Category: Thoughts

The player’s experience

I remember when I took a unit on writing for film, how we were told, “Don’t tell me, show me.”

Well, I think this needs to be expanded upon for the sake of differentiating between films (or tv shows) and games.

Books: Tell me.
Film: Show me.
Games: Let me find out for myself.

It may seem obvious, but when this is properly understood, will we really have any need for epic cut-scenes that do anything more than literally set the scene? I’m not talking about getting rid of all cut-scenes: for example, the intro for Left 4 Dead is highly effective at showing a variety of scenarios and special infected, while hinting at ways of dealing with them. In that sense, “show me” has superceded “tell me,” while remaining short and setting the scene. We do need some sort of introduction, some sort of illustration of how to play, but first and foremost, we should encourage players to feel more involved than watching a film.

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Item Collection and Achievement Hoarding

I don’t read Gamasutra much anymore, mostly because I find half-baked ideas that either frustrate me or make me feel insecure and insignificant. Recently, though, a friend of mine linked to a link to this. It narrows down the desire to collect items and achievements to one of two drives: either you’re OCD, or you really enjoy bragging.

But I believe there is a softer, deeper desire that was not explicitly touched on. The desire to be valued, and the desire to express out value to a society which we feel we deserve to be a part of. If I am on Steam, people can look at what games I’ve played, for how long, with what achievements, and what I am playing now… Or the last time I was even online. We want to appear appropriate to the Steam community, having played the “good” commercial games, the “best” retro games, and the “coolest” indie games. Even if we don’t explicitly try to wear our choices as a badge of honour, it’s still all there, comparing us with our fello Steam buddies.

On the other hand, sometimes we just get achievements because wee like a challenge 😉

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Replay Value?

I was thinking about the concept of “replay value” when it comes to games. I was thinking about how there’s an idea that a game only retains replay value if each playthrough is slightly different in some way.

Then I was thinking about how we buy books and dvds, and how the narrative of each of these never changes, and yet we still reexperience them, or at least often hold onto them for the potential to do so. And when we do reexperience them, it’s often with a sense of dramatic irony- and suddenly the writer/director’s skill at foreshadowing comes to light.

I don’t believe that a game has to offer a new version of itself in order to be replayable. I replay adventure games in the same way as I would reread  book. I may get a lot of booing and hissing from some people for this, but what’s the shame in aiming to make games that offer deeper meaning the second playthrough, instead of trying to recreate the initial play experience?

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The Myth of the Unnarratable Game

Tonight, I was talking to a friend online, and he said he was having a debate with his housemate over whether or not all games had narratives.

My personal opinion? Yes, all games have narratives. It is important that we do no limit our perception of what constitutes a narrative. Generally speaking, a narrative/plot/story is a sequence of events tied together and recounted in such a way as to create meaning. According to Aristotle, a plot requires action, but not necessarily character. There are good plots, and there are bad or weak plots. There are plots that are simple and some that are complex, and they can be categorised according to their strutural and formal attributes.

There is also the whole aspect of self-narration and identity formation that I’m not even going to touch in this post. That’s huge and I love it, but that isn’t what this is about.

There were arguments put forward about MMOs (grind erases narrative), as well as sandbox and “sim” toys (note: I use the term “toy” because Will Wright does). I was surprised that “puzzle games” didn’t come up.

If you play any of these types of games, here’s an activity to do: think about the best game you played of it. What is going through your mind? Key events and moments, strung together in a sequence. There ma or may not have been character, but there was action. By Aristotle’s definition, your “unnarratable” game just achieved the status, “Plot!” Congratulations. You just narrated the unnarratable.

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inversion

I feel too used to criticising the society and not the individual. I want to make my tragic hero properly heroic, and martyr him or her to reveal the flaw of the society.

I am far too used to plays that say, “So this is your society: a little fucked, isn’t it?”

Instead I need to think in terms of catutionary tales. I need to think in terms of an external society that is okay, and an individual who represents a seemingly alright deviation within society, or a sub-group of society.

