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Some pretentious conference-inspired rambling THE THREAD

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Some pretentious conference-inspired rambling

Posted by Chris Remo, November 23, 2009

(This began as a simple endcap on the MIGS roundup post, but the post quickly became too long and lopsided for that.)

While it's tough to ever assign a running theme to an entire conference, I did feel that there was a bit of an undercurrent running though a number of the Montreal International Game Summit talks I covered, about the need to expand the expressive or creative possibilities of the medium. I may be reading that into more talks simply because it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately.

If you're reading this, you probably love games. I certainly do, but I've been thinking about what makes games important to me, versus what makes books or music or film important to me. I think I might be most interested in the formal and design aspects of games more than those other things, partially because the way my career path has gone means I spend so much time thinking about that. It's also just exciting to be here to witness the evolution of a creative form so early in its existence. The theory and creative side of games is going through so much more creativity and discovery than the theory of those other forms, which are much better established and understood.

But there are still some parts of my life that games don't address that well. They do the "fun" thing well, and they give me a lot to think about, but they rarely speak to me the same way a wonderful novel, film, or album does. I don't as frequently feel that I've genuinely realized something about myself or my world in the same way I do when I read Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, watch Mad Men, or listen to The Who's Quadrophenia.

That doesn't mean I don't get creatively excited when playing games. That happens all the time, and it's great. I love it. But, at least for me, that excitement is more often related to the exploration of game design and the video game medium than it is related to broader human revelation. It's obviously easy for me to say things like this; it doesn't take much to throw stones. And it is certainly true that (fairly randomly) chose examples of other works that were created much later in their forms' history than would even be possible with games now. (Although on a personal level, I think I could choose a number of films that are more historically equivalent in that respect.)

But the reason I bring this up is because I think games are certainly capable of more. I think games have the possibility of speaking to us as people, not just as gamers, in the same way a film by Scorsese or Bergman or Welles or Kurosawa or the Coen brothers can speak to us as people, not just as film buffs; in the same way The Beatles or Beethoven or Charles Mingus or the Flaming Lips or John Adams speak to us as people, not just as analysts of music theory; in the same way Vonnegut or Nabokov or Shakespeare or Orwell or Hammett speak to us as people, not just as appreciators of literary prowess.

Maybe some of you reading this would claim games are already there. I wouldn't actually disagree. For me, there have already been a few amazing games that speak to me beyond triggering my "fun" receptors or engaging my interest in design. And obviously there's no objective measure of this; I would never presume to decide which games have achieved this or haven't achieved it for anyone who isn't me.

As Hecker suggested, though, that crucial consideration of the "why" of game development -- along with related questions like "What are you trying to say to people?" or "What influenced this?" or "Are you trying to say anything at all?" -- seems to be less important in this medium than it is elsewhere. That's understandable, since "fun" can be pursued for its own benefit, and to great and impressive effect. Surely we've got that covered by this point, though, and there's bandwidth for more.

Smith's discussion of whether it would be possible to make a "not fun" game is also probably less important than the question of whether we can make games which don't explicitly put "fun" at the top of their list of paramount goals. (I imagine that, outside of the context of his directed thought-experiment, he would agree.) It seems as though, through iterative design and decades of progress, we have -- at least to a reasonable extent -- figured out how to iterate until we've found some fun.

I'm sure directors like Scorsese or writers like Vonnegut are plenty concerned that their works turn out "fun" (or whatever equivalent synonym you want to apply to their forms), but I suspect they have never focused so single-mindedly on that goal that they strip away any elements that aren't All Fun, All The Time. They have other goals they are trying to achieve with their work that serve some higher purpose, and their skill and experience as craftsmen allows them to keep "fun" (or whatever) as one consideration, rather than as the one consideration.

Particularly right now, as the industry becomes even more risk-averse than ever in a period of declining revenues, maybe this isn't on everyone's mind. But I think game developers who actively have something to say and want to express it through games don't necessarily need to engage in particularly risky or experimental design to work towards this goal. Intent seems like a great first step.

I have something to say on this, but I need time to formulate my thoughts. I figured that having a thread on it would help. I hope I'm not one of 10 people who create this thread at the exact same time.

Edited by PiratePooAndHisBattleship

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Hi!

I think about this a lot too. As I've said, enough times that I'm starting to feel like a broken record, the biggest single limiting factor on the expressive range of most games today is that so many - even the most magnificently constructed of them - are about the Shooting or Stabbing of Faces, on both the metaphor ("Pretend you're shooting people in the face") and simulation ("We model guns, the bullets that shoot out of them and the faces they are shot into") layers.

