Narrative, Plot And Aimlessness In Game Design 140
Logic Bomb writes: "Feed is running a very well-written essay by Steven Johnson on game design that includes an interview with the designer of Oni. Johnson has some thought-provoking comments on narrative, navigation, and cheat sheets. Lots of room for discussion here: what balance do you like best between plot and action (i.e. Metal Gear Solid versus Quake)? Are cheat sheets just part of the game, or does needing one show bad game design? Anyone have comments on the system used by Oni discussed in the article?"
Equally interesting to me is this other Feed interview with Warren Spector, designer of Deus Ex.
Re:Games, Work, and HOW-TOs (Score:1)
My personal view is that "work" is something you have a responsability of performing, for money or otherwise. Let me tell you a story:
My freshman year in college I got hooked on playing on a MUD with my friends (BatMud, if you know what I'm talking about, the equivalent of EQ, if you don't). In fact, I made a few friends over the net, and it was fun for a long time. At times, I spent time on my own just leveling up my character, a tedious enterprise, but it allowed me to play better with my friends. Then, winter break came, and I didn't play for a few weeks. When I came back, some of my friends had played non-stop, so they had levelled up so much that we couldn't party anymore. After that, I played regularly to avoid losing my other friends. And that's when it hit me: I had to play, even when I didn't feel like it, or I'd miss out on something. That's when I realized it had become 'work' for me.
I quit playing shortly thereafter.
I know a lot of you EQ-heads will find this hard to agree with, but, if you've ever been tired, wanting to go to sleep, but you still played (for any reason other than 'something really cool is going to happen if I play') then it's become work for you too. You put in your time, for the privilege of hanging out with people, getting recognition, doing, whatever it is you do (and of course, paying N $/month).
That's why I refuse to get hooked on a game anymore
(Although, I still miss Shadowkeep every once in a while)
metal gear (Score:1)
Re:Half Life (Score:1)
That's a rather odd analogy to make, since Helium is gaseous up until very low temperatures. You don't need a hot stove to evaporate it - you could evaporate liquid helium in your freezer.
Oni's story (Score:1)
Half-Life I don't think was that great. What they improved was the *presentation* of the story, but there is very little in there that wasn't in other games. You got briefings by walking up to scientists and talking to them, and occasionally having them perform tasks for you, but the whole plot wasn't very original.
Re:Hear hear (Score:1)
FF7 has a lot of full motion video, but it still managed to pack in a fair amount of gameplay. That was over 3 or 4 CD's, though. I think, in the future, they'll actually be able to cut this down by doing more rendering of the FMV sequences.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
Re:This is why I play thought and strategy games.. (Score:1)
Wow, was that a majot brain fart or what... unless it really did take you so long to learn the strategy to Starcraft/Warcraft. Let me summarize it for you: build lots of guys really fast (which ones and how will come to you after a few games) attack your nearest enemy and take him out, take over his resources, proceed until the victory screen pops up. Alternate startegy against computer players: game of attrition (just make sure you have enough units/resources left to get across any barriers, like space/water; a pathetic stalemate situation like that should _never_ be possible in a game that can last hours).
Don't get me wrong, Starcraft can be _hard_, especially when the computer starts sending guys you can barely put a scratch in after 10 seconds into the game, or when other players gang up on you, and it's definitely _fun_ (Starcraft being my favourite RTS game, (until Fallout:Tactics comes out anyway, which sort of falls into the genre)), but it's hardly chock full of _strategy_.
Re:aimlessness (Score:1)
The game is very much non-linear, in fact you can start the game, and try go to the last map (of course your character is so weak he'll probably die when someone looks at him the wrong way, but that's beside the point here, you _can_). Everything you do (good or bad) affects the gameplay (you can kill children, dig graves, be a prostitute (even star in a porno), but this will be reflected in your karma. Of course, there is no shortage of bad guys to associate with to help you though the game should you step into the dark side, but the game is definitely designed for 'good' players where you can collect some NPCs to fight with you. You can even kill key NPCs (well, there aren't any really key NPCs), do anything you want, do (or not do) any quests you happen to pick up, and actual plot is affected by your actions as well (limited dialogue, NPC stance and willingness to talk to you, etc). And, yes, the game ending is somewhat customized, summarizing the next few years' events after the game ends.
Well, I think it's a game worth checking out.
Re:Damit! now you wrecked the"story" for me ! (Score:1)
Ford Prefect
FPS Plots (Score:1)
Doom: Experiments involving dimensional portals go wrong, creating a rift between our world and Hell. Generic gun-toting, solitary marine goes on a rampage, killing lots of nasties, and travels into the other dimension to kill more nasties before killing the big evil overlord monster (a great big wobbly brain).
Quake: Experiments involving dimensional portals go wrong, creating a rift between our world and various undefined dimensions. Generic gun-toting, solitary marine goes on a rampage, killing lots of nasties, and travels into the other dimensions to kill more nasties before killing the big evil overlord monster (a great big wobbly jelly).
Half-Life: Experiments involving dimensional portals go wrong, creating a rift between our world and a mysterious alien world called Xen. Generic gun-toting, solitary theoretical physicist goes on a rampage, killing lots of nasties, and travels into Xen to kill yet more nasties before killing the big evil overlord monster (a great big wobbly foetus thing).
Back to the present day...
As for Oni - I discovered what the plot was before the game was released, thanks to the dialogue subtitles to the whole story being left in the datafiles for the demo. (Mwuhahaha!) Pretty good it was too - although I'm really looking forward to Halo's plot (is it connected with Marathon in some way, and if so, how?)
Bungie games (well, apart from Gnop and Minotaur) have good examples of well-written game plots. They're actually integrated into the games, and not just something told in cutscenes and similar. Might this be due in part to the level designers and programmers being a big part of the story-writing process?
Ford Prefect
I was too. :-) (Score:1)
No, it's just not quite what you want (Score:1)
Recently I've been playing Vagrant Story, which I love. Great RPG, nice plot/action balance.
I NEVER use the cheat sheet to figure out monsters and block puzzles. I SOMETIMES use it to figure out maps, because I hate getting lost. I ALWAYS use it to figure out weapon and armour classes because otherwise I'd be making my own lists. (Now let's see, was a Sallet better than an Armet again??)
With a complex enough game, it's fair to choose how you want to play.
Nostalgia or reality? Games of the past == better! (Score:1)
Maybe I'm just overly nostalgic, but I still consider many of the best games so far came during the golden age of the Commodore 64. Games like Wizball, Paradroid, The Last Ninja, Gunship, Red Storm Rising, Zak McKracken, Maniac Mansion, Agent USA, Parallax, Archon, Boulder Dash, Pirates!, The Guild of Thieves, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, ... Yee $DEITY, I could go on for hours.
Not to mention that most of the games on the 64, even the really crappy ones (like Rambo, which has got my alltime favourite tune, and Robocop 3, which has a most amazing intro-tune, but badly sucking gameplay), had better music than any of the games produced nowadays (except a few exceptions, where I seem to notice a strange pattern; the music in those highlights are made by musicians such as Jeroen Tel and other people who was active during the 64-era...)
