Sulphur on 10/12/2010 at 16:29

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Hahaha, what a clusterfuck this thread has become.

Wormrat, no one is saying your opinion is wrong - it's an opinion after all. Hell, I'd probably mostly agree with you if I knew which parts of the game you didn't like - specifically, the skip work any time and lose, the parts where routes are blocked off (no going back home and just giving up, for instance) are issues I have.

They don't undermine the final emotional response, though. Unless you already knew that 95% of the options led to failure before playing. So, once again, high-level's good, but since we mostly agree, what specific scenarios didn't work for you, and what happened in the end?

Sulphur on 11/12/2010 at 07:27

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Good points, Wormrat. I understand that the game rail roaded you in a sense by not allowing for the style of play that you wanted.

I also agree that the things that don't make sense, well, don't.

Stepping aside from the writing, of which there isn't much (each day is only a vignette), I think your expectations of characterisation are misplaced. There isn't any character development because your wife, kid, whomever are blank slates for you to project onto and populate with your own imagination. The game is only five minutes long after all; to expect it to do any meaningful character development means the game would have to be much, much longer.

I was slightly shocked when the wife killed herself, but not saddened. However, when my kid asked, 'Where's mommy?' I couldn't bring myself to carry her to the bathroom because even though it's a game, I wouldn't wish that sight on a child, so we went to the park instead of to work.

And maybe that action prevented me from finding a cure; life is simply as random as that sometimes, which I think is the point.

So yeah, there are infuriating design gaffes when it comes to certain things like common sense and play style, criticisms of which are valid. The game didn't cater to your expected decision tree for realism, which I can appreciate. But not everyone went your route, nor did they need to, so they don't have the same expectations of the game. Doesn't make their experience invalid, though. It's an experience that asks you to reflect on what you would do at the end of the world, nothing more.

One last thing: why were you expecting a moral at the end?

Papy on 11/12/2010 at 17:24

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You are wrong. It takes a lot of talent to communicate an emotion through mere words. Very few people are able to do it effectively. It's easier to do with a film because of our natural empathy based on non verbal communication, but even then, not a lot of people are able to do it.

The main problem is we always interpret words and even non-verbal communication through our own context. It means that in order communicate effectively, you have to be aware of who is the one listening to you or, at least, how he is interpreting what you are saying so you can adjust your own communication. If you only say what comes to your mind without thnking about the ones who are listening, if you have no feedback, chances are that very few people will understand you.



You fail to understand what I was saying because your answer makes no sense at all. I was not talking about the mechanics of the game, I was talking about its meaning. It has nothing to do with input or output.



We're done? Why? Because you take words I said within a particular context and try to apply them to another completely different subject? To be honest, I generally despise assholes who try this kind of manipulation in order to win an Internet argument when they have nothing else to say.

OK. Once again, One Chance was not about thinking. It was not about winning and it was not about playing a character. Comparing One Chance to the Nameless mod is like comparing a book on C++ with a novel. It makes absolutely no sense. One Chance was about communicating an emotion. It was exactly like the painting analogy I gave you. All your arguments are idiotic. You completely miss the point.

It's sad you were not able to understand the game, but hey! No one has the intelligence to understand everything.

june gloom on 11/12/2010 at 22:32

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holy god shut up already

BlackCapedManX on 13/12/2010 at 06:23

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Not that it's strictly related to the OT, but at this point, thread thoroughly driven into the ground and may as well be buried, well, whatever.



This idea, unfortunately, is not even remotely true. Anyone who's had an argument with a significant other, watched political debate or participated in an online forum knows this through experience. You can say something all as clearly and persistently as you want, but if someone fundamentally disagrees, even if their reasons are stupid or inane, it's very infrequent that you'll be able to get them to understand what you're communicating. Most people understand things not by observing them objectively, but by comparing them to their own experiences (there's an old phrase "you can't write literature in a vacuum," well the same is true for any degree of communication.) Hence often the most effective ways at getting someone to understand or learn something new is to have them somehow invested in the learning of the idea.

For example, no matter what I said or how I presented or conveyed myself, it'd been nearly impossible to get my family of conservative engineers to appreciate my desire to be an artist, or more to the point, the merits of art in general. It's taken most of the four years I was in school for art for (in particular) my parents to start to acclimate to the idea of what the art world is about, and, to my tremendous frustration, it's had nothing to do with what I've said. Rather, being forced to sit and deal with my decisions, my parents have had to come to renewed realizations about art on their own terms, had to invest their own time into trying to understand what I was doing, and had to grapple the thing from a perspective I could never have presented for them (especially coming from a fundamentally different world view.)

This dichotomy, the schism between presentation and understanding, and hinging around interaction and participation, has been a big thing for (more socially minded) artists lately. A number of established artists and growing artists are dealing with concerns to do with pedagogy, and in strongly investigating what kinds of practices are effective in teaching (teaching being in many ways a very distilled kind of communication, because there's usually a pretty strong feedback to whether or not you've been successful.) Rirkrit Tiravanija started the trend of "relational aesthetics," which forgoes the typical distancing between artist/artwork and the audience, by creating pieces (usually consisting of cooking food) where the "art" is the interaction with an audience, and wouldn't exist without someone participating. Take, otherwise, the much vaunted 4:33 by John Cage. Cage could have sat down and said "there is music everywhere, just listen to the sounds that are around you," and no one would've paid a damn bit of attention. Instead he forced people to grapple with something, to put their own stake in their experience and generate their own conclusions, by literally saying/doing/making nothing, and for it has become a massive critical success.

Especially in recent history, people have become increasingly skeptical, and merely telling them things often doesn't convince them (I remember a lecture once where someone showed the first cleaning product to do an add campaign saying, without qualification "our product cleans better," and it was a runaway success. Now people hear that everywhere and know not to believe it.) The means to convey understanding have become increasingly complex, increasingly circuitous, and indeed often the more successful way to bring someone to terms with something is to hand them the brush and have them figure it out form themselves.