So the range of human experience such a game has access to is something like:

- With what shall we shoot these faces?

- How - in what specific manner - shall we shoot them?

- (In certain games such as Deus Ex that highly value choice) Whose faces should we shoot?

- (Only recently) Why do we shoot these faces?

Movies and books have plenty of people getting shot in the face, but all but the most vacuous of them use that as the turning point of some social or emotional dynamic - the final confrontation between the hero and the bad guy, a heist gone wrong, etc. The social or emotional dynamic, and the way the actors carry it out, are what keep people watching.

If we make games that model those dynamics instead of the usual gun->bullet->face dynamics, we will have access to a broader range of human experience. Full stop. People outside the bubble will start to take notice. And those of us inside the bubble who care will feel a little better about the future of our medium.

The reason creators miss the mark so often with this stuff is because there's a huge difference between making the interactivity of your game about these things (which is quite hard) and simply sprinkling it everywhere in the cutscenes (which is quite easy). David Cage thinks he's making a game about serious emotional stuff, but he's actually making a game about mashing a button to mess with a toaster or to keep from getting strangled. Maybe it'll be a decent take on that, we'll see. But it's not going to be about being a single father or being a drug addict in the way that (legitimacy touchstone incoming) Braid was about consequence and regret.

There are two big forces that keep us from this, and they plague us from opposite directions.

The first is, as I said, the artistic and craft challenges of tackling a fundamentally different subject matter, and to an extent a different raison d'etre, than we're used to. We have to step out of our game design comfort zone.

The second is the industry's resistance to the prospect of doing that. Breaking ground in a fairly unexplored set of core mechanics means failing many times until you discover what works well. The truly powerful people in the industry won't tolerate that because it's not sound business, and gamers won't tolerate it because on the whole they're very resistant to most change and see it as zero-sum, subtracting from the huge mass of established stuff that they like.

Chris Hecker can talk about this with a bit of confidence because his new game seems to be about modeling social dynamics in a simple way. He's also right that indie games are better set up in some ways to lay the early groundwork, to fail interestingly and instructively in a lower risk environment, so that fewer creative directors on AAA projects have to drive their 20 million dollar party bus off a cliff to find that same new ground. However, Hecker's also right that indies can't be the only ones doing it.

The first part is mostly up to game designers. Part of the reason I'm such an indie cheerleader and weekend tinkerer is because I want to be one of the first to get there. And I do so love saying "toldja so".

The second is at least partly up to gamers. If we can show the rest of the industry that there is a market for Absolutely Nothing To Do With Face-Shooting Simulator 2010, and Contemplative Indie Rumination On Things Besides Face-Stabbing, then the influence of those ideas within the culture of games will improve, and more creators will try something different, and eventually we'll have some new kinds of games to play. I'd like that! Would you?

First, though, we have to wade into the flames of popular scorn and creative failure, and think about new things for a while, as we slowly wear out the semicolon keys on our keyboards.

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Well pretty much as I see it, a game needs not to be fun exactly, but to compel you to continue until the end or until time you see fit to finish playing in a game which has no proper ending, or it is a failure to a point. of course this compulsion could well be seen as fun, but in a sense it isn't true fun, it is something else.

If a film, album or novel isn't compelling then it is usually a bad thing. If I don't care about any aspect of the subject then I wouldn't consider it a success, which of course is subjective, so I could not comment on another's perspective without first understanding theirs.

Although the obligatory tag of "game" implies that it will be fun, if any sort of non video game is not fun then it is not a success, at all. So maybe the use of the given tag is at fault here. Although the use and meanings of words can and often does change, but game is one which I highly doubt will change to something almost entirely different. Any game for me has to have a decent fun to time ratio (although no figure is applicable) or it won't get the time it wants, which is pretty much why I am done with Catan.

I cannot put my thoughts together into what I am thinking properly so I might try again in the next few days. These are just initial thoughts.

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It's not like Chris is the first person to say this, heck I'm pretty sure it's not the first time Chris himself has said this, this just Chris adding his voice to an already sizeable chorus.

That's fine and all but, beyond the fact that I agree, I'm not sure there's much for me to usefully add.

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This subject has been on my mind a lot too, for a long time. I love games and feel very passionately about them, but as I got older, the fulfillment I got out of them diminished. My problem with games today is, in a nutshell, I grew up; games didn't. Games that hit me on a deeper level, they come along very rarely and still don't hit on a level that is to my satisfaction. I want more out of gaming as a medium and I know it's possible.