Oni is horrible ! (Score:1)
Boring level design, uninteresting enemies, and the dreaded endless quest of finding consoles to open doors ( I rather find "keys to open doors" - Gauntlet).
After giving up on this game, I constantly heard a lot of hype on it and decided to give it another chance, this time, by renting it for my PS2. Same crap. It had a couple more flashy effects on the PS2, but still, boring gameplay and empty rooms after empty rooms.
When you get lost on a level because it all looks the same, you know you are playing a real boring game !
'Nuff said !
Re:Oni interface (Score:1)
Considering the state of Mac 3D hardware during the games design period, I'm not too surprised. However, there are some truly breathtaking (in terms of scale) environments - the airport and atmospheric processing plant for example.
Given the simplistic nature of the game, the twin gauge interface worked very well. The focus of the game was hand-to-hand combat, and the interface reflected this. One gauge is dedicated to showing health and hypos, the other is overloaded to show weapons and navigation. The placement ensured that I never felt they were in the way, yet were easy to find and interpret.
Personally, I enjoyed the game - well worth the CDN$35 I payed for it.
Re:Yes, Oni blows, but ... (Score:1)
My vote for best video game ever would have to be Zelda on the N64. Talk about your immersive environments! I've played it through four or five times, because just
(jfb)
Yes, Oni blows, but ... (Score:1)
If your're on a Mac, hold down shift as the game starts to get a dialog for editing controls. On the PC, you edit a text file (EDIT A TEXT FILE!) called key_config.txt in the Oni game directory. Ok, that's
The real problems with Oni are:
1. The save system. Save points suck the peanuts out of my shit. And the game difficulty is
2. The reliance on jumping puzzles. The only thing that would be worse would be spooky castles and lava. Oh wait: there's bio-sludge. Bio-sludge! Under tiny little catwalks! Catwalks! All this game really needs to complete it's transformation into a jumping twitch console game is
3. The voice acting. It's abysmal. Maybe the stilted, middle-school dialogue gets the Anime loving sweaty palmed Japanese schoolgirl fetishist community all wet in the biscuit, but for the rest of us it's
4. The environments. Yes, they're cool, and they do look really good. But for all their "real-world" sophistication, they're still just videogame levels. For instance, you break into a government archive building. Ok so far. But what's missing? Chairs! Desks! Watercoolers! ANYTHING! There are lots of tiny offices (full of gun-toting security, of course), but apparently DMV employees in the year 2032 are forced to stand up all day long, working at clearly unergonomic wall mounted cubicles. Where's OSHA? More to the point: what's the use of having REAL ARCHITECTS design buildings that are totally empty, except for the odd crate or cringing civilian?
6. Enemy AI is really bad. The opponents are of two kinds: the useless street thug who chases you ham-fistedly around, and O Sensei. Game balance again, of course. Oh, and they NEVER MISS when they're shooting at you. Even the goons are apparently Marine Sharpshooters.
7. No multiplayer?
8 - infinity: see 7
Admittedly, the game has some things going for it. It looks great, the combat is a blast, and the lack of blood is actually a pretty big plus. I like the fact that you're encouraged to fight hand to hand by the relative scarcity of ammo. Still, it's a sad little wet fart of a game, overall, and does not bode well for the future.
Please God (Bill?), don't let the incompetents who made this game so crappy screw up Halo.
(jfb)
Re:Yes, Oni blows, but ... (Score:1)
But oh good God almighty it better not suck eggs like Oni.
(jfb)
Re:It's the innovation, stupid (Score:1)
The need for cheats (Score:1)
To me, this is not Real Time Strategy, but rather, Real Time Puzzle Solving. The Strategy Guide saves you the trouble of playing through (and losing) a mission just to learn what the situation will be. I think this indicates a flaw in the game. You should be able to devise a winnable strategy based on the information you learn while playing the game (you may not, but it should be reasonable to expect that you could). It's a shame because it really does ruin some of the immersion factor of the game.
So, I think this should be a tenet of good game design: It should be reasonably possible to win the game without needing a crystal ball!
Thief 2 (Score:1)
Driven by money not fun (Score:1)
I had lots of fun playing Meridian 59 when it was in beta because the players were allowed the freedom to do what they wanted. In retail though it changed because if a player was being "evil" they were slapped down and told they couldnt do that or their account would be canceled.
Same thing happened in Everquest. Beta was a blast. Could do what you want. Out comes retail and bam. Have to play nice or not play. Blech.
Re:Half Life (Score:1)
Re:fsmsp (Score:1)
Don't worry, I was joking ;-) (Score:1)
Grr: Something is wrong: parent=146, dups=1
Damit! now you wrecked the"story" for me ! (Score:1)
Discuss by example: (Score:1)
Metal Gear: fully winnable without cheating, and a great plot
Metal Gear 2 (Snake's Revenge): great plot, but absolutly impossible to win (though I did eventually). Took so long to win it robbed my childhood and I skipped the prom.
Ghosts n Goblins: nice and linear, so you don't feel like you're missing anything. But again, the game gets ridiculously hard.
Rygar: Overall great, except I spent 50% of the time gathering life vials like a bad OCD habit.
Battle of Olympus: damn-near perfect game, except almost impossible without reading a strategy guide (nearly a walk-thru).
Uncharted Waters & Pirates: two easy games, great exploration and replayability, multiple endings, etc. It was fun hacking into them to see all the characters and endings missed while playing the game.
3-D Shooters: absolutely frustrating. They're a total maze to me (I get lost), and they give me a headache for some weird reason.
King's Quest 5: buy the hintbook, or waste your whole life on the game.
Quest for Glory: like King's Quest, but you don't need clues to win.
Master of Orion 2: good loooong game. But if I ever want to finish a game, I end up cheating. Same thing with Railroad Tycoon.
Dungeons and Dragons: WOOOO-hoo! no commentary needed.
Atari games: think of Adventure, perhaps the first game of its kind! then came the Swordquest series (did they ever finish that series?)
Love and Sex: impossible games to win, and cheating doesn't help.
Real Gamers... (Score:1)
Ever.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Re:Plot? (Score:1)
fred
Nah it's the story stupid. (Score:1)
Re:Yes, Oni blows, but ... (Score:1)
Bungie historically had a "it'll be ready when it's ready" approach to release dates. Only after selling out to M$ did they hand Oni off to Gathering of Developers and Take-Two, who for whatever reasons decided to push a premature release. Neither GoD nor Take-Two have anything to do with Halo, although I would be worried about Bill & Co. "consolifying" it, since it's supposed to be a flagship XBox title.
Re:The Best Games (Score:1)
Thief, Thief2, System Shock2, Half-Life, Starcraft...
