What is "consolisation" and why does it exist? Or Simulated Skill v Player Skill - by SubJeff
Koki on 12/2/2011 at 07:15
The reason why "emotional state" responses became so popular is the increasing amounts of voice acting in games.
With the traditional style of What You Read is What You Get voice acting will only lead to boredom and redundancy. First you're going to read all of your character's possible answers, then you will pick the one you want and... then you will have to wait while your character says the text you read just second ago*.
With no voice acting this is all fine and dandy, even if your picked answer appears on the screen you quickly learn to not read it and just focus on the NPC's response. Hell, after a while of Fallout playing I even skipped reading the NPC responses and just focused on my own; after all what the NPC says changes little, it's what I can say that matters.
So if it's inevitable to put voice acting everyfuckingwhere in video game dialogues, I'm all for "emotional states". Then again the only game I played which actually used them was Mass Effect and I didn't play it for long, so who knows, maybe they completely fucked it up.
* - And let's not forget, this is the "TV" voice acting - slow, methodical, and clear.
Thirith on 12/2/2011 at 11:56
Quote Posted by Koki
* - And let's not forget, this is the "TV" voice acting - slow, methodical, and clear.
On that topic, I dearly wish that RPGs and games in general would experiment more with 'messier' voice acting - since you always get one line after another, without any overlaps, it all feels way too polite and genteel, especially when what is being said is *not* polite. It tends to make everything feel like a bad school play or drama from the olden days. Give us overlaps, give us more naturalistic dialogues! I'm not saying that every game should go for that sort of style, but more games should *try* it.
faetal on 12/2/2011 at 14:30
I agree with Koki that the "dialogue visible" options works better without voice acting, because it does pose invisible limitations on the amount of dialogue events which will be available in the game. I think why VTM:B worked so well was precisely for this reason with the whole silent protagonist thing.
I personally find the emotional stance style less satisfying because regardless of how well it accommodates itself as a gameplay dynamic, I find it removes the player from the dialogue by a degree. As mentioned above, I think that if the player is going to be reading the dialogue choices before deciding which to use, this will drive more complexity into the dialogue as a design decision because the wording and content of the dialogue is the gaming substrate. If you choose an opaque category, there is no pressure to make the dialogue do anything other than deliver the chosen tone, so ambiguity, ambivalence, sarcasm, irony, feints, manipulation etc.. are no longer a gameplay element in the dialogue. Sure, not all games using the dialogue first option make use of this, but it's easy to see the difference in how either system would influece the designer's approach to the actual dialogue.
Papy on 16/2/2011 at 15:46
Quote Posted by Sulphur
But if SS2's systems weren't broken, why fix them in Bioshock?
If you mean that neither SS2 nor BioShock had "broken" systems, then I agree. If you also mean that the reasons for the change between SS2 and BioShock was a different targeted audience, then I also agree. Where I disagree is when your explanation for those difference is because of the age of the targeted audience. A 15 years old has pretty much reach his peak intelligence and peak aptitude for patience and intellectual efforts. He lacks a lot of knowledge and global understanding, but neither SS2 nor Thief relied on the player's "life experience" to understand the presented situation. There are always exceptions, but I believe most 13 years old could play and appreciate SS2 the same way most adult could.
To me "consolitis" is more about all games following the same current models rather than any particular characteristics. With computers, we always had a broad range of games, from the very dumb almost press forward kind of games, to games demanding a lot of learning and a lot of thinking to play them. Consoles, on the other hand, were more or less always on following the formulas that were the most popular at the moment. Of course, there is a general trend because of limitations and general attitude, but I think those are relatively minor points.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Whether you like the Rescue/Harvest system and what it means to you enters the realm of subjectivity. So, subjectively: I couldn't identify/relate with the Little Sisters because they had no personality and looked like wax dolls and not actual children, so saving them didn't have much of an impact on me. The same goes for Tenenbaum because she gets almost no character development either apart from those audio logs, and she never quite seemed trustworthy in the game up till the end; hell you don't even get to see her face when you make it to the safe house.
I didn't like the rescue/harvest system at all. I hate black and white choices, particularly when they are forced. I also agree that Tenenbaum in the Safe House was badly done. But overall I did sense emotions from both little sisters and Tenenbaum. That's probably where voice acting changes everything. I compared BioShock in English and French and I ended up playing the game in French because the voice acting was much more natural than the English version. It was like Portal. GLaDOS voice acting was much better in French than in English. To use another example, I compared Shrek in English, French and Spanish, and I found that the difference in voice acting made an enormous impact on how I perceived the personalities of each character.