The first is, as I said, the artistic and craft challenges of tackling a fundamentally different subject matter, and to an extent a different raison d'etre, than we're used to. We have to step out of our game design comfort zone.

The second is the industry's resistance to the prospect of doing that. Breaking ground in a fairly unexplored set of core mechanics means failing many times until you discover what works well. The truly powerful people in the industry won't tolerate that because it's not sound business, and gamers won't tolerate it because on the whole they're very resistant to most change and see it as zero-sum, subtracting from the huge mass of established stuff that they like.

I agree with this. However, complicating things is that the industry seems to be stuck in a large hole that they dug entirely themselves. I have thought long and hard on how to formulate my opinion on this, but Chris Crawford said it much more eloquently then I possibly could at this point in time:

Compounding the problem is the approbation that the industry bestows upon such products. A prudent industry would treat sleazy products with harsh disdain, but the games industry cannot conceal its delight in sleaze. Grand Theft Auto III won industry awards despite the damage it did to the industry image.

Industry insiders protest that they are merely offering the players what they want; they are not imposing values on players but responding to values already inculcated in youths by a sick society. This is self-serving circumlocution. The games industry is not passively responding to values imposed upon it by a ruthless marketplace; it has selected its own audience, driving away most who do not revel in blood-soaked killing. By offering such games, the industry has attracted the kind of audience that demands them-- thereby reinforcing the cycle.

Source: Chris Crawford on Game Design, 2003

This cycle is the biggest problem to overcome. Further complicating matters, I think, is that the people making games today are the same people that have enjoyed playing these narrowly focused games since their childhood and wanting to make more of the same.

So much iteration has happened on this very base form of interaction (violence), that we've gotten really good at it. Meanwhile, we're leaving a more social means of interaction completely underdeveloped. I'm not saying there is no room for violence, but it has gotten to the point for me where I feel that enough is enough. It's cliché, it's limiting and we need some pushback on that front.

If we want games to be be meaningful on a deeper level-- that also speaks to a mass market-- then I share with you one of the most important things I learned from Crawford and something I truly believe in: Games should be about people, not things.

Hope I didn't overload anyone's pretentiousness-o-meter.

:owned:

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Vonnegut in particular was a very purposeful writer, or at least, taught that in his creative writing classes. I think the quote in one of his books was "If you show the audience a loaded gun in chapter one, it better have gone off by the third".

Engaging might be a better term than fun; it's at least genre neutral.

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Chris, why the hell did you have to write the first 8 paragraphs of this article? The last ones were good and needed expanding , but really : "Games can be more" & "The Why is important"? Revolutionnary :shifty:

It's bullshit for you to say that games can be more when games are more and when the fight for diversity has been over for quite a while. Maybe not in the mainstream market (and that I would argue), but who cares?

Explaining what's wrong in the Video game industry has been done to death, won't you rather talk about the people and the games that managed to create pieces that you're enthusiastic about instead of game design philosophies that disappoints you? "The Why is important says Hecker", Chris Hecker who's been working on the technical side for years, who's saying something designers have known for years but might only rarely get to answer when billions are involved ?

Why do you go on about books, music, theater when you don't even name or discuss the games that you said made you're enjoyment go beyond fun ?

People make games for certain reasons. Some of these reasons we might find ballsy, engaging, inspirational and some we don't understand or find uncompelling; yes I also find the why very important and worthy of being developed but some designer and gamers don't. And that's ok - whatever works for them - so get on with; please stop spending your writing and analysis talent on things you wish weren't and start championing the people, practical processes and games you feel might lead to the games you wish for. There's not a single positive game reference in your article, what's up with that ?

I'm looking to you to make me discover jewels or alternative vision of the medium, not to confirm that everything is shit. Brooker's already doing that.

Also, if you don't understand what I mean, please think

as a companion piece.

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Chris, why the hell did you have to write the first 8 paragraphs of this article? The last ones were good and needed expanding , but really : "Games can be more" & "The Why is important"? Revolutionnary :shifty:

It's bullshit for you to say that games can be more when games are more and when the fight for diversity has been over for quite a while. Maybe not in the mainstream market (and that I would argue), but who cares?

Well, I care. Vonnegut and Scorsese and Eco and the Coens are mainstream creators. Their works sell to millions upon millions upon millions of people. They resonate with a very wide audience. That, to me, is illustrative.

Explaining what's wrong in the Video game industry has been done to death, won't you rather talk about the people and the games that managed to create pieces that you're enthusiastic about instead of game design philosophies that disappoints you? "The Why is important says Hecker", Chris Hecker who's been working on the technical side for years, who's saying something designers have known for years but might only rarely get to answer when billions are involved ?

