which is great because of its use of space so I think that a game with a really moving story told in its non-game elements will not be a greater game than chess, which is great because of its use of play. But this is obviously entirely personal.
You criticise Jon Blow for dreaming of greater things yet to come. So do I. He has been asked what the meaning behind Braid was, and he replied that if he could have expressed it in words, he would have but he could only express it in gameplay mechanics. Now, I don't know about you, but I have no idea what the message behind Braid would be, and as far as I have been able to gather in the last few years, nobody does. I believe Blow actually got depressed as a result of the failure of the audience to grasp what was meant by the mechanics. The thing is I'm sceptical. I think he could have expressed his thoughts in words, certainly better than he did in gameplay, which nobody understands.
The question of this thread is how to make a game that impacts the lives of people. I think that's entirely the wrong question. The correct question would be, when you have a specific impact you want to make, whether games are the correct way of making it. And if you have a message to the world that is best conveyed by clicking on people, bless you, go make that game; but I don't think that's how Jonathan Blow set to work and I'm fairly sure that's not how the dev team of The Last of Us set to work.
You know, I spent most of my childhood behind the TV or behind a monitor. I've spent a lot of time and money on games, and I'm fairly familiar with a good number of them. I can talk with people about Dys4ia, Pathologic, Planescape: Torment, Howling Dogs, Dear Esther and a bunch more obscure art games. I've got Koster and Salen & Zimmerman on my book shelf, I've read Huizinga, and over the years I've read dozens upon dozens or articles and ten times as many forum threads. I've spent a year in game design school. I have invested quite a bit of my life into games, and I think that's true for a lot of people these days. And when I wanted to creatively express myself, the fact that I'd make a game was a given and then I'd come up with some kind of point I'd want to make. Thing is, when I get down to it, I have nothing to say that I think can be expressed by mechanics and if-then routines. It took me a long time to drag myself away from it, because I've got so much baggage for game making; but when I wrote some short visual novels last year, I was thrilled by what I could do; I explored my Catholic guilt, its relation to creativity, I thought about sexism and dehumanisation. In truth, I've learned more about myself in a year of thinking about stories that were not restricted by gameplay, than I have in ten years of thinking of them in combination with gameplay mechanics. That's not a universal truth, it needn't be true for you; all I'm saying is that you shouldn't let your investment dictate what you create. Game should never be the starting point; your meaning ought to be the starting point.
Yep. I don't know why you're giving this guy points for a very surface level observation. Personally, I love narrative like this, and I love it especially in game form. I think the mix of story and play is fantastic.
I don't know why or how the trend arose where if a game has a story, it is somehow 'impure', and unworthy. I don't care either, if people want to sit around and masturbate about the future of games being 'multidimensional and fuzzy', that's fine. You can discount a good experience when one is presented to you for the sake of the high-minded, yet fallacious (or should that be fellatious? In this context?) reasoning that until games achieve this un-achievable pinnacle, that we will ignore those attempts which dirtily mix story with play.
Go for it. In the meantime, I'm going to have more realistic expectations, since nothing that you wrote, or any of these people you have brought have, can seem to give any way to penetrate into this purity. They might as well be talking about their chakra, walking around telling people they're not going to have a conversation until their astro-symbology is in line with the 'multidimensional fuzzyness'.
Done with this thread, thanks for all the discussion.
An example of a story that had choices that was much better than almost all game stories I have seen was the one in Telltale's Walking Dead game.
I often find the most impactful aspect of a game to be the nature of it's simulation. It may not shock you with "gee whiz" plot twists like a movie can, but it can give you an intuitive grasp of complex systems dynamics that is unique to games, which i think is neat.
Or, you can just have some easy, simplistic shooting galleries bookended with little TV quality videos. I guess that's fine if you just want to vegetate.
Spyro.
Suikoden 2
bt srsly everyone will have different answer no matter how reason you are
but so far I know this one absolutely has life impact on it
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Thoughts on the game and how to use it to be moving is totally welcome!