Storytelling in Computer Games

Cosmicbandito writes: "The latest issue of XYZZY News features transcripts and audio downloads of a 2 hour panel discussion titled "Storytelling in Computer Games Past, Present and Future". Scott Adams, the celebrated designer of classics like "Adventureland" and "Pirate's Island", described his experiences in the early days of the home game market, offered his opinions on the current crop of games, and made predictions about games of the future. Scott is credited with writing and marketing the first commercial computer game. Of special interest to Slashdotters, he is also an avid Everquest player. And no, he doesn't draw "Dilbert"." Think "pre-Infocom".

Comments

Lost art of storytelling

[t_hunger]

Hi!

I don't know, maybe I'm just nostalgic. But computer games used to be great when I started out with my Amstrad CPC: Graphics were amazing, Sound not so much (the CPC had cheesy sound) and the Games were fascinating.I used to play such simple things like Boulderdash, Gryzor (a shoot em up) and all time classics like Bard's Tale and Elite.

What made those games great? Considering nowadays games those were ridiculously simple: Few colors, 320x200 pixels and horrible sound. The stories? In Elite you fly around with a ship you could equip with a lot of gimmicks, you bought and sold goods to get money or you became a pirate and attacks innocent traders, you were able to smuggle forbidden goods. Sometimes you even got to do special missions (those really happened rarely). I'm not too deep into games anymore, but I don't know of a single game nowadays that comes anywhere near!

Bard's Tale was so much fun too: You ran around with a party of adventurers and killed anything 'moving' (of course nothing did really move, this computer had 64K of RAM:-). Storyline? Well, you went to diffrent places to kill and eventually fought the ultimate evil wizard... Nothing compared to todays multiple CD epics. Yet, I did kill that evil wizard multiple times... today I hardly ever finish a game anymore.
Why did that happen? Did I change? Or did the games get boring? Is it some kind of 'been there, done that'? I don't know.

Playing todays games I am fascinated by the graphics and sounds for a while, I play for a few hours and then I'm getting bored. Somehow I keep getting the impression that the money goes to the artists, not to the script writers. Producing a computer game is getting more and more like making a movie: You need a script, but you get most of the audience with the special effects. Some gems (like Myst) emerge sometimes, but those are rare and far between...

What really catches my imagination for a while is the multiplayer feature of todays games: Real humans are so much more challenging then those dump computer controlled opponents. But even there I eventually feel bored: Most games just don't let me do what I want to do. They restrict me too much to be fun for long.
Am I the only one who feels like that?

Regards,
Tobias