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Hubris as a positive trait

In Aristotle’s Greece, the society was pretty afraid of Pharmakos, or what we would call a “tall poppy.” These were members of society treated as scapegoats, often because they had too much good fortune or luck. Democarcy was the political system of the time, and anyone in the minority was treated with suspicion. Hence the tragic hero: full of hubris, the sense that their personal moral choices were more relevent and valid than those of their society or their gods.

But in today’s society, we have almost an excess of hubris. Everyone is expected to have their own opinion, and they have the right to that freedom of speech. What could be understood as slandering another is acceptable today: telling someone, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” treads all over their right to freedom of speech.

Is hubris encouraged in today’s society? Is being selfish exactly what we expected we should be? Is this a change, or is this a good thing?

We may have more contestants to win the meritocracy crown, but does it just give rise to the stupidification of the masses based on the misiformation of one?

Are we freeing ourselves to uncover “The Truth,” or are we just second-guessing everything?

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Preventing social and personal change

I’ve been doing more creative research lately, starting to read up on Atlantis and the Knights Templar. The current edition of Hyper magazine is exploring moral choice in games. Very heartening, but also interesting because it isn’t exactly what I’m looking into.

I also gathered together my two essays and put them together to the best of my ability to begin my exegesis. I’m formatting it with topics and conclusions which then become my design constraints. In doing this, it has more brought to my attention where I’m going wrong with my thought process on Tragedy. Until now, I’ve kindof been seeing it as a way of changing society or personal thought. But I’ve since realised that this is backwards:

Tragedy is not about changing society, but preventing change and maintaining what else exists.

Thus, I need to ensure that the theme of my game isn’t about something I dislike about society, but something I do like that is being challenged. I’m supposed to be reinforcing behaviour and thought, while warning against incorrect choices. So, I need to ensure that the first part of my game design is aimed towards building up the relationship between the player-character and the tragic hero. I can’t have him/her be too deviant from the start, or else the deviancy must be understandable/interesting/tempting for the player as well.

It’s difficult, because my instinct is to show a “normal” hero or underdog- someone who goes against the corrupt society and is revered for it. Instead, I need to make sure that whatever I am depicting in the society in which this is set is what I want to reinforce, or otherwise the tragic hero needs to take their society to excess, and make sure that the law of their city is what they follow, instead of the law of the Gods of their time.

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Surprise!

So this is what happens when you go deep into research mode. Everything, all communication with the outside world fails. Or at least, all communication with the virtual world fails.

So what have I been up to?

Well, I gave my presentation/pitch for my research project, and did pretty darn well. I have come to the realisation that I don’t feel I have a department. Well, I guess I have “Media, Culture and Creative Arts,” but here I am, with a Performance Major, an Internet Studies supervisor, as well as the interest/understanding of Literary and Cultural Studies and Film. I feel very supported yet slightly lost.

I wrote my second essay, this time using Foucault’s concept of Panopticism to explain the discipline function of Tragedy in theatre. That was fun, I think I linked things together, but the marker felt there was a lot more I could have looked at. So I got a good mark, but not a great mark. Whatever. Next semester and The Final Thing are far more important.

Right now, I’m writing my “Literature Review,” which, for me, is essentially a big first draft of my exegesis, sans-introduction or conclusion. It’s currently sitting at around 3k words, which means I’ll have another 2-3k to play with in the future.

In a day and a half, I’ll be flying across to the other side of the world to be with my boyfriend for maybe a month. This is after an absence of about four. It’s surprising and very nice that we managed to stay together. Don’t ask me how we did. I’ll also be seeing Tim and Jess, as well as Ian (if things go to plan!) Huzzah for seeing people I haven’t seen in a while!

Game-wise, I’ve been obliterating Plants vs Zombies (PopCap) and trawling through The Path (Tale of Tales). I’ll review them soon. Not that there’s much to say about PvZ except it’s great. Also had a brief (ie, maybe four hours!) play with The Sims 3. There’s a reason I’m not buying until post-October 30th. Honours will suddenly disappear!

I’ll try be better soon, I promise!

Until then~~

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