These all combined above average gameplay with above average plots. They also, for the most part, avoid tedium. Take Quake, no plot, all action. Extremely forgettable. The only stuff people remember is the multiplayer (which is a completey different matter)
On the other extreme you have games like Wing Commander IV, which was a movie diguised as a game, and games like 7th Guest or Myst where the gameplay is there more to further the story.
After about a qurter of the way through a game you understand the kind of thought that went into the game. Was the plot the driving force? The action? The new technology? Did they really try to get the plot in but it is too weak?
I find the best games have more than just balance.... they have a unique intertwining of both the plot and action so that one cannot be remmebered without the other.
By being enveloped in the ambience and pseudo-reality of the story I experience the kind of lasting memories that make these games wonderful to me. This is exactly what a good book or movie does to me.
I leave one caveat. The nature of video games and production schedules often means that an otherwise engrossing game and story often degenerates as the 'end game' approaches. It's apparent in the original Thief and even Half-Life. Books certainly avoid this easily... movies usually too.
Re:fun, plot, and realism *all* ORTHOGONAL (Score:1)
wha...
Plot is King (Score:1)
Other then Ultima and FF, what other games do this kind of story telling?
Re:Wow, how innovative. (Score:1)
Re:It's the innovation, stupid (Score:1)
I think there has only been a few truly original games, spawning whole eras of gaming. During an era all games looks the same and works the same. And almost anyone thinks that this is how games always have looked and worked. Needless to say; today we are within the FPS era. Based on the above I would say that, of the FPS games you mention, only Wolfenstein 3D was truly innovative. Here are some other games I belive were truly innovative (but I might be entirely wrong, please give any examples of earlier games with the same ideas):
Super-Mario (the beginning of the plateau era, or was that lode-runner?)
Pitstop II (beginning of racing games)
Decathlon (beginning of sport games)
Interceptor (beginning of flight simulators as we know them today)
I would like to add the first shoot-em-up game here; but I have no idea what that was. I would like to say Uridium (wonderful game, that); but I don't truly belive that to be the first. Does anyone know?
Re:The Best Games (Score:1)
Oh, and Tim Willits has been a level designer at id since the DooM II mission pack release. Close enough for me.
People buy game guides? (Score:1)
1) Oni sucks.
2) Why do people act like Metal Gear Solid is some kind of pinnacle of gaming? Sure, it certainly advanced video game cinematics, but the gameplay is totally linear and not much more advanced that the original MG.
Well, I guess SOMEONE has to buy game guides, otherwise I doubt I'd see them all the time at Best Buy. I might consult a game faq once or twice, but I'd sooner dump a game that requires constant hand-holding rather than pay MORE money. I don't think I've EVER bought a game guide, unless you count the ones I got free from Nintendo Power back in the day.
P.S.: Oni sucks.
Re:I like (Score:1)
You're tired of Slashdot ads? Get junkbuster [junkbusters.com] now!
even better: (Score:1)
You have:
Tea
No tea
-------
Great system (Score:1)
-------
Re:Great system (Score:1)
(This is for the babel fish puzzle, a puzzle so hard they used to sell T-Shirts that proclaimed "I got the babel fish!")
- How to get the babel fish (stop reading if you don't want to know!)
- Make sure that when you get to the Vogon hold, you have the towel, your gown, and the pile of junk mail.
- Wait for Ford Prefect to go to sleep.
- Pick up Ford's satchel and put it in front of the panel.
- Take off your gown and put it on the hook.
- Put your towel on the drain.
- Put the junk mail on top of the satchel.
- Press the dispenser button.
At this point you'd get the fish- and this was all accesible through in-game commands. Ohyeah, I don't know if I said this, but the game was one of those old Text-Parser things.-------
Read it again (Score:1)
Marathon (Score:1)
-Elendale
Re:Half Life (Score:1)
Yeah, the plot pretty much goes away once you get to Xen, but it retains some interest because you get to explore completely different and bizzare landscapes. The thing that really, really sucked was the part of "Interloper" where you have to jump down about fifty floating platforms while the damn floating head things are blasting at you with fireballs. You're completely exposed, and the jumps are tricky enough without needing to avoid being killed by the fireballs. That section just plain sucks, and it takes forever to get through for no real reason. If you could just skip that part it would be OK.
Re:Speaking for the plot. (Score:1)
Cheating is admiting the game is to hard (Score:1)
Which is anouther thing. I'm here to play a game. If I wanted to watch a movie I'd use the VCR. When I spend more time watching the game than I do playing it, its not worth my time. Soul Reaver:LoK was a good game with an exellent plot. It had me on the edge of my seat trying to figure out who was pulling Kain's strings, without ever getting the way of playing the game. Metal Gear Solid had a good plot that moved the game play along, and made sence of it all.
A good game that had a weak plot was Castlevania. But it was excellent for anouther reason. I spent more time exploring the castle and finding items than I did beating the game. And that was after I beat the game.
When I play a game, I want something I have to think about. I want something that gets my addrenaline running. And sometimes I want something that my fingers can play without me there. I don't want something that is more of a challenge to me than it is my wallet.
The shiney graphics are cool, but don't sell me a demo of the 3D abilities of the card I've already bought. Use the eyecandy to enhance the story and gameplay. My favorite game of all time is Angband [angband.org]. Writen in 1984 and constantly updated through the years, the graphics have been updated to color, and nothing else. Yet I can come into a new situation, and with just a glace at the screen, know my situation, recognize any of the 800+ monsters that could be attacking me, and be up todate on the game. It has no plot, but that ensures that you never play the same game twice. I'm still playin it after 6 years:-)
--Cam
Re:On Cheating & design (Score:1)
--
Wow, how innovative. (Score:1)
You know, now that I think about it, didn't they use a slightly less robust version of this nav system in Marathon, Bungie's FIRST major release?
Re:aimlessness (Score:1)
That's a bit harsh. Those games can be very fun, but it takes more work to get to a point where they become fun. The ultra realism of these games make it hard for people who are not that interested in that type of game to get to the point where they can have fun. You can't just pick up a simulation and expect to be able to master it. You have to learn the technical aspects and most importantly you have to put lots of time into practice.
Let's take Grand Turismo. My one friend is horrible at passing the licence tests. He loves racing other cars, but when it comes to racing against yourself he finds it frustrating. He can't pass the tests so therefore he can't use the better cars and can't race on the other tracks. If he dosen't master the tests, he's not going to have any fun playing the game. Someone else on the other hand loves to race against themselves. Their the perfectionists that have fun trying to become perfect or near perfect to pass the tests. He can pass the tests because he will keep at it until he does and then can race the better cars and tracks. The game will be fun for him.
The flight simulators and racing simulators are just what they claim to be. Simulations. They are not aimed for the broad gamer market, but for the nich market of people that want to master a certain machine in a various set of situations that will challenge them to play the game perfectly. These are the people that buy a game and beat the game. Then they play it again, and again, and again. They play the same game over and over just to master the game. To play it perfectly. Think about it. Every game is like that. In RPG's you want to master and develop your perfect charachter, with FPS you want to master each weapon and level, with RTS you want to create the perfect battle plan and execute it perfectly. It goes on, and on.
