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Missing the 'Whole' Point in Game Development
An Anonymous Reader wrote to tell us about Walter Kim of the Ludonauts. He has an interesting argument about game design: "many videogame developers, particularly the Western ones, approach their craft with far too much of a hard-headed pragmatism, a nuts and bolts mentality about development that has, consciously or unconsciously, extended itself to design. What you end up with are a bunch of games that, while they may exhibit a great deal of cleverness on the level of individual level design, are stitched together with about as much finesse as duct tape."
Games are seen as 'product' rather than art. When a car designer (as the man himself says) sits down and designs a Porsche, he isn't thinking 'product', he's thinking art. Art isn't about one bit being perfect, but about the overall impression being spot on.
"I think the real indicator will be when somebody confesses that they cried at level 17,"
Daikatana made my cry at level 1.
Still, the guys have a point: video games are not engaging enough.
I think it's about time to bring out one of the more famous John Carmack quotes. "Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie; it's expected to be there, but it's not that important."
I have great respect for John Carmack as a programmer, but I absolutely despise his games. Honestly, I think that the western developers could really learn something from the Japanese. About the only western developers that I know of that make games that I personally feel the need to play are Ubisoft (Prince of Persia), and Silicon Knights (Eternal Darkness, Blood Omen, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes).
These are the kinds of threads I like to spend my mod points on, but I'll bite the bullet and respond.
While there are a lot of good items to digest in the article, what we have here is a commentary on filmmakers who think about game design in terms of filmmaking. But game design is NOT filmmaking, no matter how much people these days like to equate the two.
I can think of a hundred counterexamples to 'there's no reminder, nothing refreshes who these characters are' and I am sure you can too. Ico springs to mind.
The problem is that STORY and GAME tend to be very discrete elements, where in a movie STORY and MOVIE are one and the same and this is where that expectation comes from. Level designs that ignore story (as discussed in the article) or story that obfuscates (or simply makes unimportant) the game elements (see Xenosaga and many other RPGs), is simply bad design and while it may be a State-of-the-Medium issue, I believe as games get more and more into the cultural forefront, we will see better and better designs where STORY and GAME are one in a way that filmmakers simply don't comprehend right now.
That's just my optimistic opinion though.
The first footnote from the article:
5 /Final%20Fantasy%20VII.htm) of Final Fantasy VII for a Stanford History of Computer Game Design class. This review claims that Aeris' death is the first time in RPG history that the death of a main playable character is an "essential and critical element of the plot." Completely untrue. It was done at least once before, in Sega's 1994 RPG, Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millenium.
I recently stumbled across a review (http://xenon.stanford.edu/~geksiong/papers/sts14
Oy. It was done much earlier than that, in Phantasy Star II. Oh who will morn for poor, forgotten Nei? Or Tellah (FF II/IV), for that matter? Or the Flying Men from Mother?
Some developers want to tell you that games are just about fun. I like fun a lot, but they're wrong and prejudiced, no matter how kindly and innocent they sound saying it. We need to push forward with designing games from a strongly holistic standpoint if we're to get anywhere with emotional affect, story "telling", and thematics. Designing and developing videogames is not, and cannot be merely about the pragmatics of creating entertainment. Otherwise, our medium of choice will not be able to reach a wider audience, to become universal in its appeal.
Excuse me? I play games because I find them fun. Games with no/little plot can still be plenty fun (Zelda I, Tetris, Goldeneye, Animal Crossing - don't tell me they suck). Why cut a game out just because it aims purely to be fun?
There are of course games where the enjoyment comes from the progression of the story (Final Fantasies), and I enjoy them every bit as much as I enjoy the first sort, if not more. However, games with more integral stories lose some of the charm of the others. Ever tried playing an RPG, then coming back after ages? You have no idea what's going on. Tetris, Pong or Pac-man can be played anywhere, anytime, by anybody. Final Fantasy 3/6 or Chrono Trigger, despite being oft-hailed as the best masterpieces ever to be experience, require lots of time, just like a book - but you can't play on the bus (unless they get ported to a handheld) and you can't stop just anywhere. They have many of the failings of books, such as losing the thread if you go away for too long, as well as many others that you get from either interactivity or the almost purely grapical output - ever been annoyed because you can't go to x until you've been to y thanks to a big rockfall that mysteriously vanishes later? There are of course some games where your actions are what allow you to progress, but even they seem far too tacky sometimes, such as picking up an item in x which allows you to destroy the rockfall, and an item in y which lets you get to the next place. In a book you don't have those problems, because you get no control - if the main character is supposed to go to x, then dammit, he will go to x! And the graphical output is another downfall that movies and games (text-based games excluded) can have compred to books, because you don't know thoughts, or even emotions beyond what the actors can express. You can't -not- have the graphical output, which means that things like the weird guy on the poles from one of the Hitch-hiker books who steps from one to another, thirty feet apart without anything appearing to distort fail utterly.