Why do you go on about books, music, theater when you don't even name or discuss the games that you said made you're enjoyment go beyond fun ?

Because there aren't many. There are games I think are extremely impressive and fascinating and worthy of discussion, but as I said in the piece, usually I find them interesting in those ways as pieces of game design, rather than as expression that is genuinely meaningful to my life. There have been no games that I can think of that have caused me genuine self-reflection along the lines of the works of Vonnegut, or Eco, or Welles.

People make games for certain reasons. Some of these reasons we might find ballsy, engaging, inspirational and some we don't understand or find uncompelling; yes I also find the why very important and worthy of being developed but some designer and gamers don't. And that's ok - whatever works for them - so get on with; please stop spending your writing and analysis talent on things you wish weren't and start championing the people, practical processes and games you feel might lead to the games you wish for. There's not a single positive game reference in your article, what's up with that ?

I could add some in, but I can't think of any that fit the criteria of what I'm describing.

I'm looking to you to make me discover jewels or alternative vision of the medium, not to confirm that everything is shit. Brooker's already doing that.

That's fair enough, but hopefully you realize that you telling me what you're looking to me to do isn't really much different than me stating aloud what I'm looking to the games industry to do. I haven't seen Brooker's thing and have no legal way to do so, so I can't really address it.

Also, if you don't understand what I mean, please think
as a companion piece.

Like I said in the piece, I recognize that this is easy for me to say. I spend a lot of my visible time on the internet discussing games I think are exciting and cool. But it's not my responsibility to do nothing but that. It would be ridiculous to say critics simply can't criticize.

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There have been no games that I can think of that have caused me genuine self-reflection along the lines of the works of Vonnegut, or Eco, or Welles.

Passage did it for me, but then I'm easily impressed.

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I think that even though a critic is pretty much entitled to do anything he wants, one of the core fundamental would be that he'd judge a game on what it pretends to be vs what he is. You cannot criticize Serious Sam for not being a deep reflected experience because it never pretends to be.

But in any case, I think of you more as an analyst than a critic, for what it's worth ... so I'm not looking to you for THE way or what to think, but to share a positive opinion and present me with an analysis of something successful. It's not a duty or a responsibility of yours, just something which I find very though provoking when it happens; so I'm asking for more. For instance, I don't agree with you at all on Far Cry 2, but what you said about it opened a bunch of venues of reflection for me.

Also, if I understand the predicament you're in, the best cure would be to simply start designing instead of throwing a message in a bottle to the industry. I'm not saying "stop jabbering, do something useful", I'm saying that obviously, you know where you want to end up, you've got a vast knowledge of the tools at your disposal gameplay wise, you're versed in other media as well and if, as you say, you're already spending your day deconstructing and analyzing game designs .... then you're 90% of a designer. Plus, since you've got a clear purpose, you're more likely to end up with something functional than a bunch of professional designers out there. (no offense)

I might get completely beside the point but the disillusionment of the article vs. the clear vision you seem to have ... if I had an idea of something I want to achieve and it wasn't already out there and I felt it was important then I could not stand not trying something (even theoretically) and communicate on it if I felt it could be useful.

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I think that even though a critic is pretty much entitled to do anything he wants, one of the core fundamental would be that he'd judge a game on what it pretends to be vs what he is. You cannot criticize Serious Sam for not being a deep reflected experience because it never pretends to be.

That's why I didn't call out any specific games. But rather than being a reason not to criticize Serious Sam or any other single specific game, that exact justification tends to be, either deliberately or inadvertently, used as a broad deflection of criticism on the part of the entire mainstream game industry.

But in any case, I think of you more as an analyst than a critic, for what it's worth ... so I'm not looking to you for THE way or what to think, but to share a positive opinion and present me with an analysis of something successful. It's not a duty or a responsibility of yours, just something which I find very though provoking when it happens; so I'm asking for more. For instance, I don't agree with you at all on Far Cry 2, but what you said about it opened a bunch of venues of reflection for me.

I probably won't stop doing that, but it only really happens when a game compels me to do so.