Oni compass? (Score:1)
Re:The key is balance (Score:1)
3D Action/Fighting has been done before - ever heard of "Fighting Force"? Oh, wait, Oni is 3D Action/Fighting/Anime and thus an entirely new genre.
I trust that Oni will probably be a very good game, but I wouldn't start getting carried away and labelling a combination of existing genres and styles as a "new genre".
My bet is that Oni will feel like an action-heavy Metal Gear: Solid.
Re:Games, Work, and HOW-TOs (Score:1)
If you manage it right, you can get money for Work. Few people get to eat as a result of game playing. :-)
Complete instructions for Pong (Score:2)
Re:Plot? (Score:2)
FP
Mo' technology != less creativity. (Score:2)
I don't know about anybody else on Earth, but my favourite video games are ones I get immersed in. When I BELIEVE I'm flying an F-16. When I
BELIEVE I'm crawling through a sewer pipe trying to solve a Big Mystery. When I BELIEVE I'm trying to escape from a top-secret military facility being taken over by otherworldly creatures. If you are trying to immerse the player, you will not be able to do it by just stringing together a bunch of game theory ideas that look good on paper. You've got to tell a story. You've got to grab the player's attention. You've got to present an engaging world to play in. And, with computer games, you do that with 3D graphics. Usually complicated ones. (MYST may be a conspicuous exeception, but I personally found that game boring as hell. Other people certainly disagree with me.)
I dunno, maybe I'm painting with a broad brush, but I also thought that the original filmmaker's credo was stupid. Why SHOULDN'T I be able to
make a film about a talking pig? What's wrong with having a story that takes place in outer space? Why can't I light the scene so that it
looks like it would really look if I happened upon it on the street, instead of looking like something that's been filmed with a flashlight
on top of the camera? If you reduce the thesis to its root, you should be able to tell any story with a simple series of black and white sketches, or with a spoken word story. Arguing that technology makes film bad is like arguing that protein makes food bad. Technology is an essential component of film (and game making) and eschewing it for the sake of some ascetic ideal is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I think that technology and creativity are not opposites...I think they're orthogonal. You can tell a good or a bad story, with or without technology. Think about novels...you can tell a good or a bad story, and it may be short or long. You can't judge a book by its cover, and you can't judge a film by the fact that it's mastered in Super Hi-Fi Dolby THX Digital OmegaTURBO Sound Blasterrific. Perfect example...Forrest Gump. For me, that movie stopped being a movie, and started being REAL when I clearly heard an RPG round detonate in the seat right next to me. The soundtrack of that battle scene, in the theater I was in, was utterly convincing, and it made the experience That Much Better.
I for one don't want to go back to the days of Donkey Kong. I thought that the game sucked. Sorry...most of the 30's games that a lot of people hearken back to don't engage me at all. I'm not saying they're bad games or that you're stupid if you like them...I just don't happen to enjoy them, and I'm not likely to enjoy a game that pays them homage at the expense of the things I enjoy in a game.
Re:er, okay (Score:2)
More recent? The Chaos Engine had me hooked for so long it was silly. Brilliant game, I only wish they'd do an FPS with that sort of atmosphere and speed.
PCs? I remember the first time I played Doom and thought a massive 'So what?'. Hated it, still no fan. Looking at PC games from then, compared to Amiga games, I have to say much of the reason it got the reception it did was that it was a tolerable game on the PC (still pretty unusual at that time IME) and was something the Amiga couldn't do. I remember the first time I played Quake, thinking it was better but not much. Got into it after a while, but I have to say I mostly like it for atmosphere rather than gameplay even now.
I remember the first gaming session I had on my own PC vividly. Back then (10/98) it was a powerhouse - 400 MHz, TNT, 128MB RAM. Oops, still that now... Anyway. I loaded SiN onto it first, and that helicopter scene, then running round the bank, absolutely blew my mind. The sound, the graphics, the atmosphere. The whole thing was just incredible. Then Battlezone - oh, I played that demo over and over, I liked it that much. Then I got the game, and I'm still playing it now. Fantastic - if you don't have a copy, track it down.
I'll probably play a lot more games over the years, but if any provokes a reaction as strong as SiN did when I first loaded it up, I'll know it's truly groundbreaking. The only thing that's come close since has been Half-Life...
Agreed with System Shock 2 part... (Score:2)
get a life... (Score:2)
this is not a troll comment, I'm serious. In life, there is plenty of activity, and depending on what you choose to do, there can be plenty of plot and storyline.
If game designers want to make games more realistic, then they won't give away the details to a murder quite so easily. Instead, they would create an environment where interacting with your randomly occuring bot-peers, (or other real-life people) would be the only way to get more goods/info/whatever to accomplish your goals. This is why Quake is so addictive, you don't always know about the troll hiding under the bridge. If I wanted a game that I could memorize and play blind-folded, I'd break out my NES again.
Re:The key is balance (Score:2)
On Cheating & design (Score:2)
So, to answer the question if a cheat means that there is poor design, I'll say that it depends on the game, and the skill needed to complete the game.
Simple to learn, hard to master are the best rules for game design; which is why tetris still does well in this day and age, adn RGPs where the focus is on the story line does wonders. (Shenmue is simplely out of this world)
Finally, something I can comment on! (Score:2)
Difficulty is a very large part of this "intrigue" category. If a game is too easy, people will be done too quickly and not care for it. If it is too difficult and requires cheats, then people will likely complain about that. A game needs to be difficult, or somewhat puzzling, but not so much so that strategy guides or friendly tips are needed every few minutes.
A game like Perfect Dark is a good example. If played through the way Rare intended, one would start by going through on Agent [easy] mode. One would play the levels without much resistance and learn the controls and the settings. Then one would advance to the Special Agent [moderate] mode. The levels are slightly expanded and the difficulty is increased, but because of previous experience it is not too much to handle. Finally, one should give a go at Perfect Agent [expert] mode. Perfect Agent in Perfect Dark was incredibly difficult, but not so much that I needed any cheats, tips or tricks... I had just developed my skills, and through patience and determination, I was able to beat the game.
(On a side note, I would like to add that Perfect Dark is the only game that I have ever beaten all the way through without any cheats or tips or guides - all others I have had some form of outside help. Yes, even Mario, but that was years ago. *dips head in shame*)
So you see where I am coming from. There is an innumerable supply of factors that can make a game more or less enjoyable, but just the right blend is required to put the game on my must-play list.
And again, good visual and sound effects are great, but not necessarily required. Think of it in terms of the United States government - checks and balances. The legislative, judicial, and executive branches work together and check up on each other to provide the most efficient government possible (arguably). Graphics, sound, and gameplay/intriguing factors work together in much the same way to make a game what it is.
