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Contrasting User-Driven Play With Developer Vision
GameSetWatch is running an opinion piece (sparked by a lecture at NYU by Deus Ex developer Warren Spector) about the difference between game experiences that are specifically planned by the game's creators and experiences that are either constructed by players or arise unexpectedly. Quoting:
"One thing Spector said during the NYU discussion was that he feels multiplayer games are 'lazy.' This is the designer in him talking, of course — his theory that in letting players build stories via Left 4 Dead-style happy accidents in open worlds, the designer doesn't have to tackle complex challenges like making choices meaningful, or making characters believable. Spector wants to take on those challenges, and he doesn't like the idea that user-driven play, from his standpoint, effectively allows game design to bypass them. It's actually an idea I relate to a lot as a writer — I was raised in an era of authoritative media, when individual voices drove culture, opinion and information. The internet's changed everything, of course; the authoritative voice has evolved into a conversation between writer and audience, and the writer now leads the community discussion rather than acting as a single determiner, a unilateral judge."
Who wants to be always led about by the nose through every adventure? We did that before.
Rigid story lines have all the staying power of cut scenes. They're fun once or twice, but then they get in the way of game play, and it doesn't take long for the average player to <esc> their way past them.
Multiplayer is about "players". Let them play with each other. A wizened NPC that tells you "You must not enter the Dungeon of Doom until you have brought me the Ring of Gold" is fine in single player mode, but a group of friends doesn't want to grind, they want to play together.
John
There are different markets, and there is nothing wrong with that. I enjoyed dues ex, and now enjoy l4d. I dont see how taking the l4d approach is "lazy". Its just different and they focused on different aspects of the game. Sounds like someone is afraid that their experience is going stale.
I understand that there's a certain challenge and art that's lost -- that of the narrative. This is still possible, but more difficult, and often users can completely throw off your plans. It has to be a much faster-paced, more dynamic story -- the kind you live as a GM, not the kind you write as an author.
But now you have the completely different problem, just as challenging, of balancing gameplay mechanics, storyline, politics, and everything else that makes up a community.
Ultimately, it's likely to be more frustrating for you, but more fun for the gamers -- which is really the point.
One example, a well-known story from Eve Online: The developers created a long event, with a fair amount of plot and depth. The first part of it involved getting a bunch of small ships to attack some huge battlecruiser, that they had no business fighting -- but get enough small players together, and they'd have a shot. Great way for newbies to have some fun.
Problem is, some fairly powerful pirates -- possibly a guild or two -- got wind of this, killed the target ship, then set up an ambush and massacred all the newbies.
The bad: That whole plotline, and all the work that had gone into it, had to be scrapped.
The good: This story has become legend. It actually makes me want to play Eve, knowing my actions, as a player, could have that much impact on the game.
Another, probably more well-known example: The Sleeper, in Everquest. This was a creature that is several times more powerful than gods in that game -- in fact, if I'm not mistaken, several thousand times more powerful than any one god. It can only be awoken once per server, and once awake, you only get one attempt to kill it, or it can never be attempted again on that server.
This creature was simply not intended to be killed.
However, instead of actually making it invincible, the developers just gave it insanely high vitality, and the ability to pretty much one-hit anything, and sometimes several things at once. This is cool -- using actual game mechanics, rather than top-down "make it so" directives, to enforce the idea that this thing is hardcore.
Well, some players killed it. It took about 300 players or so, but they did it.
And again, this is exactly what the developers did not want. In fact, the first attempt, they simply deleted the creature when it got to around 30%. Players were outraged enough that, once they were sure that killing it wouldn't cause a bug, they reset the event and allowed the players to try again. This time, they won.
The point isn't that you shouldn't bother to create well-written, finely-crafted events. In fact, without a rich world around him, and without his own nicely scripted event, The Sleeper would just be another dragon. Yawn.
The point is that players will do things that are completely unexpected. They'll do things that surprise you, frustrate you, and go directly against what you intended.
And you will never understand this medium until you understand that this is the best thing that can happen. Games are great because this can happen.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Sometimes, game devs hit the home-run and make a story I can't put down (KOTOR II, HL-2). Other times, most of the time... not so much.
I find that people who think they've got to control the narrative or interactions with the world are people who think I need to see their story, rather than help much in making my own. KOTOR was a bit that way, but at least it offered you multiple paths and endings. Things like L4D leave you to fill in a lot of the details. Things like MUDs always did - they rely on players and their characters bringing key interactivity to the world. Modern MMOs, at their best, have elements of that, when they aren't grind-fests or 300 person raids.