Also, if I understand the predicament you're in, the best cure would be to simply start designing instead of throwing a message in a bottle to the industry. I'm not saying "stop jabbering, do something useful", I'm saying that obviously, you know where you want to end up, you've got a vast knowledge of the tools at your disposal gameplay wise, you're versed in other media as well and if, as you say, you're already spending your day deconstructing and analyzing game designs .... then you're 90% of a designer. Plus, since you've got a clear purpose, you're more likely to end up with something functional than a bunch of professional designers out there. (no offense)

I might get completely beside the point but the disillusionment of the article vs. the clear vision you seem to have ... if I had an idea of something I want to achieve and it wasn't already out there and I felt it was important then I could not stand not trying something (even theoretically) and communicate on it if I felt it could be useful.

This is surely correct. My issue is that I don't know if I actually do have anything to say. My entire attitude on this is fairly self-defeating in that respect. I love experiencing works made by people who have something to say, and I frequently find I have things to say about those things, but I don't know if I myself have any observations that stand up entirely on their own.

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Forgive me if this has been said a thousand times before, and much better than I can, but I do really wonder if people in general would even WANT a challenging game experience?

I will openly admit that I may not be the greatest authority here, as I am pretty unexposed to mainstream culture. I haven't had television in well over ten years and I don't watch movies often, particularly not major blockbuster types. It seems to me in my observations, however that "challenging" seems to be pretty under-represented in whatever the highest grossing films/most popular TV shows seem to be. Instead, it all seems to be rehashing the same old routine over and over again. Look at how many old TV shows seem to be being remade. I think the film equvalents go without saying.

People seem to be pretty comfortable in this space, and things that come up and differ from that don't appear to go over well with the average Joe. An old housemate of mine was perfectly content with anything that involved cars, explosions or boobs but anything that veered too far into the realm of thought-provoking was promptly labeled as something very rude. Sadly, I think that he's a shining example of mainstream (mostly male) interests.

Without going on and on stating the obvious here, I'm sure that pretty much everyone on this forum agrees and would love to be challenged by games in this way. I really don't know, however, if there's enough of a market for this type of experience in general. As a result I'm not sure that we can expect to see games of this kind often. Just like a really great film or a really great book is pretty rare, if you consider the volume of what comes out, gaming experiences that really break the mold are few and far between, if you've ever had that experience at all. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that I can really see that changing anytime soon/ever either.

Edited by Fuzzy Lobster

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So much iteration has happened on this very base form of interaction (violence), that we've gotten really good at it. Meanwhile, we're leaving a more social means of interaction completely underdeveloped. I'm not saying there is no room for violence, but it has gotten to the point for me where I feel that enough is enough. It's cliché, it's limiting and we need some pushback on that front.

If we want games to be be meaningful on a deeper level-- that also speaks to a mass market-- then I share with you one of the most important things I learned from Crawford and something I truly believe in: Games should be about people, not things.

Chris Crawford frustrates me these days. He was a total hero of mine years back, when he was much more of a lone voice in the wilderness. Now, far more people have come around to some of his key points yet he's still quite dismissive and focused on problems, rather than solutions. His life's work has ended up being some combination of overambitious and misguided - he wanted to make a single game that did some of the narrative modeling stuff within a specific premise, but got sidetracked for more than a decade making an engine with which you could make 1000 such games. That's a classic development mis-step, never make an engine when you just want to make a game!

It's all just kind of sad. I really hope he ends up with something salvageable from the whole adventure.

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Because there aren't many. There are games I think are extremely impressive and fascinating and worthy of discussion, but as I said in the piece, usually I find them interesting in those ways as pieces of game design, rather than as expression that is genuinely meaningful to my life. There have been no games that I can think of that have caused me genuine self-reflection along the lines of the works of Vonnegut, or Eco, or Welles.

Understandable.

For an alternate approach, then, what kinds of experiences do you think this kind of game could provide that is absent from current offerings? What parts of human experience do you suspect games could speak to but don't currently? While you don't have any working examples, are there small elements from games that seem to offer a glimmer of this?

Often I try to think of it in terms of what's there now, and where I'd like to go, and strive towards a working reality in the middle.

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Forgive me if this has been said a thousand times before, and much better than I can, but I do really wonder if people in general would even WANT a challenging game experience?

That my friend is called progress. On one hand you can stay where you are and perfect and practice the things you know, on the other you can try to move forward.

Most indie game designers try to move forward, that is how drawings on a wall became art, how accounting tablets became litterature and how filmed theatre became movies.

On the piece itself, I would be interested to know what game you're talking about Chris

I wouldn't actually disagree. For me, there have already been a few amazing games that speak to me beyond triggering my "fun" receptors or engaging my interest in design.

Because I think that games have a different way to talk to us.

There have been no games that I can think of that have caused me genuine self-reflection along the lines of the works of Vonnegut, or Eco, or Welles.