Re:Interactive Fiction is an Oxymoron (Score:2)
There are a lot of fairly standard devices that can lend a nice air of pacing and/or non-linearity to an otherwise blandly linear plot. A classic is what I think of as a "node" approach; the player moves from one chunk of the linear game to another but the actions necessary to move on are fairly free-form within each chunk. That is to say that you can get the key first or you can kill the monster guarding the door first, but you must kill the monster and have the key before you can move on. This lets the player feel that he's not completely on a rail without breaking the scripting advantage of a linear plot.
Another old chestnut to provide a semblance of pacing is to vary the difficulty and frequency of opponents vs. puzzles vs. open space. Sections without oppnents can release the built up excitement of a flurry of combat, but after a while they start to build up tension and wondering when the next attack is going to come. Areas without any puzzles or enemies can be particularly good for this, since the player is inevitably scrutinizing everything very carefully to find the next ambush. Similarly, an increased frequency and intensity of combats convinces players that they're closing in on something important, while an occasional wimpy attacker suggests that nothing big is going on. These kinds of things let a careful designer play with the gamer's emotions in much the same way that a good novelist can, and can be made to work even without a rigidly linear plotline.
Re:Great system (Score:2)
> i
You have:
No tea.
--
Re:Oni interface (Score:2)
Re:aimlessness (Score:2)
Good point !
The problem here is that if the game becomes *that* realist, then you'll have to be *that* hero to survive through it
Anyway, the fact it is actually a problem just makes it more interesting to solve (or try to)
Have you ever played james bond rpg ?
While I didn't like james bond so much (well I just like better some other ones), Those who designed the game faced the same problem: "you've got to be a hero.. now how can you be a hero ?" and found an elegant solution (that could still be improved, especially for a video-game case):
The hero points...
You start your missions with some few hero points and their number increase according your performance in the game (game master decision)
The idea is, when you get stuck in a very hard situation, you can use a hero point to "magically" go through it
Which is a pretty funny and good way to model a "james bond" case, or the "find the snake scale"
For instance, you open a door, and damn ! three strongly armed guys are waiting for you ! you use your hero point (if you chose to do so) and oh well.. the 3 guys appear to be busy watching tv, anything...
Now it would be hard to introduce something like that in a video game, but not impossible if carefuly thought (and modified accordingly) (maybe for instance, if you run out of ammo, a hero point would spam some in the room you are (but behind you so that you don't lose too much realism and make the ammo 'shinny'.. things like that) and would perhaps help making the game-plot as hard as it should be. If you're not *that* hero it takes to get through the end, well you'll end with less hero points than somebody else, plus, you get a somewhat more interesting scoring system than counting all the dead bad guys
design (Score:2)
Companies like id software don't need an enthralling plot - they need technology. They deliver that fantastically. Of course, with the advent of this technology, companies with creative minds (in the gameplay/plot sense) are now open to focus on other aspects of the game.
Most companies that attempt to do this in one go fail because its just way too much. Those that don't fail are either really good, or really lucky (usually the latter, because most of the times the sequels suck).
The key is balance (Score:2)
The first, and foremost key is making the game 'fun'. But I find this to be an opinionated and useless term.
The real key is putting in a 'balance'. Halflife (which is going to be overused in this whole discussion) made an EXCELLENT balance between plot and action. There was no real "You killed X number of monsters, found X number of secrets, etc...", because your goals were "get the hell outta that lab", which screamed plot (not to mention how every npc interacted with you). But the action part was balanced because there really wasn't 'levels', it was 'chapters', and it was very continuous.
Another example would be System Shock 2. It was a first person action game, just like any other. WRONG! It was breath-takingly scary. The well written plot, with the errie sounds, with the constant action (either stompin aliens or running for the hills) made such an excellent combination, it was a sleeper hit over Q3.
Now you don't need to have an intricate plot (like SS2, HL, Deus Ex, etc...) to balance the game, take 'theif' for example. It had a minor plot, but the action was also minor. It still was a great game (not to mention genre breaking). How could someone like a game that was only 'minor' in plot and action? Well, honestly, I think it was the 'breaking the genre' that did it, but it wouldn't be fun if it was all action and no plot or vice versa.
This is why Oni will be a breakthrough game. Combine action, 3rd person, and fighting games, and you got a new genre. But it has a story the works right alongside the action.
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Re:The Best Games (Score:2)
Another point to bring up is with online games. If its a team game, you kind of make the plot as you go along. When people assume specific roles (even if its just 'sniper' or 'offense' and 'defense') it kinda makes its own plot. These can be very exciting games (just look at how tribes grew).
--
Forgotten Old Games (Score:2)
To me, those games were the best - you were fully immersed in your imagination, just like a good book, but with a freedom to affect the story line.
Many games nowadays I find hard to play - the offer nothing for the imagination (similiar to movies). Everything's cut and dry - nothing like a good Mamet movie with loose ends and hints at a character's history. Nothing for an imagination to grab hold of and nothing to make me wish for the end not to come.
Re:Half Life (Score:2)
as an example, i played half-life, then deus ex, and then Half-Life: Opposing Forces. while Half-life was fun the first time around, deus ex blew it out of the water. when the time came to play Opposing forces, the total lack of interactivity with objects and the fact that mobs don't spawn until you walk over a triggerpoint was really irritating.
as an example, there was a certain point in opfor that you walk between some trailer-crates and a big nasty slug with legs thingy spawns to your left, while a huge grasshopper-lookin' guy spawns to your right. after being hugely surprised by this, and dying, i reloaded a quicksave game and decided to ambush them from on top of the crates. lo and behold, when i looked down at where he should be, he wasn't there -- i hadn't set off the trigger that loads them.
compare this to deus ex, where mobs all spawn when the level is loaded, and have set patrol points, warning responses, etc. they're there, doing their thing, whether you're there looking at them or not.
more importantly, you can take many different paths to reach your objective. in half-life, you're herded like a cow into a semi; you have two ways to go. the way you came from (everything's been raped and pillaged that way already), and the way they want you to go (preferably over all the nice trigger points they installed.) no other choice. bleh.
i can see the arguments rising in your head already: "but half-life was made years before deus ex!" true, and a fairly irrefutable point. video game progression hadn't gotten to this point of sophistication yet (with potential exceptions such as Thief; it may have come out at roughly the same time, i can't remember.)
anyway, Half-life, Thief, SYstem shock 2, Deus Ex... they were all great games, and you can see a certain progression of development among them. I just hope that developers look back at the things like triggerpoint loading vs mobs that are there doing their jobs all the time (like in real life) all the time, and learn from the lessons of the past in what makes a good game, so that they can make even better games in the future. I look forward to it.
eudas
p.s. oh, btw, even deus ex had its weaknesses. for example, eidos bought out Looking glass's implementation of certain things; i think that they took the Thief/Thief2/System Shock 2 type engine and modified/enhanced it for Deus Ex. However, the Thief/Thief2/SS2 all had a memory leak type bug in common; after a while, you would get one of two symptoms: 1) the program would crash, losing unsaved data (happened to a friend), or 2) the memory leak would eventually cause something to go awry with the sound, making everything fuck up that involved sound (usually creating some god-awful screeching) until you saved, exited, and rebooted the computer. deus ex inherited these bug(s) to some lesser extent... they didn't affect as drastically, but that could have been a symptom of 256mb ram instead of 64... i had more memory for it to eat up, so it took longer to run out. heh.