While I will always love any game whch makes me cry (none have succeeded - nor, for that matter have any books or movies, although The Crucible came damn close), to focus on just the fact that you get more engaged because of the interaction would be to lose half the charm of the medium - that you can pick it up, play, and put it down again for ages. I have nothing against games which try to be like a book or a movie, but f it weren't for the ones which do something completely different that can't be obtained from the others, the medium would have died a long time ago.
And for the record, everybody died in Final Fantasy II/IV. Usually several times.
I suppose it has alot to do with suspension of disbelief. While most, if not all western developers do tend to make games based more on fun rather than story, and content, rather than context, this isnt a fundamentally flawed concept.
Something must still be said for the ability to engage the user/player upon those qualities alone, which a fair number of AAA titles have done in recent memory. Its a different market. Im a huge fan of RPG's, and engrossing story lines, from Final Fantasy, to homebrew D&D. But these cannot be the end-all-be-all of gaming, nor should they. While in a perfect world, an engaging story, lengthy plot, personal character development, and exciting gameplay may make a good game, these are just buzz words, and not actual gaming concepts. I hate to say it, but you're not in the majority of the industry. As long as the money in gaming is in *entertainment*, and not "engaging gameply", then duct tape is what you'll get; along with the 200x version of last year's sports game.
I agree that there is alot we could learn from Japanese, and even some European developers that could greatly enhance the "art" factor, and elevate these games from a product, into something much more. But dont discourage the fun factor in development, its still the principal reason most of us play games. One brand of duct tape isnt nessecarily better than the other.
First of all, John Carmack is right about his own games. I enjoy them, and in an FPS, it's generally true that you can have a good experience with very little plot.
Still, plot can work with the game. Here's my example: Jak II. There's some outstanding gameplay, the world is absolutely massive and very cohesive -- only three or four major areas, the rest of the levels are all seamlessly melded into the City. And I do mean seamless, and that is my impression of the entire game. Comments are made all the time, cinematic scenes are short and relatively infrequent. The plot is not incredibly complex, but it is very well tied to the gameplay.
The way games are going to absolutely leave movies in the dust is when AI gets so good that the designers mostly do a rough outline of the game, and spend most of their time in character design and AI. MMOs are sort of moving in that direction, but the advantage of local AI is that they are more expressive, never lag, never talk out-of-character, and can be saved and restored.
Think about how Half-Life 2 works (in the videos, anyway) -- the physics engine and wide-open level design allows you to be very creative and have a lot of freedom in how each battle goes. Half-Life was like that, only less so. Yet the experience was seamless and linear, so you got enough freedom to have fun with the game, but enough limitation and design that you can "lose yourself in the artist's world".
What I think Speilberg wants is for the character and plot to go the same way -- not like a choose-your-own-adventure book, not like write-your-own-book, but like life with fate.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Two words.... E.T.
A cogent argument could be made suggesting that Spielberg's 'game design intuition' was the single greatest cause of the great video game crash of 1983. The man may make some good movies, but I'll never listen to a DAMN thing he says regarding games, because he obviously has no clue what he's talking about. I'm surprised neither Walter nor Chris brought the great ET debacle up in their articles.
On another note - increased realism is not going to be and never was the driving force for good games. it's been a driving force for the industry, the millions of fanboys who eat up a few extra mole marks on their polygonal models and the graphics cards companies who happily sell us upgraded machinery every six months, but we've been seeing the same old, tired, incredibly conservative games and forms of gameplay for years now.
The first time I cried from playing a video game was playing WWF Wrestlemania (or something like that) for the SNES. I picked it out for my ninth or so birthday because I saw some screenshots in Nintendo Power, and they looked so photo-realistic that I wanted to play it. After taking it home and turning it on, I was appalled by the simplistic button mashing that grew tedious after only a few minutes. I cried all night for being so easily tricked by the lure of realism, and vowed never to give realism in games any thought again. I still have that cartridge today as a reminder.