My opinion is it's because you cannot think of a game as a different entity while playing, the whole Ebert reflection is about that. Games are lived through and not read about, therefore you are the narrator, the writer and in a way, the author of your playthrough. That means, when games try to talk to us, they do so during cutscenes, to talk to us through a game, one would have to consider talking to himself while designing.

You would like games to "talk" to you, well they can't, they can only make you talk to yourself while playing.

In that sense, even Braid failed to talk to me because it was talking and I was listening. Yes, it was books and not cutscenes, but I did not hear myself.

As you are one with the narration, either the game makes you step out of it or it makes you say something you did not know was in you. For that, it'd have to be a game in which you don't care about the world as a system but are immersed in it.

That is my take on things right now.

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Chris Crawford frustrates me these days. He was a total hero of mine years back, when he was much more of a lone voice in the wilderness. Now, far more people have come around to some of his key points yet he's still quite dismissive and focused on problems, rather than solutions. His life's work has ended up being some combination of overambitious and misguided - he wanted to make a single game that did some of the narrative modeling stuff within a specific premise, but got sidetracked for more than a decade making an engine with which you could make 1000 such games. That's a classic development mis-step, never make an engine when you just want to make a game!

It's all just kind of sad. I really hope he ends up with something salvageable from the whole adventure.

I absolutely know what you mean. To me he is someone I greatly respect, who I listen to when he has something to say. After all, he's been wrapping his head around a lot of problems for a lot longer than, likely, all of us have.

But I understand your frustration and I think I share some of those same feelings. Last I read, things weren't going too well to the point where he is considering licensing his tech for use in games (something he was previously opposed to). Hope it works out for him.

You would like games to "talk" to you, well they can't, they can only make you talk to yourself while playing.

I'm not sure I agree with that, but then, after reading your post over a couple of times, I'm not entirely sure I understand your idea either. If you could elaborate a bit more?

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That my friend is called progress. On one hand you can stay where you are and perfect and practice the things you know, on the other you can try to move forward.

Most indie game designers try to move forward, that is how drawings on a wall became art, how accounting tablets became litterature and how filmed theatre became movies.

I completely agree. I also think that I and most other people on this forum are very positive toward changes that would increase what we get out of games. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that most consumers aren't as receptive to new experiences, perhaps especially more emotional ones. As a result, I feel that progress in this direction may be limited since it's not likely to be as profitable as another zombie face-smashing game.

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My opinion is it's because you cannot think of a game as a different entity while playing, the whole Ebert reflection is about that. Games are lived through and not read about, therefore you are the narrator, the writer and in a way, the author of your playthrough. That means, when games try to talk to us, they do so during cutscenes, to talk to us through a game, one would have to consider talking to himself while designing.

You would like games to "talk" to you, well they can't, they can only make you talk to yourself while playing.

In that sense, even Braid failed to talk to me because it was talking and I was listening. Yes, it was books and not cutscenes, but I did not hear myself.

As you are one with the narration, either the game makes you step out of it or it makes you say something you did not know was in you. For that, it'd have to be a game in which you don't care about the world as a system but are immersed in it.

That is my take on things right now.

That is incredibly eloquently put. I have to say, I believe that's one of the more coherent and interesting views on the way in which a game should be able to impact you emotionally. It's the kind of thing I've thought for a while, but you said it far better than I would have. Well done, sir.

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That my friend is called progress. On one hand you can stay where you are and perfect and practice the things you know, on the other you can try to move forward.

Exactly, it's the same with almost every other if not all other forms of media: plenty of films are almost exactly the same. where as there are other films which are hard to watch, because of there subject matter, but we persevere with there being something else that encourages us to continue watching. This is of course not to say that that which is different has to be difficult to watch, it is just a link to the article, in what is probably a fairly contrived way. In some ways a few games have been difficult to play, but not in the fact which they are challenging, but there is a barrier which is not easy if even possible to overcome. To my knowledge there hasn't been a game with a subject which fits with this.

My opinion is it's because you cannot think of a game as a different entity while playing, the whole Ebert reflection is about that. Games are lived through and not read about, therefore you are the narrator, the writer and in a way, the author of your playthrough. That means, when games try to talk to us, they do so during cutscenes, to talk to us through a game, one would have to consider talking to himself while designing.

You would like games to "talk" to you, well they can't, they can only make you talk to yourself while playing.

In that sense, even Braid failed to talk to me because it was talking and I was listening. Yes, it was books and not cutscenes, but I did not hear myself.

