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The Decline of Fiction In Video Games
Speaking to Eurogamer, art maestro (and visual design director of upcoming stealth/action game Dishonored) Victor Antonov put into words what many gamers have been feeling about the gaming industry of late:
"It's been a poor, poor five years for fiction in the video game industry. There have been too many sequels, and too many established IPs that have been ruling the market. And a lot of them are war games. And they're great projects and great entertainment, but there's a lack of variety today. So, when you step out of this established genre, people cannot grasp it, or the press tries to find a match. ... We were always waiting for the next generation of great worlds or great graphics. Well, great graphics came; the worlds that came with these graphics are not up to the level of the graphics. ... Games should sort of split up and specialize and assume that there's such a thing as genre, and they shouldn't try to please everybody at the same time and try to make easy, diluted projects. Let's go for intensity and quality."
The last few years have been a boom for indie developers, especially on the PC: Humble Indie Bundle Indie Gala Indie Royale BeMine ...not to mention the Indie packs in the Steam Summer Sale!
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
now where is my THEME HOSPITAL 2?
there have been many great stories. And there is no reason a sequel can't also be a great story.
Skyrim, Uncharted, Max Payne, Portal, Portal 2, Half-life EP 2, Dragon Age. ON and on.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Humble Indie Bundle
Indie Gala
Indie Royale
Be Mine
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
I loved Witcher and Witcher 2. The fiction/story in the first one was great. World with shadows of gray.
hasn't played enough games outside of the best-sellers. There's lot's of games with well written stories and intriguing worlds that were all new IPs. From the top of my head:
-Bioshock
-Bastion
-Portal
-Braid
-Alan Wake
-The Secret World (just released!)
And that's just the big, well-known titles. I'm sure if you start reading a quality gaming blog like Rock Paper Shotgun you'll be up-to-date on some great indie titles as well in no time at all, sir. (also take a look at things like the Humble Indie Bundle, sometimes these bundles contain really well written adventure games (and they always contain games with Linux support)
We've also seen the resurrection of franchises like Fallout, and Deus Ex, while not having extremely well written dialogue (with the possible exception of Fallout: New Vegas, which was made by Obsidian instead of Bethesda), they are still worth playing for the world and the story the players themselves can write through their actions.
One of the bad aspects of modern gaming is games becoming interactive DVDs. Press X, beat the bad guy and earn the privilege of watching a half-hour cutscene that tells you to press O to defeat the next boss to watch the next cutscene.
Create games that are engrossing with gameplay and don't require much of an investment on the behalf of the player.
Where was the rise of fiction in video games? We look at the previous generation with rose-tinted glasses by ignoring all the crap games and just looking at the gems.
Every generation complains about the same thing: too many sequels, not enough original properties. I mean, 5 years later we will be looking back and looking at this generation with longing.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Games today have abandoned story and character development for fancy graphics. Gone are the rich and nuanced tapestries of MarioKart and Gradius. The complex character development of super punchout and the beautifully crafted narrative of Earthworm Jim.
Happens to every platform of gaming. Arcade Games, Consoles, PC's, etc...
In the early days of Arcade Games, every game was unique (Asteroids, Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Robotron). As games stood out as top money makers, they started emulating them. Why risk a new idea, when an existing one is close to a sure thing? The longer the platform is around the less unique the games will become. Go into any modern Arcade (that is still open), and you're going to find that 90% of the games fall into Drivers, Fighters, Shooters. With maybe a couple games outside of that.
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
"It's been a poor, poor five years for fiction in the video game industry...."
Nonsense, Victor. Gaming magazine reviews have raised High Fantasy to an unprecedented new art form, and DRM has been more gruesome and compelling than the best Horror gaming.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
And yet World of Warcraft remains one of the biggest games in the world.
Well, great graphics came; the worlds that came with these graphics are not up to the level of the graphics.
It doesn't make any sense that game stories should suddenly get more complicated because graphics got better.
It used to be that games with the best/most original gameplay and story would be the gems that stood out in review and among peers. Now that graphics came into its own as a factor of quality, there are other games that stand out without necessarily having the best gameplay. Which means you might have to look for games you want to play instead of just taking the highest-rated games. But they're there.
Besides that, it's yet another thing in life that seems to have gotten worse since the better years which by no coincidence always happen to be the same time for everyone -when we were young and had all the time in the world to play every game exhaustively and repetitively to a mastery of every move, path, and secret.
We're gettin' old. Cure that and you'll cure Video-Games-are-Getting-Worse Syndrome.
You appear to mean "indie" as in companies made up of alumni of major software houses, as opposed to "indie" as in small companies that are truly independent of the video game establishment. There's a difference.
Three games that blew me away that are non-fiction and novel are Flower, Limbo and Journey. All three are more imagination, dream and a reflection of life.
