Good idea! I'll try.
But if you look at the image...
http://boeing.mediaroom.com/image.php?id=2629... it's already pretty blurry. I doubt that a higher-res version would contain any more detail.
The problem with the whole "videogames should be exploiting their storytelling potential!!!" thing is that narrative and interactivity are basically like oil and water.
Either the game makers are telling a story (through an intro, cut-scene, pre-scripted in-game event, etc), or the gamer is making his own story (by interacting with his environment, seeing how items and entities and the environment interact). Either the gamer is sitting passively watching the plot unfold, or he is doing his own thing. The kind of story in the cut-scenes (stories of personalities interacting, people going through emotions, etc) is fundamentally different from the kind of actions the gamer is responsible for, from the "story" the gamer makes (figuring out the rules of a simple system so that he can out-trick a computer).
So "telling a story" happens at times when interactivity does NOT happen, and vice versa. If the story-telling in the narrative cut-scenes is actually good, then the gameplay just gets in the way. If the gameplay is good, then the cut-scenes don't really add much to it. They're nice, and I like them, but they're not what makes the game good, just as interactivity can not make a narrative good. That's why I said that narrative and gameplay are like oil and water. You can have a game with both, but one does not really help the other much.
For example, the article says "With videogames, the audience takes the teller's baton and continues to tell the story... This way, the game player enjoys the storyteller's thrill, adapting the narrative to his or her satisfaction, while also being the audience for the narrative elements that the game developer provides... We have never had a storytelling medium like video games... Game playing represents the hybrid of both aspects of storytelling, where the audience is empowered to self-propagate the storytelling creation and enjoyment. This stimulates their own creativity and gives them the experience of controlling their destiny... But where does that take us? Video games, as narratives, are not getting better". Right, that's because a narrative is not enhanced by interactivity, it is only paused by it. Either the game makers are telling a story with the gamer watching, or the gamer is trying to complete a challenge while the story is paused.
The exception to this are games that have no real "story", but where the system one masters inside the game is rich enough, interesting enough, complex enough, and similar enough to a real-world system (rather than to a computer simulation of a few entities and a few parameters in a simple environment), where the gamer-generated story IS the story. All that the game-makers want to communicate is stuff that can be "learned" from figuring out the "system" where the game is set. This is the case with Sim City, The Sims, The Movies, and all the Sim Something / Something Tycoon games. These games don't tell a story, they don't narrate, they just illustrate. THAT is the potential that video games ought to explore. Not TELLING stories, but SHOWING stories. Not narrating, not going from beginning to end, but teaching/showing/expressing/illustrating something just through the challenge the gamer must complete, just through the world/system/environment/entities the gamer must learn to influence. This is very different from telling a story. It is almost the opposite of narrative. This is not something a writer can help you with. This kind of art - expressing something about the world and human nature by illustrating it through an open-ended interactive experience - is a whole new kind of art.
It is like a teacher that gives his students an assignment where the assignment does not lay out the things to be learned, but the teacher knows that, while completing the assignment, the students will need to expose themselves to certain ideas, skills, techniques, or bits of knowledge. It's open ended and simple but contains, hidden in it, the requirement to see / learn / realize / think about something. THAT is the future of videogames. And it is NOT telling a story or trying to be a book or movie.
Re:There are plenty of games that last longer!
on
Once Upon A Game
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· Score: 1
I agree.
The relationship between interactivity and storytelling is a tricky one. Anyone should be able to recognize that you don't need a "plot" in order to enjoy a video game. However, like you pointed out, a gamer generates their own story. The more freedom the gamer has within the game, the more interesting a story can be generated. Ironically, games which progress "on rails" through a fairly strict storyline are those that give the gamer the least freedom to generate a story.
(It got published in a research journal, so I do think it's pretty good)
There are basically two kinds of story in a video game: the synchronic and the diachronic. The synchronic story is the one made up by the actions of the player (like "the storyline of the last game of chess you played or the last basketball match you watched" as a previous poster said). The diachronic story is made up of the back-story, of cut-scenes, and of in-game events that are outside of your control (such as a non-player character saying/doing something, or the environment changing spontaneously like when explosions or enemies are triggered when you go to a certain area).
The diachronic stories can have branches. If the player takes certain actions, this could trigger the next bit of diachronic story to play "Path A", while other actions on the part of the player can cause the game to go through diachronic "Path B" instead. So the things that happen in the synchronic story can push the diachronic story in one of a few pre-written directions.