I also think Tenenbaum never seemed trustworthy and never really was my ally, but it seemed coherent to me. One thing is for sure, the tone of her voice change a lot during the course of the game, it definitively went from cold to mellow. Also, audio logs did show significant character development toward little sisters and the whole situation. Because of that, I judged her character as believable and somewhat likable, or at least interesting, so that's why I think my actions had meaning.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
The Iron Man argument we've had before and elsewhere, and I don't want to go over that again. Suffice to say the majority of PC gamers don't view game challenge the same as you do. I'm fine with quick saves and quick loads and the ability to choose a difficulty level if you want to; these options are not forced on you, and choices you make as a player to use or not to at the end of the day.
I agree, but my point is that you can't have it both ways. You can't use something which imply a variation in challenge as a meaningful consequence if the game is not truly based on challenge in the first place. This is particularly true when almost nothing bring the player to identify himself with his character, because in that case cosmetic changes won't matter to the player. That's why I think BioShock's approach to focus consequences on NPC made an overall better "experience" than SS2 approach to base consequences on gameplay limitations. I'm not saying this is true for everyone, but I do think people who will care about what happens to their own character are a minority.
Quote Posted by Briareos H
...quest that relied solely on player initiative...
That would be great... but I have a question : how many people do you think will ever be able to show that kind of initiative?
Quote Posted by Eldron
I think bioshock succeeded for some reasons, the world of rapture, and it's success in marketing and hitting just at the right moment, people can't critique the lack of gameplay they never knew existed anyway.
ss2 didn't succeed as much because it never had the marketing and back then the market wasn't as big as it was when bioshock hit.
I'm what you could call an elitist old school bastard who despise most modern games, who most of the time will think good critics imply an uninteresting games, who hate marketing and who knew full well what SS2 was. Yet, I think BioShock was overall a more interesting game than SS2. How do you explain that?
Quote Posted by Thirith
On that topic, I dearly wish that RPGs and games in general would experiment more with 'messier' voice acting - since you always get one line after another, without any overlaps, it all feels way too polite and genteel, especially when what is being said is *not* polite. It tends to make everything feel like a bad school play or drama from the olden days. Give us overlaps, give us more naturalistic dialogues! I'm not saying that every game should go for that sort of style, but more games should *try* it.
Unless the game tries something like real-time dialogues, which I don't think was ever done, I don't see how this can be achieved.
Thirith on 16/2/2011 at 16:21
Quote Posted by Papy
Unless the game tries something like real-time dialogues, which I don't think was ever done, I don't see how this can be achieved.
True for player-chosen dialogue lines, but in so many of the cRPGs of the last couple of years there's a lot of exchanges that happen without player input - party member banter, even follow-up lines by the PC where there's little point in having the player choose a response. For those, doing overlapping (or just generally more naturalistic, less declamatory) dialogue would definitely be possible. Instead it all tends to sound like "Exposition, exposition!" - beat - "Exposition, exposition, exposition?" - beat - "Exposition." (The heavy reliance on exposition is another bugbear I have with lots of game dialogue, but none of this really touches on the topic at hand.)
ZylonBane on 16/2/2011 at 18:41
Quote Posted by Papy
That would be great... but I have a question : how many people do you think will ever be able to show that kind of initiative?
Looks like someone hasn't heard of this "Minecraft" thing.
Sulphur on 16/2/2011 at 21:01
Quote Posted by Papy
Where I disagree is when your explanation for those difference is because of the age of the targeted audience. A 15 years old has pretty much reach his peak intelligence and peak aptitude for patience and intellectual efforts. He lacks a lot of knowledge and global understanding, but neither SS2 nor Thief relied on the player's "life experience" to understand the presented situation. There are always exceptions, but I believe most 13 years old could play and appreciate SS2 the same way most adult could.
If you remove age from the targeted audience, what else remains to account for the difference between SS2's audience and the audience for a game with dumbed-down systems a la Bioshock? Are we saying that most people in general aren't smart enough to get SS2's brand of complexity? If that's the case, then by extension we're saying that most 13/15/whatever-year-olds in general aren't smart enough to get it either.
There are other things about that paragraph I disagree with. A 13-15 year old certainly isn't at his mental peak for intelligence or intellectual efforts, because I remember myself as a 15-year old was all about sitting at a window in the school bus and squirting invisible ink at girls walking on the pavement outside as we drove past.
As a 15-year old, I was also unable to fathom politics and legal argumentation and differential calculus, much less have an interest for them. Sure, I could understand the context, and have a vague blurry outline of what was supposed to be going on, but a lot of the nuances would have slipped me by (and in the case of differential calculus, did).
Quote:
To me "consolitis" is more about all games following the same current models rather than any particular characteristics. With computers, we always had a broad range of games, from the very dumb almost press forward kind of games, to games demanding a lot of learning and a lot of thinking to play them. Consoles, on the other hand, were more or less always on following the formulas that were the most popular at the moment. Of course, there is a general trend because of limitations and general attitude, but I think those are relatively minor points.
