Slashdot Mirror
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?
Little moments of that sort of third-wall breaking can be good to relieve the monotony, however. I particularly like the little voice that harangues you whenever you pause in Viewtiful Joe ("OK, is it number one, or number two?")
--- Bwah?
"and some games which feature it"
Metagames exist in every game. This term has been coined long before this author thought it up, but really he's just talking about particular games' self awareness (to which the term Metagame does not apply).
A Metagame is the game that goes on in the players mind, when *they* step past the suspension of disbelief to tackle the actual game mechanics, and not the fantasy scenarios involved.
A good example of this would be a First Person Shooter. The "game" is where you, as John Doe Mercenary must blow your way past the Evil Terrorist Organization, using all available weaponry to eliminate your foes and survive.
The "Metagame" in this example is really how quickly and acurrately you can move the mouse and click while using the arrow keys to avoid incoming hits. That is the *true* challenge of the game; hence: "metagame".
I think this author should read up a bit on common game design theories and philosophy before tackling another subject like this. All he's really doing is trying to coin a term that has been in common use in the game design field for several years.
At least his footnotes know they are footnotes.
Money for nothing, pix for free
... because I have a copied version of the game, you insensitive clod!
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?
His description is not a metagame. A metagame is when the player engages the gameplay mechanics directly, taking a step back from the suspension of disbelief to play on a different level outside the boundaries of the games world, NOT when a game breaks the "fourth wall" and becomes self-aware.
I guess WarioWare Inc fits in perfectly then.
In one of the new the .Hack games, based on a relatively popular anime, you play a player who is playing an MMORPG that he's stuck in. The game is therefore a single player simulation of an MMORPG, complete with the game AI playing as players, and also as NPCs. The gameplay is also based on currenty-day MMORPG gameplay - the focus being entirely on levelling and getting new stuff.
Sounds JUST ABSOLUTELY THRILLING to me.
Remember Monkey Island? Hermann Toothrot frequently turns to the screen and comments on things, and when asked who he's talking to he replies, "the people watching, of course." Then there's the famous "rubber tree" scene poking fun at Sierra adventures. And I'm pretty sure the "that's the second largest monkey head I've ever seen" bit is a reference to the player, too.
The fake "game over" is a pretty common gag in adventure games, actually... I can think of several other (more obscure) titles that feature it.
I had a great laugh in Max Payne when in one of the dream sequences, a phone rings and (I believe it's Mona) says: "It's a video game, Max.". He then proceeds to rattle off all the features of Max Payne, complete with various screenshots, mentions being under complete control by some nerd, and finishes off with something along the lines of "It was the most horrifying thought I've ever had".
I really got a big kick out of that.
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
"Meta-game" terminology aside, the most horrific example of breaking the 3rd wall happened in the original X-Men game for the Genesis. Apparently, the team thought it would be cute to force the player to stop a self-destructing computer from counting down by resetting it / resetting the Genesis. Of course, nobody could figure out that what the designers wanted the players to do was to walk over to their machines and push the reset button, so many people just though the game wasn't finished.
I personally think it was done as a collaboration with Sega to sell more controllers. There's only so many times you can throw one of those into a television before one or the other breaks.
The ______ Agenda
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....
Except these games are presented in a 2D medium :)
OK, so they're in 3D... will you settle for the 3-and-halfth wall?
deus does not exist but if he does
Also, when Fry walks into the room that is the final battle of the game (which is often called the "boss level"), he says something to the effect of: "Uh oh, this looks like a boss level."
There are other examples in that game.
At the end of the introductory clip, as Homer has decorated his car as a taxi and asks the family what they think, Bart says: "Just get to the game already!"
If you run out of time while driving a "Road Rage" level, at the end each character has a unique funny comment. Several of them say things that seem to refer to the game, like "I thought I had more time left" and so on.
When you finish the game, the camera zooms out of the "You Won The Game" screen to reveal that the game was being played by the aliens Kang and Kodos. One says, "This game grows tiresome!" The other responds, "Insert the alternate game disk." They then start playing an alien version of Pong and fly off.
Conker's Bad Fur Day has the most metagame ending there is. "Can you believe that? The game froze!"