oh, and the mobs, even though they were there and had persistence, and were somewhat smarter in responses (warning each other, etc) they still had the Thief engine weakness; that is, that if they saw you and went into Active-Warning-Defense mode, they would swarm around a bit (like a hive of bees)... but if you hid, and waited for them to 'lose scent' of you, they would just go back to their previous patterns. if you did this several times, they would still do the same thing. they weren't programmed to figure out patterns and install additional guards in an area where you kept showing up, or even to do something like be more alert than usual after you've tripped the alarm once or twice. i certainly hope that if one trips an alarm on a military base in the real world, they don't just go back to normal sleepy routine after an alarm trips! i'd hope that place would be a beehive until they figured out EXACTLY where that intruder went.
anyway, blah blah blah... i sign off now.
cheers,
eudas
Proposal: on-line text adventures (Score:2)
I'm not kidding on this one. I swear.
I've been thinking about this over the past few weeks and I think using PHP & MySQL (and perhaps a little Java) you could hammer out an interesting (hopefully entertaining) structure for MUD/MUSH-like multiplayer text adventures.
The idea of bringing MUDs into the 20th century intrigues me - kinda like everquest.
If this doesn't sound dumber than rocks, let me know. [mailto]
There are exits to the north, west and south. [ridiculopathy.com]
Oni was a failure... (Score:2)
The lack of a input config option in Oni is just as bad as the savegame problem in Project IGI
Oni interface (Score:2)
make good games, not narrative (Score:2)
Maybe games based on good narrative can be developed eventually. But until someone figures out how, game designers should perhaps just focus on making good games. There is ample precedent for how to go about doing that. And it neither involves making characters more "life like" nor adding a lot of bogus story background to the game.
Must... Have... Cheats... (Score:2)
Re:Plot? (Score:2)
Re:Plot? (Score:2)
Hear hear (Score:2)
1) terrorists
2) Sephiroth
Problems: the better the plot in terms of literary valuation, the worse the gameplay because it restricts fredom.
FF7, however, rewards systematic and thorough gameplay and does have many periods where you can freely explore theworld map and get hidden stuff, chjaracters and plots.
Re:The Best Games (Score:2)
They should mandate the memorization of this phrase before anyone can publish a game. Plot is good, interactivity is good, action is good. All of these are wonderfull qualities for a game. None of them can stand alone as the basic premice for a game.
Quake 3 (In single player mode) -- Plot? What plot? Sure, there is this completely basic storyline that you don't even notice in the game until you get to the end level. Even Doom had more plot. Plot is an integral part of the game. It makes the player belive, even for just a second, that his actions matter in some wider scheme.
I should note that plot is almost totaly unecessary in multiplayer games. Interaction with real people is far more convincing than a computer can be... right Mr Turing?
Myst -- No action to speak of. Now, I'm going to get flamed by Myst fans for saying this, but Myst was really lacking in the "Fun" department at times. By relying so heavily on problem solving and plot, myst offered no outlet for the stress involved in not being able to solve the problem. I wanted to let loose with a rocket launcher on those seagulls more than once. By making the game so cinimatic and slow paced, Myst gave up a good portion of its potential audiance and apeal.
Interactivity -- Balders gate was listed as the example for this above. I agree, a universe that is to interactive, where the player "picks up anything that's not nailed down... just in case" is poorly designed.
So my conclusion is this. Moderation. There needs to be a basis for your game. That basis can be in action, plot, or interactivity. That depends entirely on what kind of game you're making. But your game also needs aspects of the other two. Further, no single element should be taken to far. Action taken to far (eg Action Quake) becomes painfully real. We don't want to see the hero die from a leg wound. That's not FUN. Plot, when to overarching, leaves the player feeling dwarfed and insignificant. Final Fantasy is guilty of this at times, it becomes very clear that your actions don't matter at all, all you have to do is survive and "destiny" will make sure you end up in the right place. Interactivity, at to great a scale, is also pointless. Sure, your character can play with everything, but what is he supposed to DO?
Diverging plot lines, maybe only three or four, but as many as 15, are an asset to a game. Building in the ability to change and manipulate the environement, even if it is without meaning, is always a plus and adds depth to the illusion of reality. Finaly, action is necessary in almost every game. We play games to escape from our world, to do things we can't do in real life, since most gamers are men and most men do have these irrational violent impulses (I know I do) action (and often violence) is a necessary asset for a game. Besides, blowing stuff up is fun.
This has been another useless post from....
Re:The Best Games (Score:2)
Most underrated gaming skill (Score:2)
Agreed, with observation. (Score:3)
However, I think this could be a feature, not a bug. If you don't try pretending that you are constructing the narrative, but are simply unlocking it as you play, the narrative becomes the incentive, like bits of kibble that reward achievement. You want to keep to a minimum, I think, the number of plot elements you have in mind at any given time to navigate the game; then you want a pay-off of narrative (and nice cinematics and sounds and such) that make you feel that you have participated in a narrative without having to create it.
er, okay (Score:3)
Ultima Undeworld came out a month before Wolf 3-d did, but you never hear people talk about it and how it had features that even DOOM didn't.
nettrek had been out for years allowing people to play online against multiple people.
Descent had true 3D long before Quake.
None of the game you list were TRULY innovative in and of themselves. They may have brought ideas to a new area but ultimately it was more than just the sum of their innovations that made them the names that you remember today.
BTW, the games I remember are C&C: Red Alert, Age of Empires 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Gabriel Knight. I don't remember them because they had innovations. I remember Duke Nukem 3D because I played that coop all the way through over a modem with my best friend one summer. I remember Red Alert because I spent a good chunk of my junior year playing it multi player with my friends. I remember Gabriel Knight because, even though it was extremely dated when I played it (1998) it had a great story and was a great adventure game.
Hamlet on the Holodeck (Score:3)
Always remember that the solution comes from two directions -- what the player gets to do, and what the game does around him. A good example is the cliche of the dropped business card during a murder mystery. Sure, maybe you as the player forget to pick it up, and that's what cheat sheets are all about. But if you're in a truly interactive game where the plot hasn't been completely laid out in advance, then maybe the character in question doesn't drop it, and then what happens? How do you continue to direct the story? Make it mandatory that the character always drops it? Or have some sort of internal consistency checker that makes the game always solvable by shifting to some other story line and providing a different clue?