However, I think it's important to realize that these two kinds of story are fundamentally incompatible. The synchronic story is mostly about the physical things you do inside the physical world of the game. You may make some choices from a menu about what to say, about whether you think the characters should do A or B, etc, but all that this really decides is whether you want to take on challenge A or challenge B. Challenges A abnd B are "gameplay", where the synchronic story happens, where you move around and do battle and avoid or face dangers and collect items and interact with your environment. This kind of thing - which is what videogames are really about - is fundamentally different from the choices a good story is about. Collecting items and interacting with your environment and with the entities in it is very different from the emotional, intellectual events that happen in a story, that happen when personalities interact.
In that sense, the "story-telling" potential of a video game is no less limited than that of a movie or TV. When you're playing, you're worried about completing simple tasks, not about the kinds of factors that make a good book / movie / TV show interesting. Even if the cut-scenes are really great and make you really relate to the characters, this is not made any stronger by the fact you just had to complete a simple task. It's like a movie or book or TV show where you're in charge of making sure the action sequences, "sneaking around" scenes, and puzzle-solving parts are successful, but where the REAL plot is still outside your control.
If it because of this fundamental difference, between the complexity of the people / interactions / decisions / emotions that make good stories and the simplicity of interactive gameplay, that I think video-games cannot tell stories any better than a book or movie. They can be AS good, but the interactive parts would not make a story great if the story is not great to begin with (in which case the interactive parts almost just get in the way).
Of course I enjoy vidoegames with a good story. It's cool to think that you're doing what you're doing to save the world, to explore an alien environment, to combat an evil and powerful enemy, etc, rather than to just out-trick a computer. Stories make most videogames more fun - a videogame is usually better for having
Now you might notice a very small amount of gravity, since an object closer to the earth will have a little bit more gravity that an object further away, so an object released inside the craft may slowly fall towards the earth, or slowly rise. It won't hold you to the floor.
Yes, those are called tidal effects. It's why we have tides - the fact that some of the earth is closer to the moon and some is farther away means that some of the water gets pulled on more strongly, so the water in the oceans "stretches" and forms two bulges - one right "under" the moon and one diametrically opposite. And the same for the sun, but less. So, yeah, if you are "under" the center of gravity of the ship (between that CG and the earth), you will "fall" just a bit, and if you are "above" the CG, you'll rise just a bit. I'm too lazy to do the claculations right now, but I'm fairly sure that, unless you are orbiting a black hole as "low" as you can, it's not noticeable.
Slashdot Mirror
Good idea! I'll try. But if you look at the image... http://boeing.mediaroom.com/image.php?id=2629 ... it's already pretty blurry. I doubt that a higher-res version would contain any more detail.
The problem with the whole "videogames should be exploiting their storytelling potential!!!" thing is that narrative and interactivity are basically like oil and water.
Either the game makers are telling a story (through an intro, cut-scene, pre-scripted in-game event, etc), or the gamer is making his own story (by interacting with his environment, seeing how items and entities and the environment interact). Either the gamer is sitting passively watching the plot unfold, or he is doing his own thing. The kind of story in the cut-scenes (stories of personalities interacting, people going through emotions, etc) is fundamentally different from the kind of actions the gamer is responsible for, from the "story" the gamer makes (figuring out the rules of a simple system so that he can out-trick a computer).
So "telling a story" happens at times when interactivity does NOT happen, and vice versa. If the story-telling in the narrative cut-scenes is actually good, then the gameplay just gets in the way. If the gameplay is good, then the cut-scenes don't really add much to it. They're nice, and I like them, but they're not what makes the game good, just as interactivity can not make a narrative good. That's why I said that narrative and gameplay are like oil and water. You can have a game with both, but one does not really help the other much.
For example, the article says "With videogames, the audience takes the teller's baton and continues to tell the story... This way, the game player enjoys the storyteller's thrill, adapting the narrative to his or her satisfaction, while also being the audience for the narrative elements that the game developer provides... We have never had a storytelling medium like video games... Game playing represents the hybrid of both aspects of storytelling, where the audience is empowered to self-propagate the storytelling creation and enjoyment. This stimulates their own creativity and gives them the experience of controlling their destiny... But where does that take us? Video games, as narratives, are not getting better". Right, that's because a narrative is not enhanced by interactivity, it is only paused by it. Either the game makers are telling a story with the gamer watching, or the gamer is trying to complete a challenge while the story is paused.