Who cares about fiction in games, if I wanted to watch a movie or read a book, I would watch a movie or read a book.
I just want to blow things up or shoot imaginary people or fly planes or drive race cars or plan and manage beautiful cities without having to pay attention to a plot.
Oh and make it look and run great. More time/money needs to go into graphics and game optimization not some boring plot that 99% of the time gets skipped over in favor of getting back into action.
I'm not surprised by the state of the industry. The decline began a few years ago when a new generation of players chose war/battle/FPS games over First Person Action games (What's FPA? Think Myst, kids. If you don't know what that is, you know where to look).
In my opinion, war-like gaming appeals to a base survival and agression instinct and can indeed be involving, but eventually becomes numbing and the player is unsatisfied until another game provides a stronger instinctual reaction, which becomes more and more difficult to achieve. As this happens, interest falls off. I've seen it happen to people time and time again.
Storyline-based gaming based primarily on a world and interactions within that world activates more of the creative portion of the mind, digging out the player's imagination from under the clutter that schooling and obsessive parenting buried it under. The abilities of the imagination are endless and a properly planned First Person Action game uses as much of the player's imagination as it does game mechanics, ensuring that the user is partially responsible for creating their own experience.
For the most part, I think the folks at Frictional Games might understand how to use the best of both better than anybody. While their games may not appeal to today's most vehement FPS gamers, once those same people reach an insurmountable numbness with their own genre, those who try the kind of product Frictional puts out could find some comfort, as Frictional builds on a mix of both survival instinct and imagination.
Mass Effect has been a fantastic example of a solid fiction storyline game.
Go into any modern Arcade (that is still open), and you're going to find that 90% of the games fall into Drivers, Fighters, Shooters.
I see redemption games taking over. But driving, light gun shooting, and dancing are popular because they use input devices that a lot of people don't have, and fighting is popular because of the dynamics of in-person competition that anonymous online multiplayer can't match.
Half-Life dammit.
Of course just like people watch porn...for the story.
Right now the cost of game development makes it hard to play to a smaller market. The major distributors and studios are loath to invest in something that won't appeal to the largest market possible. Indie games are starting to get some traction but it's a long way off. The games industry is the same boat the movie industry was in the 50s. The big studios control and squeeze every last dime out of the product, and they don't take chances on anything.
What we need are a few star developers to step in and push for a larger piece of the pie and then spread that around to indie stuff. Just like the bigwigs in hollywood do right now. Those multi-million dollar pay-cheques the stars get don't all go into their pockets, a lot goes to niche projects
Bring Back Wing Commander, Story, plot, character development, Drama, and Death, all on the highest resolution screen at the time... I miss that series more than any other. I'm fedup with half assed attempts at games. Bring Back the Confederation's war against the Kilrathi, the great space Crusade :(
Meanwhile, we should teach the producers of Triple-A titles the error of their ways - that big-budget entertainment shouldn't rely on mass-market appeal just to recoup their staggering costs.
Or we can accept that there are plenty of games out there which cater to an ever-expanding variety of niches and you're ungrateful.
Is Tribes: Ascend meets Eve Online, with Guild Wars 2's level of "player respect" shaping every design element.
I will PvP in space or on the ground when I want to, and when I don't want to, the entire galaxy is mine.
WOOHOO! I'd pay 15 a month for the rest of my life.
(I realize that both Star Trek Online and Star Wars The Old Republic attempted this, but they both failed on all fronts).
All the dragon age games?
I'm of the opinion that it took a nose dive after awakening.
The Secret World will be free to play in one year.
Nothing about it can justify the monthly subscription when just-as-awesome MMOs that don't have a monthly subscription (like Guild Wars 2) are available.
Unbearably repetitive dragons that are too easy to beat interspersed with mundane quest after mundane quest to get some stupid artifact. The graphics are amazing but the gameplay is just so damn conventional and predictable it ruins the experience.
I was just going to point out that Wasteland was primarily written by Michael Fucking Stackpole, and ask how anyone can claim that 'modern' games are more well written than stuff from the 80s. There may be *MORE* of them, but the quality was there from the IF days on up, you just had to look harder... (oh wait, same as today!)
Although there is plenty to lament that games are failing in story there are still bright spots. Plenty of smaller games seem to be able to focus on crafting story and environments that the AAA games can't seem to afford to spend time on. In particular, "Journey" is one of the first games in a long long long time where I cared that another character "died" let alone that other character was a player. Just this one game is a demonstration of the power of a well crafted game without blowing a big budget and it gives me hope that developers still strive for story.
Out Of This World totally sux.
I can't speak to its business prospects.