Re:Half Life (Score:3)
Choose the most likely explanation for this:
It's the innovation, stupid (Score:3)
So basically it's not the overall game I base my appreciation on, it's the innovations they introduced that made them k-rad elite. This is why I've pretty much stopped playing them after Q2, everything's just more of the same but with insane hardware requirements. And when you think about it, it's not the stories that keep you interested (go play D&D if it is, or read a book) it's what's new and exciting. Now days all that's left is eye candy and complexity. But dammit, Doom on a 486 with no mouse was fun enough for me.
PS. if anyone knows a Q1 CTF league drop me a note. Once I get it to install under win2k I'm all over that...
Interactive Fiction is an Oxymoron (Score:3)
It is critical to recognize that the notion of "balancing" these issues is subtler than it may seem at first. Once can have a simulation, or one can have storytelling, but it is in fact virtually impossible to combine (balance) the two without just plain lying with the suggestion that you are doing either.
This is because both simulation and storytelling place an unreasonable constraint on how time is "delivered" to the player. A story requires some application of the Poetics, an approach to the delivery of characters, their relationships, the staging and timing of events, the building of conflicts between those elements, the lifting of tempo until a climax, AND THEN (you simply can't skimp on this), a solid and unsudden denoument to a close. Tempo --an issue that is far more important than sequencing-- is critical in this regard. To the extent that the storyteller cannot control how the "story time" gets allocated to the real time of the game experience, the storyteller cannot deliver the fiction.
On the other hand, a simulation requires that the user is able to dictate the tempo of matters. This ability to control the timing --even moreso than controlling the sequence-- of events is critical to the sense of interactivity felt by the user.
In short, these are issues that really can't be balanced in fact. You must always cheat storytelling significantly to do any simulating, and vice-versa.
This is not to say that virtually every game purporting to be "in genre" doesn't try to do this. What I am saying is that it can't be done actually, and that the true miracle of a great game is not the "balancing" of these issues, but rather the capacity to use theatrical devices, smoke and mirrors, to cloud the player into feeling or having the sense that a storytelling game is interactive, or that a simulation is storytelling. One of the devices used in this regard is precisely the notion mentioned above, giving the user more control of sequencing to make up for the lack of timing -- which is the real tradeoff that is typically made. The best, and most creative games, are not just those which provide non-linearity, but which combine nonlinearity with other, often subtle, devices that "fake out" the user into thinking she is playing one type of game when she is actually playing the others.
IMHO, although this is not always the rule, those games that attempted to "balance" storytelling and interactivity directly, by going back and forth between the two styles, seem to fail dismally on both counts. For example, cinematics, one of the classic game design "dodges," while utterly goregous in modern technology, seem to detract from, rather than enhance suspension of disbelief in the simulation portion of the game rather. I have seen it get better, but I think the reason we haven't seen it done "great" is that, perhaps, it can't be done at all directly. The "smoke and mirrors" theatrics, on the other hand, can make for truly great simulations or storytelling games, and seem to get far closer to the "ideal" of Interactive Fiction.
Play to your strengths, and not to your weaknesses. Just another view.
Half Life (Score:3)
That is, right up to the teleporter level. Then the story evaporated like Helium-II on a hot stove.
I hope that HL2, when it finally does come out, will be able to have enough money to carry the story through the whole game. Of course, I'd like them to throw in a few different tracks for different styles of play (the "sneak&snipe" vs. the "Grond KILL"), and of course I want it under a REAL operating system, but I digress....
How Half-Life was made... (Score:3)
Dug this up from my bookmarks because I think some may find it interesting. Essentially Valve focused on making a specific portion as cool as possible, then they moved on, went back and made it as cool as possible again. I think it's a shame this isn't tried out more.
Considering that this is one of the little gems that has done things RIGHT lately, I should hope more people take note of HOW it was done right.
Yes! (Score:3)
Really, I feel the same way about tabletop RPGs. If your GM has a story he really wants to tell, you'll probably be railroaded and it very well may suck. If, on the other hand, the GM gives you the freedom to take it where you want to go, ahh, now that's more fun.
Also, I want to be able to turn on a game and enjoy it immediately. I don't want to have to turn on a game and say, "that's right, I'm still looking for the Princess's MacGuffin!" or have to try to remember exactly where I was. But maybe I just don't have the right gamer mindset needed to appreciate long linear plots in video games.
Trans-gender storylines (Score:3)
Game Design Tip #13 : Make sure your game heroes are somehow related to Boy George.
Games, Work, and HOW-TOs (Score:3)
I recently realized that, with the exception of Final Fantasy 9 (which is more of a story), I haven't played any games in a long time. "What am I doing?" I thought. I then realized that I was playing games, just other types of games: How can I help the Free Software movement, How can I maximize my contribution to society and self, how can I promote, learn about, and work on, groupware. Learning is also another type of game, that I play.
What's common to games? I liked the definition I read on the WorldForge project page: You've got a goal, you've got obstructions, and you try to meet the goal through the obstructions. And, that description matches the games that I play, video-game or otherwise (contributing, learning, etc.,.).
Now the question is: What seperates a game from Work? The description above seems to also describe work rather well. Almost by definition, I hate work, but I love games (Cosmic Encounters, for name-dropping). So what's the difference? For this, I draw on Taoism, that book "Flow" (John Carmak recently referenced it), and Miyamoto-sama, who emphatically repeated at GDC 1999 that the game-playing experience must be "comfortable". Perhaps the only difference between work and a game is that the game is comfortable, whereas the game is, well,... Work. I'm still working on this definition. (Mary Poppins said that with a spoonful of sugar, you just snap, and the job's a game. While I like this idea, I have trouble in the impementation; perhaps I'm just not snapping my fingers correctly. Maybe I need to meditate more.)
Given this description, what are the types of games that I'm interested in playing? Personally, I'm really interested in games that cross-over into the domain of my livelihood, and the livelihood of others around me. I'd like the principle of game-ness to shove out work-ness from my life. I wouldn't fret if work completely disappeared from my life. Computers fit the bill rather well. I've always considered the operation of computers to be something of a game, since I was a wee little one, and I've always had an intuition that it would pay the bills. (That intuition turned out to be right.) But still, there's a lot that's uncomfortable about it. It's just like when you're in the maze, and all the doors are locked, and there isn't a key in sight. You're absolutely stuck. You were slated to finish a programming task in 2 days, and it's taken you 2 WEEKS, and you still don't know how you're going to get out of it. This is an uncomfortable situation, and draws me out of the realm of the game, into the realm of work. Ugh. And I was trying so hard to get out of that realm. Where am I going with all of this? Well, I'm trying to establish the similarities and subtle differences between work and games, and then I'm trying to segue into how I think that we can structure things so that work can become more like a game. My ultimate goal is to get feedback from you, build interest in the subject, and have you send me links and other references to related lines of thought.
So, I've found this neat way of teaching that can make a game out of learning. It gives you immediate positive rewards, it helps out in the world (because you learn a valuable skill), and you don't get stuck with no keys and lots of locked doors, because it has a built in help line, that you can call on and get a quick piece of help.
