Queue on 10/6/2010 at 12:26
Quote Posted by Sulphur
...the most recent example of this being taken to the extremes is that ridiculous 'Pandora withdrawal' syndrome that some people have after watching Avatar.
But it was
in 3D!
Now if they want to do something interesting, make a 3D video game.
Aw shit... :o
TRADEMARKED... COPYRIGHTED... PATENTED!!
(You do realize I just single handedly destroyed any notion of there ever being a 3D video game with this post. I CANZ SUEZ YA, BEOTCH! Tee hee.)
catbarf on 10/6/2010 at 12:42
I had the beta stereoscopic drivers for my nVidia card a while back- getting pounced by a Hunter is far more terrifying when it's leaping at your face. The only problem was that it killed performance.
Poetic thief on 10/6/2010 at 17:01
I must say I am pleasantly surprised at how this thread developed :cheeky:. Little Flower and demagogue brought up some really good points that I would love to respond to.
But let me adress this:
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Those were just examples. Based on Poetic's statements, one wonders how he would engage in play if he lived in a time when computer games weren't available. Presumably he dislikes all board and card games, as well as all games of physical skill.
"Chess sucks... it plays like a game!"
If I lived in a time when computers weren't available, those games would fill the same role for me. I vividly remember making up stories out of the chess pieces and the face cards when I was a kid. As a matter of fact, I used to call my face card game "King Story" and it even had a
theme song which my sister composed for me. :p
It boils down to what Koki said so succinctly. Simply going through the motions of a game's mechanical rules in order to win isn't enough of a motivational goal. but if I can construct some kind of story around those barebones mechanics, it provides more of an incentive, and I can get really caught up in it. I love real life chess, by the way, and I've always played it as a tactical war simulator where I use my imagination a great deal.
Poetic thief on 10/6/2010 at 17:21
Wow, what LittleFlower just said about chess is absolutely spot on. I totally understand what he meant by that.
Quote Posted by LittleFlower
Chess is all about my decisions. Implementing them via my fingers to actual moves is trivial. The game is not about how fast I can move pieces around. (Not even when playing Blitz).
Now let me play StreetFighter. It will take days or weeks before the link between my brain, via the control buttons, goes into my actions of attacking, blocking and using combos. Or whatever it's called. The button mashing. The quick reflexes. Not fun.
Relating to what I just told Zylonbane:
With chess, I can easily construct some story about my castle being under attack, and me giving out tactical advice to the king which is immediately carried out on the battle field. Like Littleflower said, it's a test of my decision-making, not a test of how well I can execute the mechanical rules of the game. Chess therefore doesn't count as a "gamey game" according to my criteria.
Demetros on 10/6/2010 at 18:00
I can make up a story for Pac-Man too. It's about these guy stuck in a haunted house. All these ghosts are chasing him... But, by the power of Cthulhu's pellet-munchies, these ghosts can be repelled! Sure, you have to lose your sanity in order to survive to the 255th level, but hey, you gotta stay alive, right?
(
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1007-Mario-Luigi-Bowsers-Inside-Story) Also, Mario has a plot. A good plot.
(Start at 1:28)
Bluegrime on 10/6/2010 at 18:26
I am actually the opposite of the OP on this matter. I find simple games to be almost meditative, while complicated attempts to simulate real life bore me to no end. I don't play video games to imitate stuff I could be doing in real life, I play them because my opportunities to kill thousands of faceless enemies in the spanse of a couple hours are currently limited by the low population density around where I live.
For example, I love Serious Sam. It is very basic. You start on one side of Egypt and kill your way to the final boss. The plot is totally optional, there are no cut scenes, and the only things you see moving are things you need to throw some rockets at. But that is exactly why I love it. Because that is an untenable goal for me in real life.
Conversely, "deep" games like Mass Effect or Bioware RPGs just don't cut it for me. I don't care how cool a character model you slap on something, if you have to use branching dialogue to deal with them then your RPG has turned into a linear conversation simulator. Its even worse when you get "tragic" characters involved.. If you have to deal with those, then your RPG has turned into nothing but a "listen to other people bitch about their lives" simulator. Complete with having your time wasted on listening to/dealing with these problems, which I could be doing in real life if I wanted to. Except if I did that in real life, I would have actually helped an actual person, rather then spend my time fixing Tragic Henchmen A's childhood with dialogue branches and mouse clicks.
But I did like Arcanum. It not only gave me the option to murder mouthy NPCs, but frequently gave you the chance to start fighting them in the dialogue options.. Can't beat that. :thumb:
MorbusG on 10/6/2010 at 19:25
Quote Posted by Bluegrime
if you have to use branching dialogue to deal with them then your RPG has turned into a linear conversation simulator.
Where did the parser games vanish, I wonder.
demagogue on 10/6/2010 at 21:21
The (text only) Interactive Fiction community is still chugging along, but it's long been an invisible, underground scene anymore. I can't see any commercial game touching it. But quietly down in the trenches they've done some pretty innovative stuff IMO and I personally would be interested to see some parser mechanics in FPS. It would take some thought to do it well and sure to incite gamer-rage (you'd need to advertise it as Esther-like to cull its audience from the start), but it's a whole untapped field of possibility.
I like zen gaming too. I used to love Death Worm, just eating camels and shit, not after any goal, but just caught up in the flow. (I'm upset that it won't run on Vista or Win7!) Also picking fights in Transcendence, good flight sims (IL2), Knytt missions, and Diablo 2 back in the day. I still feel that this is a different thing from being annoyed by gamey mechanics, but I'd have to think about what, if any, actual distinction there is there. But it's true I have to be in a zen kind of mood to do them, which differs from the mood I'm in when I want to take on a "complex" game. So two distinctions there for me, complex vs. zen gaming, and even for "simple" games, ones that can put me in a zen flow and ones that end up pushing me away.
Demetros on 10/6/2010 at 21:38
Shin Megami Tensei DEVIL SURVIVOR does have branching dialogue and characters that you can relate to, but otherwise it's pretty unrealistic. What with the whole demons taking over Shibuya thing, yeah?
Can't a game be unrealistic but compelling at the same time?
Well, I suppose it comes down to what you're in the mood for.
Sulphur on 10/6/2010 at 21:49
Quote Posted by Demetros
Can't a game be unrealistic but compelling at the same time?
That's pretty much any game you care to name really, personally compelling or not.
@dema: Parser mechanics in an FPS would be... tricky, to say the least. FPSes are actiony by nature, and text input isn't. In reconciling those two fundamental differences, your game would need a very real purpose for such a thing - like talking to an AI, for instance. Though of course a rudimentary dialogue tree system would suffice for that; more transparent, but it wouldn't be as immersive. Or maybe you could use it in something like a hybrid first person adventure game.
At any rate, it's a very intriguing idea, but the use of it and the audience for such a thing seems to be limited. Didn't Space Rangers or something segue multiple game modes whilst you were playing it, with one of them being a rudimentary sort of text adventure? I ought to find that game and play it, someday.
