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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think "indie" merely refers to the practice of a single company both producing and publishing their game. Whether they're alumni of Blizz/Activision/EA/Ubisoft or they've never worked on any gaming projects before, the only difference may be the amount of capital invested in the project.
That's my $.02, but YMMV.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
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
Because a good story can make the game a lot better, it can't make a crap game good, but it can turn a solid game into a legendary game.
Look at Final Fantasy VII, the storyline is what really made it all fit together.
Some games need no storyline to make it fun, for example, no one really questions why blocks are falling from the Soviet skies in Tetris, they just are. Same with Team Fortress 2. On the other hand, take away the story from most RPGs and adventure games and you are just some guy running around the world. Its a lot better to feel like you've just saved the world than it is that you just mowed down a bunch of enemies.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Mass Effect, with its repetitive, unskippable cut-scenes, is the most boring game I've played in years. It's a bad ScyFy B-movie with a few interactive sections which try to pretend that you're not playing on rails (yes, you will go here and you will do something fscking stupid that you as a player would never choose to do, because that's THE STORY, you see).
That's ... kinda the point. That there needs to be a BETTER story TOGETHER with the good graphics.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Agreed. I have hundreds of hours on Daggerfall, Morrowind + Expansions and Oblivion + Expansions, but Steam tells me I've played Skyrim for a total of 23 hours. (20 of those were spent looking for things in the inventory, or switching between items in the inventory, or screwing around with the inventory. Ten minutes were spent installing an inventory fixer addon, but I haven't loaded the game since.)
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
To be fair, WoW still has a very thought-out and detailed universe (absurd and eclectic to some extent, but not too much), with great characters, interesting plots and great "theatrical experiences" in key moments - especially starting from WotLK. Of course it's not some "deep" game like Heavy Rain, but still, if you care to read and listen (and notice all of the small details) you would find it far from mindless grind-factory it is sometimes portrayed as.
And again, there are a lot of books and various fan-art about Warcraft universe - not as much as DnD or even Warhammer, but still. If WoW had no soul, it wouldn't attract so much artists. Hell, this game even has it's own rock-band (ETC 90L) - not so many titles can say that.
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
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.
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.
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.