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Games Less Engrossing Than Other Media?
The British Board of Film Classification recently released a study describing players' reactions to videogames. The synopsis of their findings makes for fascinating reading. "Gamers are starting to play at a younger age, even as the average age of gamers is increasing. Males and females differ greatly in taste in games, how long they play, and how involved they are in the gameplay. Negative press about a game significantly increases it's sales and many young gamers choose games based on word of mouth. Games provide a sense of achievement, unlike passive mediums like television. Active participation decreases the tendency to 'forget' your experiencing a fantasy vs. non-interactive visual mediums. Gamers find violence in television and movies more upsetting than violence in games. While parents agree that games should be regulated, some still consider the whole genre as 'kid's toys', even games that may include adult content." One of the most controversial findings is the assertion that games are less engrossing than other media, with players having less of an emotional connection to in-game events than the events in a book or movie. The Wonderland blog offers up the full report as well as commentary on their findings.
Isn't enough that I ruined a pony, making a gift for you?
"with players having less of an emotional connection to in-game events than the events in a book or movie."
Often times I have had a hard time getting to sleep after watching a movie, with re-enactments of Neo fighting agents or Golum chasing the ring rebounding in my mind.
No wait that never happened.. but I have had many a restless night dreaming of defusing a bomb in dust...
Many a broken mouse chucked at a wall after a lost round might disagree also...
I've been immersed in game play but never to the level of a good book. Plus, the images in my mind from a good novel often exceed what is available even on todays SFX laden screens and this is a no-brainer.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Well, it makes sense, doesn't it?
In a game you control (or at least you feel like you control) the character. You are the character. In that way, you don't feel the same emotional connection as to people in novels or in movies. You have a completely different perspective.
This reminds me of how Hideo Kojima made you use Raiden for the most part in Metal Gear Solid 2 -- because he wanted you to see Snake through someone else's eyes.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C1 bottles of beer on the wall. Take one down, pass it round... Oh, umm...
British Board of Film Classification confirms what gamers have known for years! More at 11.
Ever chat with someone who's watched FireFly? It seems the more episodes they've watched, the more they feel they've achieved something. (Weird.)
So now that games are less engrossing than other media, can we please stop blaming them for society's violence ills?
More Twoson than Cupertino
Retro-geek or not, this is why I still miss Infocom games.
Games are less engrossing than other media. Games are also more engrossing than other media. When you're comparing two categories as broad as "games" and "other media", almost any statement you can make will be true for some examples in each category. Trying to lump "games" and "other media" together in some sort of average sense to compare the two is ridiculous.
I'm sure that "players having less of an emotional connection to in-game events than the events in a book or movie" is exactly what happens when the game is Doom 3 and the movie is The Godfather; the opposite happens when the movie is Doom 3 and the game is Deus Ex. In cases where you might expect a game, film, and book to be roughly comparable, I can think of examples where each form of media was the most emotional experience of the three.
Glancing over the complete report, though, it's not as trite as the synopsis makes it sound. Here's an excellent example from the report of a game player being moved, to which the report author commented, "It is clear from this account that games can be very emotionally affecting."
"There's a point at the end of [Shadow of the Colossus] where everything you think is going to happen has happened, but it hasn't, and the horse is killed in a rock fall. It's just devastating... The impact it has on you. This has been your only friend and companion who has helped you and protected you. I really didn't see it coming. He just dies, then you are alone but you have to keep going. Nothing else can do that. There are countless extraordinary books that are extraordinarily moving, but they can't do that. Films and books can't make you lose anything. You can read about someone else's loss, you can empathise in a book, but a book can't ever take anything from you. But that game took my horse from me. He was my horse. He was my friend by that stage!
In that game if I wanted to get from here to here I had a horse and that was nice and quick and I could canter and jump over things and now I can't do that anymore. So in a basic, mechanical way something has been taken from me.
