"logic" is a broader concept than "consistency". When you say something is consistent, you have to establish what with, or you don't know what the claim means. When you say it is logical, you sound like you're appealing to a universal concept - you don't have to ask what it's "logical about".
So when you talk about realism and logic in games, you don't necessarily mean correct physics or real-world stuff - but someone might. If you mean internal consistency, call it that. It's precise and accurate.
I don't think any game could be much fun without internal consistency. I can't solve any problems if I can't rely on experience in the game-world, except through fluke. The number of times I've been annoyed with a game because something works everywhere but the place you're stuck in, apparently just "because"...
That said, if I'm not looking for internal sense, I don't mind. I can bumble randomly just seeing what goes on. But that's not the same kind of game - there's no skill, no judgment, and no real rules. It's just an experience.
There's lots of games which are full of illogical things, in a broad sense, but I don't see how that matters.
The article starts by talking about how you'd feel after losing a squad RTS-type thing. That's a world away from Ico or Final Fantasy.
To get you feeling loss and the usual trappings of the "squaddie / buddy" movie, you have to get the player to care about the squaddies. That means giving them personalities not just special skills, and playing it through properly. You'd need make the interfaces much more "real" - stop someone breaking down by talking them round, keep the squad together, have your soldiers have their own friendships and react appropriately when their buddy gets blown away - worse if you just talked them round with a "you'll be okay" speech...
It stops being a standard Dirty-Dozen mission and turns into a tactical game where there's emotional stresses as well as the shooting opposition. The technology's there, but would trigger-happy ruthless-General-wannabes buy it? Do people get into squad games for this, or do they want to pit wits like a proper General, and just shout "It's a war, soldier. And in war, people die!" like you see in testosterone-fuelled films?
Ico works by giving you someone helpless to protect, with real signs of fear and reluctance (body language you can read, stronger than text dialogue), and a character who's isolated and fairly weak but fights on regardless, who you can identify with and be drawn along with. When your own character finds things out about him / herself it draws you in, because he/she reacts and the emotions they display make you empathise with them.
FF is probably quite similar, only with more of an ensemble cast - especially FFX. It's like a film; you see people at their best and worst - that tends to involve you, if you have any natural empathy in the first place.
Other games where I got unexpectedly attached to the characters - The Getaway (which was filmic again, I suppose), and Primal (ditto).
Summarising: I think there are different ways of provoking emotional reaction. You can draw on film / TV techniques, which players understand and interpret easily into involvement (FF sequence, Max Payne, etc). You can go the AI route, and try to make characters into fully rounded people to be interested in. (Note: this has already been attempted in "Real Life", the legendary MMORPG) You can make the character you control draw you in by his/her reactions to the unfolding plot, hooking the player along (the Planescape:Torment, Ico, MGS approaches)
However, it's only the one you can do in real life that isn't there in games yet - and as I said when I started this rant, there's probably not enough demand in most genres.
Blimey squire, you'll not be a comics reader then. DC have ads every third page, which in a visual medium rather detracts from the content.
But product placement isn't like this - you're not interrupting the game for an advert, it's just something there in the background.
Better, I'd say - limited subliminal effect (unless you're very easily influenced), and far less intrusive. Course, if it's been paid for by advertisers I'd like to see the benefit in the game quality or in the price I pay being subsidised...
Isn't there a difference between books like the Bible, which are at least by implication didactic and advocate ways to behave, and something like GTA, which is simply an artifact open to interpretation?
To prove how rhetorical that question is, admittedly by switching genres, I remember that when Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs came out it was hailed as genius partly because it showed the real effects of being shot (in the stomach, Mr Orange IIRC), and consequently de-glamorized violence. [Yes, the ear scene rather undercut that, but bear with me].
What I'm getting it is the gap between something offering instruction - any scripture, Machiavelli's Prince , possibly Mein Kampf - and something that is just put out there for people to react to. There's no guidance in GTA about what you do; you simply play it and draw your own conclusions. The game itself offers no instruction, in the way of a novel or a film.
The reason didactic works are abused is not because of the content, but because some people will manoeuvre to be the interpreter, and can then impose their ideas on others using the original book for authority. This means that there are two problematic factors: the manipulative moral-free people who use this as a control mechanism, and the manipulated mind-free people who follow the instructions.
GTA stands without interpretation. It does not have an overt manifesto which can be followed rightly, or misinterpreted. It presents something which the person using it has to make judgments about for themselves.
Unfortunately, it also attracts people who are not able to make rational judgments about what happens [and the same applies to the Matrix-inspired killers]. When your sense of reality is diminished anyway, the reward mechanism for illegal and violent behaviour (built into GTA) will be a contributing factor to tipping you further into your own world and out of the communal one with all those damn laws.
Two final points to my rant.
The Bible in itself is clearly against most of the bad things done in its name. The problem is that people need to understand how to think before you let them near a book of instructions.
Das Capital is only tangentially connected to the systems of "communism" that exist. It suffers from similar problems, in that real communism requires disinterested and objective administrators to run the system, and the people who want those jobs are rarely selfless and good people. It's essentially the same requirements as theoretically apply to any politician.
I don't know of any country where it's illegal to defend yourself.
Illegal to defend yourself with a gun, yes, but that's just a restriction on the tools you can use. It's fairly unimaginative to equate the activity to one style of (pardon the pun) execution.
Slashdot Mirror
"logic" is a broader concept than "consistency".
When you say something is consistent, you have to establish what with, or you don't know what the claim means.