As you are one with the narration, either the game makes you step out of it or it makes you say something you did not know was in you. For that, it'd have to be a game in which you don't care about the world as a system but are immersed in it.

That is my take on things right now.

This is why games are interesting to me, you are a part of the story, they don't need to tell you everything, only imply it. You put your personality into the character, with a game telling you how you should feel, I feel that that is not a way of progressing the medium of games. Which is why Half life 2 seemed such a success to me, I put my personality into Gordon, they explained little about how you should feel, but what they encouraged, particularly with Alyx, you had something you care about, despite it being fictional. This is one aspect of films and games which I highly encourage.

Overall to me it seems that games should put you into a character with little personality or agenda, encouraging you to further the narative, with the main characters being NPCs. Breath of Fire IV does this pretty well too, if any of you have played it. Of course this isn't to say I don't like games in which your character has a personality, when I love a lot of those that fit into this exact pidgeon hole.

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I completely agree. I also think that I and most other people on this forum are very positive toward changes that would increase what we get out of games. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that most consumers aren't as receptive to new experiences, perhaps especially more emotional ones. As a result, I feel that progress in this direction may be limited since it's not likely to be as profitable as another zombie face-smashing game.
I completely agree. I also think that I and most other people on this forum are very positive toward changes that would increase what we get out of games. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that most consumers aren't as receptive to new experiences, perhaps especially more emotional ones. As a result, I feel that progress in this direction may be limited since it's not likely to be as profitable as another zombie face-smashing game.

I feel there are three behaviors towards progress:

•Those who encourage it and don't mind feeling uneasy while accomplishing or trying something new.

•Those who openly encourage it but would not put themselves on the line for it, some probably because they feel progress is the intelligent way to go, some because they want to pretend.

•Those who try to demonstrate that progress is evil, in a sense they have a perfectly valid point to defend there, sadly most of them are complete retards.

So I'd guess you could find people in the two first categories on this forum, mostly in the first one. People willing to pay (agreed, it's a small risk) for game that are trying things.

Overall to me it seems that games should put you into a character with little personality or agenda, encouraging you to further the narative, with the main characters being NPCs. Breath of Fire IV does this pretty well too, if any of you have played it. Of course this isn't to say I don't like games in which your character has a personality, when I love a lot of those that fit into this exact pidgeon hole.

In Limoges last year I was at a game theory conference and I was talking with Bernard Perron, a very smart person girl whose name I sadly don't remember and Sébastien Genvo about just that, is it better to have little personality into the character to make room for the player to narrate or is it better on the contrary to have a character with strong motives to make it easier for the player to get into the story.

Both points were argued and well defended, I was on the "more player" side. According to the instanciation models of Etienne Armand Amato, either is valid as long as the lubricant between "more player" or "more game" is there (ie the Gameplay).

Well done, sir.

Thank you very much.

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The thing with games is that provide an arena for the player to experience things in rather than a direct static one. This means that the player is very much responsible for message they take from the game.

The other thing is that games require interaction which means that they have to provide some kind of incentive/ positive feedback to keep the player interested. This means that setting up any kind of negative experience causes all kinds of problems.

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I think about this all the fucking time, but I don't have the creative vision or the skills necessary to make a game. There are so many barriers to what we want, one of them being that "we" in this case constitutes possibly less than five percent of the gaming audience. I even made up a name for people on the internet who know about gaming but just want to have fun all the time: "hardcore traditionalists". It's not necessarily a negative label - Jeff Gerstmann personifies it and I think he's cool, but a lot of forum assholes are exactly that.

For the last month or so I've had the first few paragraphs of my next GSW column down but I haven't had time to finish it and I discuss something like this. It's about Shenmue (a game Gerstmann hates), and why being actively not fun for about nine tenths of the experience makes it great. It's totally flawed obviously in terms of flow and narrative and several other factors (the design ethic may be immoral in that it's just leading you on an endless stream of minor Macguffans), but it's one of the few examples of a game that isn't trying to amuse you constantly.

There are more out there, though. Horror games, for example, aren't often much fun on a moment to moment basis. Resident Evil, up to and possibly including 4, is fucking terrible in terms of "fun factor", but you play it because it's atmospheric or scary or whatever.