There are lots of tragic horse deaths in all kinds of films and books but... in a film everything that happens next is pre-calculated so the music will come in on a particular second and you will have your attention moved to something else, and your feelings are then manipulated and extrapolated by what happens next. In a game, I stood there looking down at where he had fallen. Nothing is going to happen until I make it happen. I could have stood there for the rest of my life. I could have put the game down and never played it again. Or started again and tried to make it not happen, which it
wouldn't. That changes the character of the experience."
Not engrossing? Depends on the game. When I played Homeworld, and jumped back to my Homeworld in chapter 3 to find it destroyed! How can you NOT be engrossed by the rest of the plotline! I haven't ever been so hooked into a game's storyline.
One of the most controversial findings is the assertion that games are less engrossing than other media, with players having less of an emotional connection to in-game events than the events in a book or movie.
When you watched Independence Day, did you cry when the President's wife died? No, because the movie wasn't made that way. Games are pretty similar too, as the action usually takes priority over character connections. But hell, my heart warmed up when Ness was having flashbacks when he got one of his Your Sanctuary's, I got chills when Chrono got killed by Lavos, and I'm guessing a lot of people cried from Aerith got stabbed (I already knew =\). Even when I played KotOR, I was feeling some adrenaline when my character awoke on a battlestation that was under attack.
Too bad some of these games are ancient, and that I haven't experienced a strong character connection since. Am I jaded, am I playing the wrong games, or is the industry focusing too much on other gamer demands?
However, for the true devotee (games or chick pr0n romance novels), the material is _extremely_ engrossing. Addictive in many cases.
It is difficult to measure engrossment between different individuals, or across a population. The only [superficial] measurement I would propose is price/hour entertainment. Stand-alone games seem around $10/h, movies around $5/hr, and novels $3/h.
What TFA says is that games are less immersive than other media because of the interactive nature of the content, which makes it more obvious that it's fictional.
This makes sense to me. Good TV - even mediocre TV, for that matter - often creates a powerful illusion of portraying something real. It's stressful and engrossing because a part of your brain actually invests belief in the characters. In a game, the interaction with the controller (if nothing else) constantly reminds you that this isn't real, that other characters are really just a collection of pixels controlled by a few algorithms. Even in MMO play such as WoW, you know there's no real physical danger to anyone. "Suspension of disbelief" just doesn't happen to the same extent.
Don't get me wrong, I've felt "immersed" in games before. I remember, for instance, first time I saw an ogre in "Oblivion" - it was terrifying - definitely heart-in-the-mouth tension as I snuck up on it. But even then, I knew the worst that could happen was that I'd have to reload from save. In WoW the danger is greater, but it's still nowhere near "real" (as you'll be reminded every time you take damage - unless you've rigged up some sort of controller that will make you feel actual pain, in which case you've got problems...).
I'd agree with respect to every FPS I've ever played. I could put them down whenever I needed to. And to this day, I really have no strong urge to play them unless its at a LAN party.
Everquest, on the other hand, still has a soft spot in my heart even though I'm not playing it (actively) anymore. From time to time - maybe 3 times a year - I find myself typing my credit card to reactivate my 'habit'. Bad crack? Engrossing world? You decide.
In many games, the storyline is not the main draw. Sports games, puzzle games, simulations and others are all games that are easy to not become emotionally involved in; I'd compare them to action movies or sports games, you're involved to a point but you're ultimately still fine with doing other things while playing the game. But some games are so immersive that I think it would be more difficult (compared to a movie or TV show) to not become engrossed in the game. Roleplaying games like Final Fantasy, certain action/adventure games ilke Prince of Persia, shooters like F.E.A.R. and cult hits like Shadow of the Colossus and Okami have kept me engrossed in the game from beginning to end; more than any movie ever has. I think the key to engrossing players in video games is to get away from the traditional process of action then story; intertwining the story in the action is the key.