All I know is I'm having more fun discovering stuff in that game, and uncovering the storyline, than i've had in a game in some time, including single player games. As for guild wars 2, I honestly have no desire to play it, but good for them, i'm sure they'll draw the people that like that kind of thing.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
And on and on. That was 30 years ago! Its kind of funny what happens when something makes a lot of money... a sequel is made. Books, movies, games, tv series. Its just the way it is. And yet, new games and stories still come out.
But you know what? People WANT sequels, they want more of a good thing. I just spent some money on Defense Grid 2 kickstarter as I want more Defense Grid.
I like new stories, but I like sequels too. I'm still waiting for Half Life 3
That's why I play Paradox games. I make my own story.
I think theres really two main approaches to gaming.
1. Is the office dweller student crowd. These people spend all day working with their brains. At the end of the day, their brain is tired & they want something twitchy & visceral.
2. The blue-collar gamer. These people spend all day working with their bodies, their brains being mostly idle. At the end of the day their brain is still active & wants a good thinking game... a mental challenge.
Guess which category the vast vast VAST majority of gaming company employees live in.
you on glue ? eery game is like fiction ? DONT TELL ME THEY AREN"T.....
man this site lately is full a stupid posts....
I love statements like this one:
"So, when you step out of this established genre, people cannot grasp it"
Because clearly the reason that the game didn't sell in the open market was because the public "didn't get it" - couldn't possibly be because the game was lame... No, not that...
Good acting is expensive. Good plotting is complex. Game-makers have limited resources. Most developers seem to want to put more effort/time/money into polishing the shiniez than producing an elegant story. Probably because the reviews will slate them solidly if the game looks a bit ropey, but weak acting, plot etc. gets much less abuse.
I was put off ever playing Heavy Rain when I learned that there's only one killer. What are you going to do - play it twice and act surprised at the ending? I'm sure it would have been technically possible to set the game up so in each new game the killer was any one of a number of possible suspects, but the amount of plot-tracking that would require means it didn't make it into the finished game.
Some games do an excellent job of combining story and plot (which aren't the same thing). Half-Life and its sequels all have a very simple plot - escape, but the story of how you go about it is beautifully detailed. Both Witcher games do an amazing job, in that the consequences of your actions aren't always visible until much, much later. Mass Effect 1 had a good try, and all the Geneforge games have huge, rich backstories running through them. But the player should drive the story, not just be subjected to large arbitrary chunks of it for no reason as in MGS4.
Video games have the same capacity for storytelling as any other entertainment medium, but the producers have to be prepared to pay for it on creation, and the public have to be prepared to pay for it on delivery.
The article is torture to read but the poor sap seems unable to grasp that the word fiction only means something is fictional. It doesn't mean fantasy, it doesn't mean sci-fi (these are in fact sub categories of fiction) and it most certainly does NOT mean good.
Even harlequin and 10 cents western novel is fiction. So are some of the greatest literary works. Fiction = fiction good or bad. And so, modern computer games have plenty of fiction. "Harry went to work", as long as I am not talking about a real Harry and even then it could be fiction if Harry didn't go to work.
And a sequel is just as much fiction as the original. Maybe he meant there isn't enough originality? What did he work on? A stealth action game? Yawn, been done to DEATH!
Overview
You are the once-trusted bodyguard of the Empress. Framed for her murder and driven by revenge, you must become an infamous assassin, known only by the disturbing mask that has become your calling card.
As you navigate a world torn apart by plague and oppressed by a government armed with strange new technologies, the truth behind your betrayal is as murky as the waters surrounding the city.
The choices you make will determine the fate of the world, but no matter what happens your old life is gone forever.
I get what he means. No originality whatsoever. It is a blessing the lead isn't suffering from amnesia. Let me guess, at one point you are captured and loose all your weapons?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I suppose what most people are trying to describe with "lack of story" in modern games isn't as much a lack of story. It's a misunderstanding of what sort of story your walking into.
A plot driven story doesn't require character development, all it really requires is a somewhat interesting series of events. Usually you can swap out 3/4 of the cast of a plot driven story without losing or gaining anything more than cosmetic appeal. There's a good reason that most modern games are plot driven, it lends itself to flashy visuals.
A character driven story however is centered almost entirely around the characters and their interactions with each other. While it's not always the case, you tend to get much better developed worlds in character driven stories as well. They're not as easy to write as a plot driven story, require careful planning of the characters, and thinking out how they will respond and influence events around them.
The problem with games however is that if you focus entirely on either of those, you get a mediocre game no matter how polished the mechanics, visuals, and sound are. All of the games which have been hailed as "the best" (in prior generations) strike a good balance between the two.
There's also my pet peeve. Games are being designed for a crowd instead of focusing on specific demographics like they were in the past. Difficulty has been replaced by tedium. Very little left to think out, it's all presented to you in a bullet point checklist with exact instructions. In the past you may have seen something like "he likes high places near the ocean", now you instead you see a map with a dot and usually a path drawn out for you, and if you stray from that path you hit artificial barriers.
