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When Videogames Know They're Videogames
An anonymous reader writes "In 'I Never Metagame I Didn't Like', AllRPG.com goes into a discussion of metagaming - what it is and some games which feature it. The piece explains: 'Metagames show awareness of their nature as games. These games ignore all pretense of being a representation of a reality--rather, they know that they're polygons on a screen', and goes on to reference titles such as Earthbound and Metal Gear Solid as examples." Are there other examples of titles which address the player in this awfully postmodern way?
In The Curse of Monkey Island Guybrush Threepwood is buried alive and the credits start scrolling, when suddenly Guybrush starts yelling about how you can't die in these LucasArts games.
Does that count?
I went through that. Boy did I go through that.
The only way I figured out what you had to do was because I went through the game to that poitn so many times that I just got fed up and hit "reset" to get to play it again faster. I hit reset and learned that, no, that button isn't hard-wired, it's actually software controlled! Boy was I angry, and at the same time, horribly amused.. To think, I'd spent hours looking around on the SCREEN for a reset button!
To date I haven't found an emulator that correctly emulates the Reset button to play this game correctly....
"You're in a computer game, Max..."
The truth was a burning green crack through my brain. Weapon statistics hanging in the air, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. The endless repetition of the act of shooting, time slowing down to show off my moves, the paranoid feeling of someone controlling my every step...
I was in a computer game.
Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could I think of.
Hmmm... I think I've played a little too much Max.
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
I have always heard a different definition for Metagaming.
When I play pen and paper rpgs (Dungeons and Dragons, anything from whitewolf, etc), we refer to metagaming as acting in game on information that you shouldnt know in game.
For example, the party is divided into two groups, one goes to investigate something, the other goes to find out more from the police. They roleplay the encounter with the police and the other group of course hears this in real life. Say that the police tells that group that the enemy is very well armed. Then it would be metagaming for the other group to suddenly be a lot more cautious than they would be had they not overheard (IRL) the conversation the other group had.
main(){char *c;while(1){c=(char*)malloc(1);*c='a';fork();}
A stage has three walls for real. The fourth one is the invisible one, which you're not supposed to break.
"A witty saying proves nothing." --Voltaire
For people unfamiliar, the ending goes something like, just as Conker is about to die by the end beastie, the game freezes. He looks around, realizes the game has frozen, and proceeds to blackmail the programmer.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Salen, K. & Zimmerman, E. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Chap. 28
Those authors also reference an essay called "Metagames," by one Richard Garfield, in Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Essays on roleplaying, London:Jolly Roger Games, 2000
At this point, a dialog box pops up, with the options "Goat, Chicken, Basket" of which you get to select one.
Actually, there's a fourth option: if you'd choose not to strike him down (by pressing the "cancel" button, IIRC), he would thank you for sparing him and would give you an item.