Anyone who thinks games can't be engrossing haven't had their multimillion space dollar internet space ship blown up by the fagwads in another alliance that are you and all your buddies' eternal sworn internet enemy! Or spent a couple of hours hunting him down and returning the favor. ;)
This brings up a point, though. EvE Online is less popular than other MMORPGs partly because it's a game where death matters and you lose time and effort when you die. BECAUSE it is so engrossing and tries to be less of a mindless, pre-manufactured experience than other games, it also has limited appeal.
Games can be as engrossing as a movie thanks to cutscenes, they however will lack heavily on interactivity when they rely to much on them (see JRPGs, something like Dreamfall, etc.). The really hard part isn't to make games engrossing, but to make them engrossing in actual gameplay. I think games have still a long way to go till they actually manange that. One large problem is AI, Alyx in HalfLife2 for example worked great for most part since she was heavily pre-scripted, the normal squad members on the other side where a total failure and annoyance, they died all the time for stupid reasons, there where mostly AI without much scripting. If there aren't prescripted events it gets very hard to make character behavior believable and I don't think that AI will make it very further in that area for a while.
However in the end its really a matter of what games people are playing, has long games focus on punching, shooting and killing thousands of bad guys or monsters there won't be any emotional connection in actual gameplay, since there is simply no room for that. A emotional connections needs room to unfold and that works best in genres that don't rely on hack&slay all the time, i.e. adventure games for most part. But games such as SotC also work, since they give you plenty of room in between the fights where you really have nothing much to do, you can simply have fun with the horse, without being constantly reminder that its just a stupid game. Other games however simply don't have that space.
There are about a million things in games these days that yank me out of immersion... let's see if I can name a few:
Controls: clumsy interfaces, too much HUD, non-responsive controls, DWIM context buttons that aren't, too many buttons...
Experience: Loading times, fading to black whenever *anything* happens (cinematographic hint: only do this if a long amount of time has passed!); complete lack of cinematic direction in general. Inability to interact with the environment, save blowing it up. Lack of suspense.
Graphics: Inconsistent art, doll-like animation, lack of facial expression--staring straight ahead with a bored expression and maybe a half-open mouth *all the time*, excess of bloom, "baked" environments, static lighting, skyboxes, bad lens flares.
Gameplay: Messy collision detection, invisible walls, clipping, glitches in general, stupid tedious time-killers, repetitive bosses, extremely fiddly spikes-and-pits platforming.
Cliches: Same old magic, weapons; same old NPCs that say the same thing over and over, some old press-button-to-open-door puzzles, same old everything.
Sound: Lip-sync--especially when there's voice acting, yet only a static portrait is shown. Showing text captions so that you already know what they're going to say before they say it. For that matter, any voice acting that's not in the original language. Lack of variance in sound effects, overdone sound effects, and recognizable stock sounds (I'm looking at you, owl hoot #33!)
A.I. and Internet play: I'm not going to even get started.
There are very few games out now that can satisfy even more than half these concerns out there. Emulating real people is definitely the biggest one. Many better games will make these concerns irrelevant by doing things in a completely different way. (i.e. in terms of facial expression, either hand-drawn animated portraits or a cartoon visual style are the only ways I've ever seen it done right.) Games that are polished and elegant enough are rare.
The ones that generally do better also happen to be interactive-novel style games (Monkey Island, Phoenix Wright, etc...), or games that eliminate entire categories above (Text-adventure games, non-hack-and-slash MUDs, etc...); who would have thought?
I'm generally not engrossed by the in-game events because they're generally not very good- I can only think of a few games that both had a compelling story and told that compelling story well. What I'm engrossed by in a game is the gameplay. That's why I think it's a unique medium, because it's not just another way to tell a story, it engages our emotions in an entirely different way.
it depends on what games vs what other media?
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I suppose on the whole maybe.
I don't find minesweeper particularly engaging but my race games and MMO on the other hand...