Oh, I don't think so. Bioshock as a game afflicted with consolitis has relatively simpler/easier gameplay systems than SS2. There's no reason to do this except to appeal to a broader range of people. Bioshock's formula is based on SS2's through and through, but simplified into much broader accessibility; and if consolitis were indeed where a game just follows the general trend, then Bioshock should have dropped any pretense of an Objectivist pretext because clearly most games in general don't give a toss about deep stories or incorporating Randian overtures into their narrative.
Quote:
I didn't like the rescue/harvest system at all. I hate black and white choices, particularly when they are forced. I also agree that Tenenbaum in the Safe House was badly done. But overall I did sense emotions from both little sisters and Tenenbaum. That's probably where voice acting changes everything. I compared BioShock in English and French and I ended up playing the game in French because the voice acting was much more natural than the English version. It was like Portal. GLaDOS voice acting was much better in French than in English. To use another example, I compared Shrek in English, French and Spanish, and I found that the difference in voice acting made an enormous impact on how I perceived the personalities of each character.
I also think Tenenbaum never seemed trustworthy and never really was my ally, but it seemed coherent to me. One thing is for sure, the tone of her voice change a lot during the course of the game, it definitively went from cold to mellow. Also, audio logs did show significant character development toward little sisters and the whole situation. Because of that, I judged her character as believable and somewhat likable, or at least interesting, so that's why I think my actions had meaning.
Fair enough. Like I said, it's subjective, so it's good that it worked for you. I didn't get much out of Tenenbaum as a person. Sure, her tone changed, but that wasn't enough for me. She's the archetypal repentant scientist, and never quite broke out of that stereotype as far as I was concerned. Maybe the fact that she was the game's Voice of God after the golf club scene made her grate even more as a character for me, because right then she embodied the game's disastrous inability to recognise its own point.
Bakerman on 17/2/2011 at 00:15
Quote Posted by Sulphur
I remember myself as a 15-year old was all about sitting at a window in the school bus and squirting invisible ink at girls walking on the pavement outside as we drove past.
As a 15-year old, I was also unable to fathom politics and legal argumentation and differential calculus, much less have an interest for them. Sure, I could understand the context, and have a vague blurry outline of what was supposed to be going on, but a lot of the nuances would have slipped me by (and in the case of differential calculus, did).
I rather think these are cases of maturity, not intelligence. I would understand Papy to have meant intelligence as the capacity to understand problems and solve them, recognise patterns, etc. Maybe even to understand somewhat of human beings and their motivations (because, however alien characters are in games, they're all human inside), even instinctively rather than analytically. I think a 15-year-old has all these traits, and while many lack sheer knowledge of the world to apply that intelligence in meaningful ways (e.g., through differential calculus), the potential is there.
Where I disagree with Papy, though, is that some games rely on maturity rather than (or in addition to) intelligence, which is where I think the typical 13-15 year old fails. It takes a certain level of maturity to enjoy a measured, slow-paced experience that requires thinking and initiative. While I do agree that many a 15 year old is
capable of understanding a game like that, I just don't think many would
enjoy it. It's kind of like wine... kids hate it (and I still do!), but as you age your taste changes, and though you haven't become more able to taste the wine, you just enjoy that flavour more.
Koki on 17/2/2011 at 07:51
Well I don't know if you covered that yet in your 20-page thesis, but when I tried to come back to Bioshock some time ago the thing which put me off the most was the insane amount of hand-holding. Vita-chambers are just one aspect of it, but stuff like Press SPACE to STAND UP popping out every time I crouch for more than three seconds, or the ever-popular Search CONTAINERS for LOOT or the infamous quest compass or the fact that every main-quest specific item shines like the sun, or how the game forces you to use the plasmid it wants whenever it wants during the tutorial, which is entire Medical, etc. Do note, that was with all the help/tutorial turned off in the options menu.
Interface and gameplay complication aside, it's a fact that Bioshock treats the player like a fucking moron while System Shock 2 does not. How's that for consolization
Sulphur on 17/2/2011 at 08:05
Uh, try page 1?
@Bakerman: Good points. I understand that most intelligence doesn't require context, but would most 13-year olds really get calculus if it's taught to them at that age? Sure, many would get the formulae if their capacity to memorise is good (so - a vague, blurry outline), but would they understand it, the theory of it?
Maturity and patience are certainly part of the equation. There are things that teenagers like, and certain things that wouldn't do anything for them. Bioshock's musings on a free market utopia would likely pass most teenagers by. Thief's commentary on religions as well. Most teenagers have little patience for the inordinately complex, so while Doom found a massive audience, it isn't surprising that SS1 didn't. And so on.