There used to be trends like this in RPGs - The DM/GM is god, it is his story, blah blah blah. Works fine with 14 year olds. Get to 24 or 34 and people start saying 'Hmmm, I think I have something to contribute and I don't need railroaded'. Older GMs and players learn that a good RPG is about shared contribution and working together to build a meaningful narrative or story. The GM might still provide some plot elements, but not all of them - his players provide some and he learns to integrate those. Some are by their requests, some are by their actions and interactions, some are accidents - but all make the story more than the sum of its parts. And they help to make the world feel like it is about the players, and not about the GM (or in the case of video games, the authors). What matters in the game - the player or the author? If the author isn't clear and thinks he's what matters, he may end up writing quite a few sucking games.
Again, this may be age related. Or mood related. Some days people like having stories laid out before them like a movie, with little choice. But other times they get pretty sick of not having options and not being able to just punch some of the real jerks in the story lines right in the face (for instance... not saying I have had that experience....always....). I think the older the gamer, the more times he's been along the railroad and the less he's interested in it.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
Do you seriously think that professional journalism is anything more than idiots with training in sensationalism? When New Scientist will have articles on zero point energy and 20/20 will run segments on engines that run on water or even free energy machines? Or that the bulk media runs the moon landing conspiracy theories?
Nothing has changed. Idiots will be idiots and like attracts like. Anyone smart will know not to listen.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
In other news, Beethoven doesn't like rap.
The 'problem' Spector is talking about certainly isn't unique, but has become far bigger with the creation of computer games...
Most forms of 'entertainment' exist purely to TELL stories, such as books, films, music, plays etc., and a large industry exists just to manufacture and distribute them.
Games, on the hand, are about the OPPOSITE. They're about letting players WRITE their OWN stories whist playing the game, and generally competing or co-operating in trying to get the ending they desire.
Computer games, are not quite unique in this respect, but they DO have the most amount of scope in allowing games to encompass BOTH of these in the same product - i.e. both telling a story and letting the player write their own.
The PROBLEM, is that you can't do BOTH at the SAME TIME. They have to take it in turns. Now, because games are about story WRITING, their MAIN focus should be on letting the player have enough influence and power over the story they can create, rather than the story the game is trying to tell them, especially in computer games, where the amount of options that can be given to the player to do so are almost limitless.
Unfortunately, so many people involved in the computer games industry have come there from the normal entertainment industry, and are therefore more experienced in TELLING stories, rather than knowing how to give people opportunities in WRITING them.
This is one of the reasons why so many of the high-end computer games now seem to all about the story being TOLD, rather than the game and game-play experience of the player, and, unfortunately, sometimes to it's detriment.
The fact is, though, is that there is room for EVERYTHING, or at least, there should be. The only thing that matters is exactly what it is that you're trying to make - is it an interactive story, or a game, or some balance between the two?
For Spector to say that story writing, is lazier than story telling, however, only tells me that he doesn't understand GAMES for what they really are. It merely tells me what his own opinion is on what games should be, and I'm sorry Mr Spector, but you're WRONG.
Unfortunately, this outlook doesn't seem to be at all uncommon atm., which I feel does a great disservice to both story telling AND writing as creative media.
In fact, I had a long argument with another person on a forum recently, (who also seems to be involved in the industry), about this very subject: She also said that games, (mainly role-playing games it has to be said), were more about the stories being told, than the ones being written.
I'm sorry, but the definitions of story writing (games) and story telling, are separate and DISTINCT - to try and define either by confusing one for, or involving, the other, is to belittle BOTH.
The only thing you need to decide, Mr Spector, is exactly which one of those it is that you wish to do: tell a story, or let someone write one for themselves, or interleave one with the other, and try and balance both of them out to your satisfaction, (which, yes, a lot modern games now seem to try and do).
To try and say that only one of these options is viable, or a better form of entertainment than the other is simply arrogant, misleading, or a result of misunderstanding about the subject. matter. I'll leave other readers and yourself to decide which was the most likely outcome here.
Note: I've been thinking about doing a paper about story writing in RPG's, based upon this subject in reaction to, and following up on the argument I had recently...
Is it me or is that paper looking like a better idea all the time???
'Stupidity is an often fatal disease' - R. A. Heinlein
Letting the players have too much control for too long ends up getting boring for most of your players.
Do you seriously think that professional programming is anything more than malicious hackers with day jobs? Oh wait. Not everyone who works in the same profession has the same moral character and goals.
When I worked as a newspaper writer, I did try to write stories that would keep government accountable, point people to good things happening in their community, and generally make the world a better place.
There is a lot of crappy journalism out there. But it's ridiculous to make a blanket statement about everyone who works in the field. You depend on journalists a lot more than you realize.