When you say it is logical, you sound like you're appealing to a universal concept - you don't have to ask what it's "logical about".
So when you talk about realism and logic in games, you don't necessarily mean correct physics or real-world stuff - but someone might. If you mean internal consistency, call it that. It's precise and accurate.
I don't think any game could be much fun without internal consistency. I can't solve any problems if I can't rely on experience in the game-world, except through fluke. The number of times I've been annoyed with a game because something works everywhere but the place you're stuck in, apparently just "because"...
That said, if I'm not looking for internal sense, I don't mind. I can bumble randomly just seeing what goes on. But that's not the same kind of game - there's no skill, no judgment, and no real rules. It's just an experience.
There's lots of games which are full of illogical things, in a broad sense, but I don't see how that matters.
The article starts by talking about how you'd feel after losing a squad RTS-type thing. That's a world away from Ico or Final Fantasy.
To get you feeling loss and the usual trappings of the "squaddie / buddy" movie, you have to get the player to care about the squaddies. That means giving them personalities not just special skills, and playing it through properly. You'd need make the interfaces much more "real" - stop someone breaking down by talking them round, keep the squad together, have your soldiers have their own friendships and react appropriately when their buddy gets blown away - worse if you just talked them round with a "you'll be okay" speech...
It stops being a standard Dirty-Dozen mission and turns into a tactical game where there's emotional stresses as well as the shooting opposition. The technology's there, but would trigger-happy ruthless-General-wannabes buy it? Do people get into squad games for this, or do they want to pit wits like a proper General, and just shout "It's a war, soldier. And in war, people die!" like you see in testosterone-fuelled films?
Ico works by giving you someone helpless to protect, with real signs of fear and reluctance (body language you can read, stronger than text dialogue), and a character who's isolated and fairly weak but fights on regardless, who you can identify with and be drawn along with. When your own character finds things out about him / herself it draws you in, because he/she reacts and the emotions they display make you empathise with them.
FF is probably quite similar, only with more of an ensemble cast - especially FFX. It's like a film; you see people at their best and worst - that tends to involve you, if you have any natural empathy in the first place.
Other games where I got unexpectedly attached to the characters - The Getaway (which was filmic again, I suppose), and Primal (ditto).
Summarising: I think there are different ways of provoking emotional reaction.
You can draw on film / TV techniques, which players understand and interpret easily into involvement (FF sequence, Max Payne, etc).
You can go the AI route, and try to make characters into fully rounded people to be interested in. (Note: this has already been attempted in "Real Life", the legendary MMORPG)
You can make the character you control draw you in by his/her reactions to the unfolding plot, hooking the player along (the Planescape:Torment, Ico, MGS approaches)
However, it's only the one you can do in real life that isn't there in games yet - and as I said when I started this rant, there's probably not enough demand in most genres.
Thanks for reading.
I'm confused now. Sometimes I'm a bit liberal, sometimes a bit conservative, depending on the subject matter.
Can I post safely, since I'm not, per se, a liberal? Or should I only post non-liberal comments in the more Acidic threads?
Blimey squire, you'll not be a comics reader then.
DC have ads every third page, which in a visual medium rather detracts from the content.
But product placement isn't like this - you're not interrupting the game for an advert, it's just something there in the background.
Better, I'd say - limited subliminal effect (unless you're very easily influenced), and far less intrusive. Course, if it's been paid for by advertisers I'd like to see the benefit in the game quality or in the price I pay being subsidised...
Isn't there a difference between books like the Bible, which are at least by implication didactic and advocate ways to behave, and something like GTA, which is simply an artifact open to interpretation?
To prove how rhetorical that question is, admittedly by switching genres, I remember that when Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs came out it was hailed as genius partly because it showed the real effects of being shot (in the stomach, Mr Orange IIRC), and consequently de-glamorized violence. [Yes, the ear scene rather undercut that, but bear with me].
What I'm getting it is the gap between something offering instruction - any scripture, Machiavelli's Prince , possibly Mein Kampf - and something that is just put out there for people to react to. There's no guidance in GTA about what you do; you simply play it and draw your own conclusions. The game itself offers no instruction, in the way of a novel or a film.
The reason didactic works are abused is not because of the content, but because some people will manoeuvre to be the interpreter, and can then impose their ideas on others using the original book for authority. This means that there are two problematic factors: the manipulative moral-free people who use this as a control mechanism, and the manipulated mind-free people who follow the instructions.
GTA stands without interpretation. It does not have an overt manifesto which can be followed rightly, or misinterpreted. It presents something which the person using it has to make judgments about for themselves.
Unfortunately, it also attracts people who are not able to make rational judgments about what happens [and the same applies to the Matrix-inspired killers]. When your sense of reality is diminished anyway, the reward mechanism for illegal and violent behaviour (built into GTA) will be a contributing factor to tipping you further into your own world and out of the communal one with all those damn laws.
Two final points to my rant.
The Bible in itself is clearly against most of the bad things done in its name. The problem is that people need to understand how to think before you let them near a book of instructions.
Das Capital is only tangentially connected to the systems of "communism" that exist. It suffers from similar problems, in that real communism requires disinterested and objective administrators to run the system, and the people who want those jobs are rarely selfless and good people. It's essentially the same requirements as theoretically apply to any politician.
I don't know of any country where it's illegal to defend yourself.
Illegal to defend yourself with a gun, yes, but that's just a restriction on the tools you can use.
It's fairly unimaginative to equate the activity to one style of (pardon the pun) execution.