Ambiguity in games

[vimes]

It's been a while since Idle Forumers treaded on the dreaded lands of discussing some cures for a problem video games don't really have. Sooo, I decided to give it a shot : the following is the first part of a far longer blog entry I should be finishing while I'm on the road - it contains a more in depth analysis of what is ambiguity for video games, how to apply it and what pitfalls not to fall in... if you're interested in these, make your voice heard, I'll paste some of this stuff in.I'd like also some critic of the form in PM, since this is supposed to be read by regular internet people and not intellectual geniouses like all of you are (except Wes)

A few weeks or months ago - I can't seem to count anymore since I fell asleep for two hours under the hard hitting sun of Chicago's Millenium Park - Chris Remo posted an interesting article and an equally interesting appendix about subtext in games. Remo suggests that to craft 'deep' games, you've got to use Transformers' motto, you've got to inject 'more than meet the eyes' (yeah, that was a lame one, but I blame Marek who is, after God, the only one to blame for this heinous joke). In short, shooting aliens should mean more than just that and living the life of a biker should tell something meaningful.

I really wish Remo would be heard because that subtext raises the player to be pro-active in an intellectual way; which is always good. However, subtext is hard to achieve in all mediums and most of the coded game genres don't really allow for subtle subtext. So maybe, a less ambitious tool should be first used. And maybe, we should talk about nobility for a second : Baron Munchausen by Terry Gilliam and The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino. Both of them are great and entertaining adventures and they both convey a subtext. The first one deals with death and its acceptance while the second deals with integration in society. They go in different direction but they've got one common idea that prevents them from hammering their subtext : the story is introduced through the eye of a child. It's not , but the slightly unreliable narrator leaves room for this fundamental question : are we depicted the reality or just the wild fantasy of a child?

This is ambiguity and I think it's one of the thing developers have to learn to use if they want to create more complex games.

Ambiguity as I define it - and correct me if I'm wrong - is the cohabitation of several valid models for the representation of something based on subjective perception as well as clues and internal knowledge.

I find ambiguity in non-interactive narratives interesting and powerful because it manages to involve the user in ways that are usually incompatible. On one hand, ambiguity requires the user to commit to a point of view that is partial - most of the time the eye of the narrator – and conjecture ' what does an event mean for this character'. On the other hand, the user's own point of view is also stimulated : ambiguity calls to meta-knowledge of the plot, of story structure and expectation, thus the user must answer 'what does this mean to me'. It gives non-interactive narrative a fuzziness that makes them less linear... imagine what could be done with interactive medium such as video games : ambiguity could appear in content (story, character,event), in gameplay and it could be managed to always be conserved.

What d'ya all think ?