Meta-Video-Gaming and you
polycounter lvl 18
hey folks. i've been thinking recently and figgured i'd throw this blurb out there for anyone who'd like to to tear it appart/add to it. i've been tryinh to look at games from a different perspective, and the amount of fun i'm having playing them has totaly sky-rocketed.
anyway, i finaly realized that the reason i look back at the games i played as a kid as being so good is because i could accept them so completely back when i was still innocent i suppose. as far as this goes, recently i've been trying to really force myself to believe that what i'm doing in a game is acctualy REAL. that this location i'm at is really a location, the people are real, and that i'm genuinely worried about my well-being. this really brings me in to the game- i get a real sense of emotional connection and genuine adventure. i FEEL like i'm on some alien planet in massive battle... at first, i just got a subtle feeling of a stronger connection, like the type that i might have felt playing something like doge-ball as a kid in gym class.. but as i get better at it i'm really able to absorb myself into the game
I'm noticing that there are definate strategies for getting into this mind set. some easy, some obscenely difficult. I've become absolutely facinated with this new way of experience and am trying to figgure out what's acctualy going on, so i can really grab a hold of it.
my friend suggests to me that the process of objectively looking at a game is refered to in the D&D community as "meta-gaming", and is something to avoid. what i'm facinated with is to identify what meta-gaming is and then try to identify specific strategies for subjective gaming.
my question is this: is there anything writen out there about the subject? any one have any personal experiences to add? does anyone acctualy know what i'm talking about or do i sound like a complete babbling loon?
cheers.
oh and btw-- after trying to play quake 4 in this altered state, i'm acctualy convinced that the developers are bloodly brilliant. i haven't played a game yet that really does as good a job at addressing all of the issues that you might base a 'meta-gaming' standpoint off of.
EDIT: i should add that i dont think that this is nessisarily any better of a method than what anyone here does. it's something im interested in, and if you guys aren't... cool!
anyway, i finaly realized that the reason i look back at the games i played as a kid as being so good is because i could accept them so completely back when i was still innocent i suppose. as far as this goes, recently i've been trying to really force myself to believe that what i'm doing in a game is acctualy REAL. that this location i'm at is really a location, the people are real, and that i'm genuinely worried about my well-being. this really brings me in to the game- i get a real sense of emotional connection and genuine adventure. i FEEL like i'm on some alien planet in massive battle... at first, i just got a subtle feeling of a stronger connection, like the type that i might have felt playing something like doge-ball as a kid in gym class.. but as i get better at it i'm really able to absorb myself into the game
I'm noticing that there are definate strategies for getting into this mind set. some easy, some obscenely difficult. I've become absolutely facinated with this new way of experience and am trying to figgure out what's acctualy going on, so i can really grab a hold of it.
my friend suggests to me that the process of objectively looking at a game is refered to in the D&D community as "meta-gaming", and is something to avoid. what i'm facinated with is to identify what meta-gaming is and then try to identify specific strategies for subjective gaming.
my question is this: is there anything writen out there about the subject? any one have any personal experiences to add? does anyone acctualy know what i'm talking about or do i sound like a complete babbling loon?
cheers.
oh and btw-- after trying to play quake 4 in this altered state, i'm acctualy convinced that the developers are bloodly brilliant. i haven't played a game yet that really does as good a job at addressing all of the issues that you might base a 'meta-gaming' standpoint off of.
EDIT: i should add that i dont think that this is nessisarily any better of a method than what anyone here does. it's something im interested in, and if you guys aren't... cool!
Replies
But I hear ya loud and clear about pretending. The games I have the least fun in (but learn the most) are the games I look at from a developer stand point.
don't reserve "living the moment" just for computer games..
hah shotgun.
cholden and vig- haha that's cool. totaly agree on the whole developer stand point thing too. it's so hard not to notice awesome artwork but if you do i find it totaly ruins the game.
anyway it's funny. they say that for people that have a hard time going into a deep hypnotic state, they need to really just try and 'pretend' that they're accepting the suggestion that's being given to them, and that if they can do that consistantly, there becomes a level where somehow you cross over and acctualy experience the suggestion genuinely..