The exception to this are games that have no real "story", but where the system one masters inside the game is rich enough, interesting enough, complex enough, and similar enough to a real-world system (rather than to a computer simulation of a few entities and a few parameters in a simple environment), where the gamer-generated story IS the story. All that the game-makers want to communicate is stuff that can be "learned" from figuring out the "system" where the game is set. This is the case with Sim City, The Sims, The Movies, and all the Sim Something / Something Tycoon games. These games don't tell a story, they don't narrate, they just illustrate. THAT is the potential that video games ought to explore. Not TELLING stories, but SHOWING stories. Not narrating, not going from beginning to end, but teaching/showing/expressing/illustrating something just through the challenge the gamer must complete, just through the world/system/environment/entities the gamer must learn to influence. This is very different from telling a story. It is almost the opposite of narrative. This is not something a writer can help you with. This kind of art - expressing something about the world and human nature by illustrating it through an open-ended interactive experience - is a whole new kind of art.
It is like a teacher that gives his students an assignment where the assignment does not lay out the things to be learned, but the teacher knows that, while completing the assignment, the students will need to expose themselves to certain ideas, skills, techniques, or bits of knowledge. It's open ended and simple but contains, hidden in it, the requirement to see / learn / realize / think about something. THAT is the future of videogames. And it is NOT telling a story or trying to be a book or movie.
I agree.
The relationship between interactivity and storytelling is a tricky one. Anyone should be able to recognize that you don't need a "plot" in order to enjoy a video game. However, like you pointed out, a gamer generates their own story. The more freedom the gamer has within the game, the more interesting a story can be generated. Ironically, games which progress "on rails" through a fairly strict storyline are those that give the gamer the least freedom to generate a story.
I wrote the following paper about this:
http://airshowfan.com/researchvideogames.html
(It got published in a research journal, so I do think it's pretty good)
There are basically two kinds of story in a video game: the synchronic and the diachronic. The synchronic story is the one made up by the actions of the player (like "the storyline of the last game of chess you played or the last basketball match you watched" as a previous poster said). The diachronic story is made up of the back-story, of cut-scenes, and of in-game events that are outside of your control (such as a non-player character saying/doing something, or the environment changing spontaneously like when explosions or enemies are triggered when you go to a certain area).
The diachronic stories can have branches. If the player takes certain actions, this could trigger the next bit of diachronic story to play "Path A", while other actions on the part of the player can cause the game to go through diachronic "Path B" instead. So the things that happen in the synchronic story can push the diachronic story in one of a few pre-written directions.
However, I think it's important to realize that these two kinds of story are fundamentally incompatible. The synchronic story is mostly about the physical things you do inside the physical world of the game. You may make some choices from a menu about what to say, about whether you think the characters should do A or B, etc, but all that this really decides is whether you want to take on challenge A or challenge B. Challenges A abnd B are "gameplay", where the synchronic story happens, where you move around and do battle and avoid or face dangers and collect items and interact with your environment. This kind of thing - which is what videogames are really about - is fundamentally different from the choices a good story is about. Collecting items and interacting with your environment and with the entities in it is very different from the emotional, intellectual events that happen in a story, that happen when personalities interact.
In that sense, the "story-telling" potential of a video game is no less limited than that of a movie or TV. When you're playing, you're worried about completing simple tasks, not about the kinds of factors that make a good book / movie / TV show interesting. Even if the cut-scenes are really great and make you really relate to the characters, this is not made any stronger by the fact you just had to complete a simple task. It's like a movie or book or TV show where you're in charge of making sure the action sequences, "sneaking around" scenes, and puzzle-solving parts are successful, but where the REAL plot is still outside your control.
If it because of this fundamental difference, between the complexity of the people / interactions / decisions / emotions that make good stories and the simplicity of interactive gameplay, that I think video-games cannot tell stories any better than a book or movie. They can be AS good, but the interactive parts would not make a story great if the story is not great to begin with (in which case the interactive parts almost just get in the way).
Of course I enjoy vidoegames with a good story. It's cool to think that you're doing what you're doing to save the world, to explore an alien environment, to combat an evil and powerful enemy, etc, rather than to just out-trick a computer. Stories make most videogames more fun - a videogame is usually better for having
Now you might notice a very small amount of gravity, since an object closer to the earth will have a little bit more gravity that an object further away, so an object released inside the craft may slowly fall towards the earth, or slowly rise. It won't hold you to the floor.
Yes, those are called tidal effects. It's why we have tides - the fact that some of the earth is closer to the moon and some is farther away means that some of the water gets pulled on more strongly, so the water in the oceans "stretches" and forms two bulges - one right "under" the moon and one diametrically opposite. And the same for the sun, but less. So, yeah, if you are "under" the center of gravity of the ship (between that CG and the earth), you will "fall" just a bit, and if you are "above" the CG, you'll rise just a bit. I'm too lazy to do the claculations right now, but I'm fairly sure that, unless you are orbiting a black hole as "low" as you can, it's not noticeable.