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();}
I guess in that case it was more of "breaking the controller" rather than "breaking the third wall".
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
The earliest memory I have of somethin metagamish, is probably Playing the mini-games in System Shock. They were really a game in a game, since you had to have a physical game pad to upload the games to. And in the games themselves, which showed up in one of the left or right screens, you battled against SHODAN and she had all the insanely high scores... When I first found them, I was wondering whether it was pre-cogniscient or cogniscient SHODAN I was playing against. A nice diversion from the game.
A more recent example is something that was mentioned in another post: Character response to player (in-)activity. I've noticed in a couple of games. Prince of Persia has a really good one, which doesn't break the atmosphere or the premise of the story.. "shall I go on?"
There's commander keen, of course (which I know is older than system shock....) who read a book and fell asleep and did stuff, if you left him in the middle of a level. Sonic, I think did it too. It's most common in scrollers, since the premise is frequently simple enough that you can get away with breaking the game world conventions like that.
More and more game NPC's comment on their own world, often reflecting on the absurdity or irrationality of game constructs. I recall a morrowind NPC worrying about the fact noone goes to sleep at night. That's interesting considering there was a sleep cycle in Daggerfall.
More and more games have this habit, as the worlds they create become more complex, yet with obvious limitations. It's a measure of the sophistication of gamers and developers, that limitations are not only accepted, but deliberatly pointed out.
click-clack, front and back. I'm not moving this car otherwise.
I googled to try to find the exact text of this, but was unsuccessful. Thankfully, the joke was funny enough that I remember it pretty well.
In Squaresoft's 1995 game The Secret of Evermore (which was produced entirely by Americans, coincidently), there was a section of the game that took place in a huge, open-air marketplace set in pseudo-Roman times.
Within this marketplace, there was a character tossing out the ambient "The End Is Near!" warnings and the like. Eventually, though, if you get into a conversation with him, the exchange goes something like this (emphasis mine at the end)....
The End Is Near Guy: The End Is Near!
You: Uh huh.
TEIN Guy: We have no control over our destiny!
You: Whatever.
TEIN Guy: In fact, we are being controlled by outside forces!
You: Suuuure.
TEIN Guy: It's true! We but answer to the directions of our huge, button-pushing overlords!
You: Riiiiight.
TEIN Guy: If I am lying, may the gods strike me down where I stand!
At this point, a dialog box pops up, with the options "Goat, Chicken, Basket" of which you get to select one.
After selecting, two lightning bolts flash down from the sky onto TEIN Guy, and whatever you selected is left standing in his place.
- Neil
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
In Eternal Darkness, Sanity's Requiem, your character has a sanity meter. When your sanity gets low, certain in-game effects happen, such as hearing strange voices, having the camera angle tilt crazily, walking on the ceiling, or even hallucinating battles that don't really happen.
However, certain effects break out of the game. In one, for example, the screen goes black, it looks like the game system reboots, and displays a "controller error" message screen. The first few times things like that happened, I thought my game had malfunctioned, but later I correlated these to losses of in-game sanity. I think this was very effective in making sanity loss seem real, by making the player (as well as the character) think he's losing his mind.
...had numerous references to the player, the game itself, the developers (lionhead studios), and even south park. Ingame the player has a good and an evil conscience, and the two constantly bicker.
Some of the more amusing conversations between the two occur when you don't touch the keyboard for a while. Here are some samples:
Good conscience: "Jeez, our Boss is inactive. Let's rock from side to side."
Evil conscience: "Maybe we can tip over the monitor!"
Good: "No, you red fool. We're part of the conscience. We're inside our god's head!"
Evil: "Okay. Let's rock and tip over the Boss's mind!"
Good: "Hmm. You are the weirdest demon I've ever shared a skull with."
---
Good: "I spy with my little eye, something beginning with B"
Evil: "Brain."
Good: "Yes."
Evil: "OK. I spy with my evil eye, something beginning with S"
Good: "Skull."
Evil: "Yeah."
Good: "I spy with my little..."
Evil: "Shuddup! Sorry. I just can't take it any more. Skull, brain, brain skull.") Good: "You're right. We should get out more."