[gameprogrammer] Re: How to save games?
- From: brianevans <brianevans@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 17:25:56 -0500
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
Yeah, I know you did. :P Sorry about that. I felt kind of sheepish
pointing it out, but I was trying to think my way toward something like
what areas of games would be novel? And in the process used a lot of words
that ended in a "well, duh?" conclusion.
There have to be things still available that haven't been done. The game
industry is only tens of years old, and its not like a lot of people have
been trying to be novel. These days, the setting of the game seems more
important than the game itself. And the setting really shouldn't matter,
if what you have is indeed a good game. In that way I think the setting--
the story-- is limiting games in a way that's really artificial. Maybe
when trying to think up new game ideas, we should shirk the setting/story
and the limiting factors that go along with it, think of something that
would be fun in abstract terms, and then add a story that best fits that.
Except for early games, and puzzle games, and selected indy games, how
often does this happen? Instead what we usually get is people starting
from either a setting/story, or one or more genres, or both, and then
trying to do something novel within that already restricted context. I'm
guilty of this as well. I think everyone is. A good setting/story can add
greatly to the "coolness" of a game, that the same game would simply not
have with X's and O's, even though it would be the same game on an abstract
level.
How did classic board games like Chess and Othello and Go come about? Very
simple rules, but extremely challenging and skill based. Of course, if
these games were today's "strategy" video games, they would meet responses
like: "OMG, all the races are the same, BORING!" and "the queen can move
almost anywhere! OVERPOWERED! Come on, buff the pawns a bit."
I think we should attempt to engineer fun on the most basic level, and then
extrapolate the results to something more complex. Today, it seems, we've
got it backwards. We take all these preconceived game ideas that require
ever more complex systems to implement, and then try to make it fun. No
wonder, then, so many AAA games suck. No wonder the video game industry
has stagnated.
So I agree with you that the flaw in the article is that it is story
centric. The proposed solutions do not address the problem, because the
author does not call for improvement to games irrelative of the story, but
rather for different stories. Maybe some different stories would lead to
different game types, but it by no means has to. It's still putting the
proverbial cart before the game programmer, and will not lead to new or
better game types, but simply new stories that games are placed in.
The article really should have been titled: 5 ways to save game
stories. And there is something to be said about the general suckiness in
game writing. Please, game developers, do us a favor and read a couple of
creative writing books and clue yourself in on what is cliche and overdone
and what isn't? While that might help make the cut scenes less painful,
but it won't make the actual game any better or worse.
Bob, I'm curious what things may be done in fiction that can't be done in
video games? I would think that in the degenerate case, you can do
everything in a video game that you can do in a book: just print text out
to the screen. Doesn't mean it would WORK or even be a game really. I've
heard some stuff on interactive fiction, but I'm not quite convinced yet?
PS: Sorry about that last post. I've had one too many philosophy classes.
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