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Game Design Showdown Leads To Collateral Romance
Thanks to GameSpy for its article covering the "Iron Chef"-like Game Designer's Challenge at last week's GDC 2004 in San Jose, in which "three famous game gurus were pitted against one another to tackle one of the thorniest of game design problems: creating a love story." According to the piece: "The three 'contestants' were Will Wright from Maxis (creator of The Sims and Sim City), Warren Spector from Ion Storm (visionary behind Deus Ex and Thief), and Raph Koster the Creative Director of Sony Online Entertainment (who was instrumental in creating Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies.)" The eventual winner was Will Wright, who "created a war-time romance game that he called a 'First-Person Kisser'", in which "...a man and a woman, chosen by the computer for having similar interests and romantic possibilities, would start on opposite ends of a raging battlefield. They'd have to arrange for a place to meet and they'd try to get there without being killed."
There are "emotion" games out there but emotion leads to sex and that is forbidden in the US of A. Better to kill then fuck. The Sims are a notable exception but they don't really have emotion just stats.
Of course a super game would be one that manages emotion without violence or sex. Or with. I am not sure on that one.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Has anyone here played ICO? Its a very romantic sort of game; and kinda spiritual too. The basic premise of the game is , young lad gets trapped in castle, meets strange but beautiful ethereal girl caught between life and death. Strange asphyx like creatures hound the girl, and try to drag her into another world. ICO, must solve puzzles, some of which require the ethereal powers of the girl in order to solve.
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Although not strictly billed as a love story, I felt that the young lad and the girl had quite an interaction with each other, the animation silky smooth. The characters would hold hands, if ICO runs too far away he can call the girl and she will come running, or if she cannot make her way to ICO will yell back. To be honest im waffling and not doing the game much justice.
I just wanted to mention it because despite being a great game, its the first game ive really ever played where central characters have a significant relationship / interplay from which feelings seem to emanate from the screen and into your thoughts.
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Following in ICO's steps are Wind Waker and Prince of Persia, which both borrow heavily from ICO. There were a few times in Zelda when I almost cried from parts of a very scaled down love story, but I admit they were fairly non-interactive. The snapy princess in PoP was very much Ubisoft Montreal's iteration of the girl in ICO.
I felt that the relationship between the gamer and Bastila in Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic was perhaps the best conversational and interactive relationship I'd ever "played." Instead of sketching up complicated systems like Spector and Wright tried, Bioware just hit the player with the old standard of branching conversations, but did it over and over and over again. The characters change through conversation and time, and it's this transformation in their character that makes it so interesting, and ultimately, worthy of caring for.
However, I agree with you. ICO does it best. The final scene in ICO is ranks among the best in gaming, and is without question the best demonstration of a love story in video gaming.
Grim Fandango, though, makes a pretty damn close second. It's nowhere near as "serious" as ICO, but in the way that it exercises its love story, it does it very well.