Aerothorn on 9/8/2009 at 16:49
Bleh, I designed a course with that title before them, they're just copying me:mad:
Though in my mind, some points are lost for citing Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto and Bioshock as the heights of story/gameplay meshing successfully.
My second (40-page!) paper on the subject will be ready to post as soon as I can fix a graph in it.
Volitions Advocate on 9/8/2009 at 16:56
I think we're beginning to strike a balance in some titles. As discussed in the article.
Personally I think the bigger hurdle (or maybe its just the same size) is public and/or societal acceptance of video games being any kind of artform in the narrative perspective. With people like Jack Thompson and the bureaucrats in Germany convincing people that video games are for fat kids and social outcasts that sit at home in moms basement and never get any sun and are prone to violence etc etc. We're going to have a tough time getting video games up on the legitimacy wagon.
Volitions Advocate on 9/8/2009 at 16:58
Quote Posted by Aerothorn
Though in my mind, some points are lost for citing Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto and Bioshock as the heights of story/gameplay meshing successfully.
Especially because they were talking about how developers push the story by sacrificing gameplay. I figured they'd be talking about the MGS series, which is a fair enough observation, but by citing FF7 as the game that did it right..... they kind of lost my attention at that point.
Papy on 9/8/2009 at 17:37
Quote Posted by Volitions Advocate
Personally I think the bigger hurdle (or maybe its just the same size) is public and/or societal acceptance of video games being any kind of artform in the narrative perspective.
I think when at least some video games will truly have value as an art form, then there will a "public/societal acceptance". Unfortunately, for now, even the best narrative in video games lack the necessary depth to be considered in any other ways than light an inconsequential entertainment. Let's be honest, video games are not made for the 50 years old intellectual.
Renzatic on 9/8/2009 at 23:37
Quote:
Star Ocean: The Last Hope producer Yoshinori Yamagishi thinks interactivity is standing in the way of video games becoming an effective storytelling medium.
I think this guy would do better working in another medium. Interactivity is the reason why games are games. Without it, what do you have? A realtime rendered movie.
If you were to ask me, I'd say the one biggest hurdle towards making games truly interactive storylike experiences is AI. Right now the height of ingame conversation systems consist of brake to another secreen and a set of 3-4 choices. Interesting to an extent, but there's still an interrupt in the gameplay, and it's far too limited for truly evolving interactive storytelling. Now imagine if you could actually talk to a character in a game and have them respond properly?
For example, it could be set up so that NPC A has X type personality, with Y goals, who works for Z. If you want to get information out of them, you actually have to coerce them for it vocally. They could respond in kind to any off the wall remark you have to say, and might like you or hate you depending on how smoothly you handle the conversation. If you expand the AI enough, make it complicated enough, you'd have a much better system that doesn't take you out of the gameplay in place that'd make for far more interesting stories. This, for me, would be the future of any adventure or RPG.
The only problem with this is, of course, we're years and years and YEARS away from AI even remotely that sophisticated. Still, we do have enough tech available to begin work towards, or at least fake, something similar fairly decently. Even a character with a relatively small set of canned lines who could fire them off based on certain vocal cues would be more involving than what we're doing now. I'd like to see more work put into something like this.
gunsmoke on 9/8/2009 at 23:41
Quote Posted by Renzatic
I think this guy would do better working in another medium. Interactivity is the reason why games are games. Without it, what do you have? A realtime rendered movie.
<3 U. Couldn't say it better myself.
Tonamel on 10/8/2009 at 00:20
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Interactivity is the reason why games are games.
Yes, but that's
also the reason it's more difficult to tell a compelling story in the medium. Books/movies/etc are built around a tightly controlled cycle of tension and release. With games, the director has to relinquish control of many aspects of the narrative to the player. Pacing on a micro level gets pretty much thrown out the window, and on a macro level it's a crap shoot since the player might decide they don't want to go to the next zone yet for whatever reason. Fancier AI might make individual conversations more interesting, but it's not going to solve the pacing issue.
I'm not saying it's impossible to tell a good story in a game, but it is much harder.
Chade on 10/8/2009 at 00:49
Quote Posted by Tonamel
on a macro level it's a crap shoot since the player might decide they don't want to go to the next zone yet for whatever reason. Fancier AI might make individual conversations more interesting, but it's not going to solve the pacing issue.
Or other issues ... I think there will be some fundamental differences between the sort of stories that get told well in games.
I've played Masq recently. It's not mechanically interesting, but it does do a decent job of using multiple choice to give the player some power over the story. It has a decent (and conventional) story, but you can clearly see instances where the "game" and the "conventional story" hamstring each other.
For instance, Masq let's you cheat on your wife. It turns out that it is very difficult to do this without your wife finding out, but this is not obvious at the time you make the initial decision to cheat or not. After some experimentation, I am pretty sure that your efforts to deceive your wife will always eventually fail. It seems pretty clear to me that the author did not want to allow the player to cheat his wife and get away with it, and I think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to try and accomplish,
however:
After cheating, the cheatee will try to inform your wife. Because this is a game and the player should have agency, the player is present in each of these scenarios, and has the power to successfully stop his wife from finding out - if he is willing to be a big enough prick. But because this is a story, it sucks that the player is allowed to cheat on his wife and then be a big enough prick to get away with it.
So how did the game designer deal with this? If you successfully navigate to the nominal end of the game without your wife finding out, then a couple of days after the conclusion of the story your wife will find out anyway while she is at work. It is an arbitrary and unsatisfying way of resolving things.If you were the game designer, what would you have done? I don't like the idea of a story that allows me to "beat" the primary message. But I also don't like the idea of a game where the player is denied agency (of course the player can reasonably guesss that cheating will have negative consequences, but the actual way in which this plays out is delayed and hidden from the player). A better structure for a game would be to unavoidably punish the cheating player straight away, and then let him overcome those consequences over the rest of the game.
(On a completely different note, I was watching a "faeries" dvd we borrowed for my daughter yesterday ... some faries and a "busy bumbling bee" were served "tricky treats". Each actor "randomly" selected a treat to eat. The faeries just happened to choose treats which made them jump and dance, while the bumbling bee ate a treat which made him burp. How convienient for the writers of the program!)
