[gameprogrammer] Re: How to save games?
- From: Bob Pendleton <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 15:59:49 -0500
On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 18:13 -0500, brianevans wrote:
> >If you look at any of these lists you see many that can be used in
> >games, and many others that just would not make a good game. And, IMHO,
> >you find that several game concepts are not covered by any of these plot
> >lines.
> >
> > Bob Pendleton
> (Disclaimer: I'm not entirely sure what the point was to this post. It
> may just be a VERY long winded way to say "gameplay rules".)
Yeah. It was so clear to me that I forgot to mention it in the post...
When I read the previous post I got this flash about the underlying
error of the original article. He kept comparing games to literature and
movies. Even when he was complaining about cinematics in games. But,
literature and movies are all passive activities. You do not participate
in them, you just watch them. They manipulate your emotions and may
teach or titillate but no matter how good or bad they are the watcher
stays a watcher and not a participant.
Games are intrinsically different. Games are interactive. That means
that a lot of things you can do in literature just can't be done in a
game. Story driven games try to bridge the divide between interactive
and passive experiences, but to me they have always failed to a certain
extent. (The final video of the castle burning down, whatever, is a good
use of cinema in games.) I always hated games where I had to watch a lot
of video and take notes to move on with the story.
I looked to the concept of "standard plots" to use as evidence of the
difference. Many of the standard plots are completely beyond the range
of things you can do in a game, while many things that you can do in a
game are beyond what can be done in a movie or a book. In a game you can
play a game of tennis, in a book you can only read about one.
It seems like there are many key things that you can have in games that
you can not have in literature or movies. The first is interactivity.
The second is the ability to simulate an experience. The third is the
ability for the players choices to affect the way the game proceeds. I
know the last one sound like interactivity, but there are levels of
interactivity. There is the tactical level, where the player controls
where a gun is pointed. There is also the strategic level where the
player makes choices about how to approach a problem. And then even a
higher lever where the players choice to go left instead of right
changes the way events unfold in the game.
In other words. I think I meant what you said :-)
Bob Pendleton
>
> Exactly. This suggests that the domain of games actually encompasses that
> of stories. It seems obvious though, since games have an added dimension
> to them that movies and books do not: they are interactive.
>
> Stories (Non-Interactive) Games (Interactive)
> Reality: Theatre Sports / People games (Red Rover,
> Marco Polo)
> Paper : Books Board Games / Card Games / Pen and
> Paper RPG
> Audio : AudioBook / Music ??Jazz (Improv)? DDR? Marco Polo?
> Video : Movies Video Games
> VR (?) : Non-Interactive Interactive ?
>
> Originally I was going to make this list to argue that Video Games are the
> most expressive medium we have so far, and out of the "non-real" mediums
> (Paper, Video), I think this is true. Its hard to argue that video games
> are more expressive than reality based games, however. But I guess that
> leads us to the next plateau: virtual reality. That is, if its even
> possible to simulate reality on that level, that would be the most
> expressive medium that you could have. I find it interesting though that
> the medium of Audio is largely a one way street. I don't really know of
> any purely audio games.
>
> Regardless, given that video games are the most expressive virtual medium
> we have so far, it seems reasonable to me that there is a fairly sizable
> domain outside that of stories that are purely "video game". This domain
> is written in the language of math and logic: the domain of the purely
> abstract. I think most people call this gameplay, or the rules of the game.
>
> Stories, while still abstract, are much more concrete than math and
> logic. Stories relate to images, sounds, objects and emotions that humans
> are familiar with. It is a way of communicating with human experience. So
> even if the medium is more or less abstract (since written word is much
> more abstract than action movies) it eventually will follow a chain down to
> some concrete experience. If it doesn't, then it would be nonsensical, or
> at least we wouldn't be able to understand it. Imagine trying to explain
> "green" to a blind person, for example.
>
> But clearly there is a balance between "gameplay" and "story" in any
> particular game. Pong has a very negligible amount of story to it, while
> adventure games such as Space Quest and The Longest Journey are almost
> entirely story driven, with hardly any "game" to them. But if you look at
> the lifespan of video games, most early video games were gameplay
> driven. The early story driven games were done in text. Modern games,
> however, are mostly story driven.
>
> I think what we are looking at is the effects of technology on
> expressiveness. In the early days, expressiveness was extremely
> limited. Games managed with poor blocky graphics and bleepy sounds. This
> restriction faced game designers to be more abstract. Yeah, that rectangle
> with the line sticking out of it is your tank. That triangle in the middle
> of your screen is your spaceship. Etc.
>
> But with the expansion of technology, we have seen an explosion in
> expressiveness. This expressiveness that the new graphics cards, and
> physics cards, and surround sound give us, is what allows us to be more
> concrete in our representations of things. The more concrete something is
> represented, the closer that thing is to human experience, and that pushes
> the environment of that thing to also be concrete. In other words, the
> more realistically we can render things, the greater the push will be to
> make more realistic games. And realistic doesn't have to mean "mundane"
> like the author of that article says. Realistic means simply behaving in a
> similar way we would expect reality to behave. We are pushing more and
> more towards "virtual reality", though we're still a long way off. In that
> vein I argue that games have gotten more realistic over time, rather than
> less, for better or worse.
>
> But as soon as we hit a plateau in expressiveness, the abstract, the
> gameplay, will be where the innovation will be. I think we're beginning to
> see the results of hitting an expressiveness plateau, with flashier
> graphics becoming less and less important to what becomes a good
> game. That's not to say you can have a bad looking game. There's
> definitely some minimal level for graphics and user interface to have a
> functional game.
>
> Just as people try to categorize types of plot devices, games have been
> categorized into genres. I think the question that we should all be asking
> is have we actually explored all of them? How much more innovation is
> actually left to do in video games, and games in general? Are we really
> just down to cross-pollination of genres with better and better graphics,
> sound and ai? How much innovation actually has been done on the abstract
> level?
>
> The biggest flaw of that authors post is that he didn't consider enough
> games, only the ones that made his point. How many RTS's are there that
> allow you to play all the sides, even the bad guys? But lets face it,
> games are about fantasy, fun, and escapism. How many men/women like to
> fantasize about ugly men/women? The superficiality permeates our entire
> society: football, movies, supermodels, and even the dating scene. I don't
> think 14 year old nerds want to play a game that puts them in the shoes of
> an even nerdier 14 year old protagonist. But with the rise of Harry
> Potter, maybe I'm not so sure.
>
> Anyway, I'm not sure what the point was to this post. I guess I should
> write that at the top :P. It does seem to be a lot of text to simply
> say, "It's all about the gameplay!!!! l0l, roflcopter!!!1111".
>
> Oh, I think puzzle games might fit in the "people learn something"
> category, though more in a metaphysical way.
>
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