The way I found I learned from Philip Greenspun [greenspun.com]. He uses problems and a community system as integral parts of the ArsDigita training program. It works like this: You have a number of problems, in gradually increasing difficulty, that the learner tackles. Lecture is rather secondary to the problem statements themselves. Lecture is useful, in so much as it helps with the problems. The problems are rather UNIX-like in that the goal is to teach the student one thing, and teach it well. Anyways, I've been working on installing the ACS, and it's been going well so far. Whenever I have a problem, I go to the web bulliten board, search for the problem. Most likely someone had it before, and I get the answer there. If not, I write an entry to the list, and within 5-15 minutes, get a reply. (Once I had to wait 6 hours, though...) The reply then goes on to the board, so that others can get the solution as well. In fact, it's like this with most of our online systems, except that the response time isn't as small, you have to sort through google entries, and usually you have to subscribe/unsubscribe to/from mailing lists, etc., etc.,.
Anyways, I've tried out the method of problem guides in the Fledging Unix Programmers class [speakeasy.org] that I teach, and it's had excellent results. Problems show up when the difficulty between problems is too high, so I subdivide those intervals. It works great.
But what I'm really looking for is for other people to do the same thing.. There are a lot of times in my life where I have 2-3 hours spare, and I'd like to play a game in that time. I'd like a good set of 3-5 problems, workable within 2 hours total, that increase my knowledge about the Linux Kernel, PHP, How to use databases, link things up, make a small game, play with networking, etc., whatever. Do you know what I mean? (Please answer.) So what I'd like to have is, not so much HOW-TO's, but PROBLEM-GUIDE's. And support lines consisting of other people who are interested in the subject, and have completed the guides themselves. Well balanced problem guides. That way, I can play games on a daily basis that are comfortable, educational, and most importantly, fun.
Plot v. Action and Cheats (Score:3)
1) Plot v. Action: Depends totally on the game. If it's a game where you need to "figure stuff out" (e.g. Myst) then plot is a necessity. If it's a shooter, plot is OK, but please, please let me skip the cinematics if I want to.
2) Cheats: If you have to have them to make the game worthwhile, it's a badly designed game. I view cheats primarily as a way to jump in and start really playing a game without investing the (often copious) time required to get good. Beating a game without cheating provides a sense of accomplishment; cheating trades that feeling for saved time.
This is why I play thought and strategy games... (Score:3)
The Best Games (Score:3)
For example, some of my experiences playing UT or Tribes have rivaled action movies in excitement and drama. But since I'm taking part in it with other people, rather than following a predetermined path, the excitement is increased because I know that my next move determines what happens. If given a choice would you rather see through Superman's eyes or BE Superman. That's the difference in choice between these two game types.
Response to cheats being bad gaming? (Score:3)
--- My Karma is bigger than your...
------ This sentence no verb
Plot and Action. (Score:3)
I think that most action games tend to have terrible plots, that are totally unbelievable, but that does not matter for most people because they only play the game for the action anyway. A good example might be Quake III - plot is meaningless.
Personally, I would like to see more professionally done plots for games. Why not hire people who know about plot, and developing an interesting story, according to the timeless rules involved? An English graduate or a professional writer or someone could I think work well with the people who typically create games.
Already most games companies employ musicians, actors, and artists as well as programmers. Why not bring some literary experts in too, to cover the plot side, so that you have a good combination of the visual, aural, logical and literary arts?
I think it would help improve the depth of games that bit more.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
fun, plot, and realism *all* ORTHOGONAL (Score:4)
Realism and Plot are independent of a fun game...
You can have games with 100% realism, and 0% plot -- that are fun (flight sims or shooters, ala Rogue Spear or Counter-strike come to mind) Basically anything with mindless destruction
You also can have games that have 100% plot, 0% realism, and are fun -- Myst (as easy as it was) or adventure games, like Grim Fandago, Monkey Island (awesome memories plaything those with a friend)
And then we get odd ball games, that rock. Like "SOUL CALIBER" No blood, no cutting off of limbs or apendages, or guts. Just a nice background story, and a blast to play. Realism? Sort-of. Plot? Sort-of. Fun? Hell, yeah!
BUT
Game designers abstract the "tedious" stuff out, so as not to make the game boring.
e.g. I just use this health pack, from 20% health right back up to 100% health, *riiiiiiiight*
Lots of people complain about the "linearity" of single player games, but I treat it like a movie. I play it once, have a fun time, and enjoy the next game. Thief 1 & 2 were definately something I had a blast playing -- late at night, lights out, 3d sound on -- the physical environment set the perfect mood!
What some people find fun, may be boring to others.
e.g. some find chess/go to be be "lacking."
Others live for card games. Others want to frag their buddies 24x. Other's love the strategy of RTS's. I loved teamplay for ages. Some find virtual craftsman and selling to be fun.
Games are starting to do a good job on "representing realism" via 3D graphics, 3D sound, and force feedback.
But plot on a LARGE scale, is still a VERY hard problem to solve.
We see that stories and books have been around for thousands of years. The "general plot" is nothing new. So we see singler player action/adventure games, are like an "interactive" book. Drakken , Tomb Raider, Thief were cool - because the story didn't advance until I did.
There is a reason we haven't seen massive multiplayer games with a good plot. Because it's dam hard to have *everyone* be able to effect the outcome. It's WAY easier to "guide" someone thru a linear story.
Fun in games: Games have been fun from the start.
Realism in games: We arrived there when Mortal Combat had the "bloody" FINISH HIM.
Plot in games: We're only 25% way there...
Putting a "ban" on "familiar" game design elements, like orcs, character classes, etc, won't really "solve" the problem of having a game with more plot.
Plot? (Score:4)
Pong: Don't let the ball go past you
Breakout: Hit the blocks, don't let the ball go past you
Pole Position: Don't drive your block (a.k.a car) out of the lines.
I had a great time with those games. Getting the magic diamond to kick the galactagoid's ass isn't entertaining to me. All that gets in the way of "hit the bad guy with your weapon"
aimlessness (Score:5)
For instance, imagine you have a game world that is completely interactive. I mean, 100% immersive. Say it's a Blade Runner game. Remember the part where Harrison Ford just "happens" to find the snake scale? What are the chances of that actually happening if the author doesn't make the character notice that.
It's similar to the problem that a lot of sports and driving/flight simulators are having nowadays. They have become so realistic that they often become devoid any actual fun.
Now you have games like Baldur's Gate where you move your cursor over every square inch of the game screen hoping to find that elusive treasure hidden somewhere. Imagine a character in a book taking time from his quest to avenge his step-father's murder to comb every square inch of land for 40 miles looking for a magic ring that may or may not be there. Talk about tedium.
I dunno about most people but I find "open ended games" over-hyped. People often complain about "linear" plots but I think linearity has gotten a bad rap. The problem isn't linearity or non-linearity of plot. It's bad game design and weak story lines.
When was the last time you read a book and the main character picked up everything that wasn't nailed down "just in case" he needs it 60 days later to vanquish the evil demon hordes?