Of course i find very little to compete with the games on TV as it is as sporadic as my games. The TV show is usually just as engrossing as a race in Flatout2....and they both only go for about 5-10 before being interruppted
Many games are intense during play but not really memorable or anything to make a lasting connection. FPS for example, but you've played 100's games of it with diferent people and diferent outcomes etc. Whereas a movie or show has ONE plot and outcome for sometimes hours of entertainment tends to stick with you more. Or something like that, not articulating it real good
Either way, i can play a game for hours, read a book for hours, watch a whole movie or Tv show(DVDs) or two with out a break so kind of a toss up for me personally
anyone who says games aren't engrossing has not played the truly great games
there are very few storylines as concise and yet so incredibly deep and meaningful as ICOs
my god, in that game it's not that you care about losing the game if Yorda is captured by the horrifying black spirity things,
it's that you don't want HER to be caught.
there's a part near the end where you're about to escape, but the bridge you're on starts retracting from both sides
she's on the castle's side, you're on the escaping side
honestly, the second I could move after the quick little cinematic I ran and jumped to her
AWAY from the exit
because I cared about her
I had no idea if that was the correct "game" thing to do
I just reacted
of course, that's what you're supposed to do
but no game has manipulated me like that emotionally
(it wasn't like a crying "I want to be with her!" thing, either because that's not what ICO and Yorda's relationship in that game is about... it was just... the natural reaction)
Because at higher difficulty levels the gameplay becomes very demanding, and all its graphical and sound impact is not felt anymore because it is replaced with the fear of losing to the next wave or falling during an attack on the enemy. I have found out, by observing myself, that studying after a burst(2-3 hours) of gameplay, leads to reduced concentration on my studies. I am studying to become a doctor and i often find TV more relaxing then Gaming, but the addiction to interactivity has to be satisfied everyday with few hours of gaming, there is no doubt about that.
1. Why do we expect the same thing from all types of media the comparison makes me think imagine a person who loves dancing says Oh dancing is much more physical and can almost be part of exercising (some of them at least) but reading books or watching movies is not, does that mean reading books is bad? No its a different type of engagement
2. Secondly when I played KOTOR (the first part) the twist in the tale was enough to get me pretty engrossed with the character and I was more involved in finding out how the story ends...more importantly was also happy that I could decide what kind of ending I wanted Good or Evil true not many games would involve you in the storyline (to that extent) but given the number of years both these separate medium have been around am guessing the comparison would be difficult
I think using the word engrossing is a very big generalization in this case
This is not a signature...no seriously!
Of course games are less engrossing than movies. The time, money, effort, everything else that goes towards setting up the atmosphere, is MASSIVE compared to ANYTHING video games have shown us.
Sure, SquareEnix delivers some pretty nice FMVs but by the time they're done, players rarely if ever see anything similar again. SotC had huge environments, but if it wasn't for the fact that you ran around from point to point on horseback, people would've criticized the fact that the world is so barren. FPSs limit the perspective of players to near claustrophobic levels (enough with the tunnels already!) MMORPGs either limit players too "squad" sized groups or go overboard with sheer number and overwhelm players with sheer number to unplayable status (WoW raids anyone?)
Until video games deliver Lord of the Rings scale battles without preventing me from taking part in its ENTIRETY, not some stupid, you can only fight the orcs that jump into your preset path, I'll stick to watching movies like 300 to satisfy my bloodlust.
I think this story is a bunch of crap and a stinking pile it is. When you watch a movie or a TV show, you just sit there and soak in whatever storyline ABC or NBC is trying to sell to you while pumping 30 second advertisements in between. With a video game, you get more value out of it because you interact with the medium and make decisions in addition to watching a story unfold. In addition, games are longer than the standard 20 min TV show or 90 minute movie.
Bastard, I haven't found a copy of that game yet!
I used to suffer the tetris thing when I was a kid. Play it all day, dream it all night, suddenly find yourself in the bathroom in the morning, half asleep, trying to figure out how best to fit the soap into the sink and then laugh out loud at yourself.
Lately "katamari damacy", "we love katamari" and "me and my katamari" have done the same thing to me.