just my 2 cents
i think the game that gives me the fullest suspension of disbelief (which is the experience that you're talking about, being "in the game") in recent memory would have to be Shadow of the Colossus. it's a shining example of great design in many other respects, but for instance one of the reasons Ueda says he came up with the reflecting-sword dynamic for finding Colossi is because he's always felt that any time you talk to a villager NPC in a game or like character and they repeat one line over and over, it breaks the immersiveness of the experience. it's just another reminder that you're playing a game and that this villager is a set of very short scripts, not a person. so he solved that problem in addition to finding a very elegant, visually interesting solution to the problem. to me, that epitomizes the kind of game design the really promotes immersion and suspension of disbelief.
I do this a lot with games and agree with Mr. Warner that it can increase the gaming experience ten-fold, in any situation. I also agree with gauss in that certain videogame qualities can take away from the experience. Finding a game with this sort of balance is hard, but when you do its _awesome_.
Now, I should counterpoint that by saying that since I was a teenager, I have been able to do something like an "abstract objective zoom-out", where I can perceive that I am observing the world from behind my eyeballs (trapped?), and I can expand my awareness conceptually, to where I can understand that I am sitting at a computer on the 18th floor of a skyscraper in the downtown area, and that skajillions of other things are going on in the world, clearly outside of my range of perception...
It's ALL in your head, baby. All of it.
/jzero
how you talk about the process of accepting everything in the screen as a reality and croping everyting out, stuff like that. specific deep-level structure, process and strategy for this kind of thing is what i'm interested in at the moment. i think i kinda know what you mean about a zoom out. if accepting a reality on the computer screen crops out everything outside of it, it's funny to think that we're cropping what's outside of our vission...
and yah, i agree gauss, there's definately aspects of games that help this, and some that ruin this. that's why i think quake 4 is so good (the beggining anyway, i'm finding that it quickly fell to shit).
rockstar- totaly dude. i think what this is is the same type of thing that people do when they read books, or play D&D. the difference is with books and D&D is that they're vauge, so that you can warp that reality to fit yourself, same with old games with blurry graphics. it's just vaugeness.
now if instead of warping the input to fit yourself, if you could learn to be suggestable to the point where you accept the reality that you're presented with... man. i can only get half way, and only for brief periods. but..
jzero, would you mind trying to explain what it is that you do? even if it sounds totaly, totaly insane, i'd love to hear it. that goes for anyone.
haha look at how giddy i'm getting. there's something about this topic that's the exact same thing that drove me towards studying hypnosis...
Darkness is really what makes the monitor become your field of view, I find this improves the experience when playing racing games from cockpit view too. When playing singleplayer I try to immerse myself as much as possible but any kind of online multiplayer I enjoy at any time. I never try to imagine whats happening in multiplayer is real (that I'm in the game). I consider it real from the point of view that I'm playing a game against real people and you can talk to them and get a different response each time. Somehow I am able to be utterly immersed, yet at other times accutely aware of reality.
I have always found this very interesting and am glad someone has brought it up.
btw, I consider HL2 be the most immersive experience I have ever had in a game. Largely due to the lighting and texture quality. Although I think the added interaction and sound are equally contributive, especially when you've got 5.1 going on
In other situations, games are simply games. Which is why I can't seem to put myself into a world like WoW.
Marcus Dublin
PS: "Every now and then I have to physically do a dragon uppercut!"
I've had it happen playing battlefield 2. And all the time when I play Quake tf. Halflife 2 was a good one.
ElysiumGX - that's true acctualy, i agree. i guess then the question is weither or not you want to lower your thought level to the point where you can accept the stuff you're playing...
I've been in some military simulation machines, an no matter how horrible the graphics were, the physical experience made them incredibly intense and fun.
If you've noticed, most companies have gotten away from the old full imersion arcade experience. remember afterburner and it's moving cockpit cabinet?
Those are fun, pc and console games, are lacking that. which is why i enjoy going to Ocean City Maryland and running up the boardwalk playing all these classic arcade machines they manage to save there. Sound is a big imeersion issue too. I just got a pair of Turtle Beach HPA 5.1 headphones, and now doom 3 scares the pants off me. Though oddly Everquest 2 uses the audio technology better.