The Last Story (which I have on pre-order)....
Xenoblade in particular was very engaging story-wise, blending Norse Myth, Greek Philosophy and science fiction elements (readers of Jack Chalker in particular will recognize elements).
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
1) Skyrim: The closest of a given. But not really any more than the same as before with dragons rather than demons. Still a less world-like world than Daggerfall or Morrowind
2) Uncharted: never heard of it. Pass
3) Max Payne: Part 2 hugely disapointing compared to 1, since it didn't really bring anything new But Max Payne is itself HOW old?
4) HL EP2. One third of a story. And how old is that one?
and on and on? Given you didn't have much there, how much can we expect from ones you didn't think good enough to get to print?
Bottom line is that content "creators" have adopted a business model where cloning shit that has a proven track record of success is preferred over venturing into new territories to build a new franchise or even just create that one-off masterpiece.
Of course the biggest issue is that society (or mostly teenagers) gobbles up this shit and makes it profitable.
This is why 9 out of 10 movies are pure derivative garbage
This is why every game is a sequel to a previous game
This is why every book is about vampires, werewolves or has dragons.
This is why every TV show is about crime scene investigation
There is a general lack of creativity in Hollywood, and by extension, ALL entertainment industries. When you can produce cookie-cuter products that make gobs of money because their is a market of addled minds craving nothing new, why even bother attempting at something that might fail just to have integrity?
Any writer, director or producer of and entertainment that wants to maintain any sort of creative integrity should never work on a sequel or prequel or take on a project that involves similar IP to other franchises. I don't care who you are in the industry, produce a sequel, prequel, remake, or copying someone else's IP is just lazy and overtly greedy.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
There were too many Crysis missions where I could just speed boost past half the level.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
The point of sequels coming out instead of new IP is actually a side-effect from developing fantastic storylines. People want to continue the stories and worlds they've visited, and is that a bad thing?
I like losing arguments, it just means that I can take your point and make it my own.
Too many games spend all their time focusing on visuals, a cinematic feel, and "immersion" while gameplay hasn't really advanced much in the last 5 years. It's gotten kind of stale.
Bitch please, did you even do any research at all?
So the gist of his argument is that no one else is creating new worlds like they did in Bioshock. It is all New York (GTA) and Military Shooters(CoD, Battlefield, Medal of Honor, etc.) No one is doing historical fiction (Assassin's Creed, Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire) or SciFi (Halo, Killzone, Gears, Dead Space, Bulletstorm, Crysis, Homefront, Rage, Resistance) . He totally ignores the fantasy genre, which I can kind of understand since they all have similar worlds, but some are well designed and have strong storytelling. Basically, he is full of crap, and I think he knows it and knows that getting a lot of people to disagree with you is a good way to get some publicity for your new game.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
I've been noticing the same trend lately. There are still many games coming out with good writing, but the majority of "AAA titles" I've seen in the past couple of years have been forgettable, generic shit. For instance, the least Tom Clancy could do if he's going to slap his name on something is supply a gripping plot. I just finished Future Soldier a couple of weeks ago, and the only thing I could tell you about the plot is that some Special Forces people got bombed in the faces, and something about Russian dissidents.
Long and short, I think the article is taking a limited scope of what gaming is. I think it's been in one of the most exciting states, and is using graphically intensive games as a bar. but those are still hellishly expensive to produce. However what would have surpassed as amazing graphics 10 years ago is cheaper than ever to produce and is being used for great narrative structures. It seems to only look to the top of the graphical scope as a judge, but of course there won't be a lot of creativity there, when these games are exceeding $100m to produce. It's a pitfall of all entertainment industries when budgets get that large, so no reason to condemn gaming in particular (not to say we can't gain anything by examining it, or recognizing that different forms of entertainment are...different.)
Hard to do better than the 2011 XYZZY Finalists for interactive fiction!
Take a look here: http://xyzzyawards.org/historical.php?year=2011&round=1
Best Game
Cryptozookeeper (Robb Sherwin)
Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis (Adam Thornton)
Six (Wade Clarke)
Zombie Exodus (Jim Dattilo)
Best Writing
Cryptozookeeper (Robb Sherwin)
Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis (Adam Thornton)
Taco Fiction (Ryan Veeder)
Zombie Exodus (Jim Dattilo)
Best Story
Bonehead (Sean M. Shore)
Cryptozookeeper (Robb Sherwin)
The Life (and Deaths) of Doctor M (Michael D. Hilborn)
The Play (Deirdra Kiai)
Zombie Exodus (Jim Dattilo)
Games can all be found at the Interactive Fiction Database. I believe all of them are free to play, too.