All of those tens for Gears, Killzone and Uncharted (all number twos) pissed me off, because those games are just constantly slapping you in the face with "ISN'T THIS SO MUCH FUN! KABOOM! WOOO! FUCK YEEEEAH!" and it feels so fucking patronising. Yes, they're fine within the scope of what they're trying to do - well, maybe not Killzone - but that's not nearly interesting or fresh or meaningful enough to be worthy of a top score. Gears 2 got on my nerves as well for having the cheek to make you give a shit about Dom's wife. I don't watch action films for that and I don't play Gears of War for that. If they know their limitations and operate within those, fine, be as fun as you want, I just won't bother playing all but an elite few of you. If they're pretending they're all artsy-fartsy and the next minute you stick a fucking chainsaw up a guy's ass, they can suck my balls.

Then you get games that aren't necessarily fun on a fundamental (fundamental!) mechanical level but do something incredible with narrative, or art direction, or atmosphere, or themes, or mechanics, or morality or any number of design decisions - some indies (Glum Buster, fucking go play it), Far Cry 2, possibly Half-Life, parts of the Hocking Splinter Cell games, parts of GTA IV, Ico and to an extent Shadow of the Colossus, the gunship and nuke levels in Call of Duty 4, Another World (though crushing difficulty hampers it), Stalker, bits of Metal Gears 1-3 and a few others that include some culturally relevant or artistically worthwhile content. None until now have been faultless, it must be remembered. The entire adventure genre, in fact, isn't "fun" per se. It can be funny, but you play them to advance a storyline or experience a world or characters, even if all you're doing is clicking around the screen.

If we're being literal, I could include a lot of strategy games, fighting games and - gasp - JRPGs, though the first two are more about the long term satisfaction of beating an opponent and mastering a system and the latter rarely does anything well. I liked what I played of Lost Odyssey because it seemed like it had really well captured a world and storyline using this fucking ancient template. I like Final Fantasy VII because I find the world utterly fascinating, it's so rich and interesting, but running around and fighting random battles is by no means fun.

Additionally, I have way more respect for games that are fun in a satisfying way than these big blockbuster types - stuff like Trine, Noby Noby Boy or Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. The player creates his or her own fun because they're given the agency and tools to do so (to varying degrees) and they're all so satisfying for that.

I still wince when I hear podcasters go on about how something was "not fun" and therefore worthless or "super fucking fun" and therefore clearly great. Even you were occasionally guilty of a mild form of that, Chris.

Here are the main reasons we don't have many of the kind of games we're looking for.

1. Gamers - mostly composed of douchebags who like the same shit wrapped in different packaging despite claiming to yearn for originality

2. Designers - high barrier to entry means they're all serious gamers already and therefore learned everything from "just for fun" games

- 2.1. Obligation - to, therefore, make games fun for twitch audience

3. Other media - being already developed

4. Film specifically - for Tarantino and Aliens, "cinematic" experiences

5. "Maturity" - Dante's Inferno

6. Publishers - they want money

7. Games journalists/writers/critics - see "2."

8. The internet - for being an unbalanced hive of shit

9. The term "game" - implies both "fun" and a rule structure in which an opponent is involved, but we're stuck with it despite its complete inadequacy

I don't watch Schindler's List and expect fucking action scenes, you know. It's compelling, yes, but because it makes you think, it makes you cry, it makes you appreciate the fucking horrendous stuff going on using cinema's strengths as a storytelling medium. Games are able to do this, but nobody quite knows how. We're treated as part-observer, part-participant, and that means it's difficult in the first place to relate to games. Then the publisher starts breathing down your neck, then you get lazy or run out of money. Suddenly, your amazing first-person narrative experience that was like an entire level seventeen is a dumb shooter which is "fun" because you shoot a thing and a guy's head gets blown off.

Any more? Am I completely wrong? Bit rambling, missed out some probably important stuff and I might have taken a shit on a lot of people accidentally. I should put a massive disclaimer on this - didn't mean to have such a go at game designers, you guys try.

Of fuck a thousand words.

tl;dr

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Oh, good lord there is a lot to read here.

Just to touch up on a couple of points:

• With a video game, the creator may not have the power to put thoughts and actions in the mouths and hands of the player, but they do have the power to put together a place for the player to explore and establish some verbs for the player to apply upon the world. Currently the most popular verbs are gun, rifle, bazooka, hand grenade and the multipurpose use, applied exclusively upon buttons, levers and NPCs.

The game can be a highly curated experience with a lot of verbs, like an adventure game, or something looser with fewer verbs like a FPS. For some added complexity verbs may be joined by objects that have their own verbs; units in a RTS, for example. While the player has faculty over the action, the creator is still needed to set the stage. This is where the auteur lies. It is no less powerful a position than the poet or the playwright or the sculptor has. The only difference is that the audience has more of a hand in looking at things. And the creator is the architect and decorator and giver of powers. It is a far more nebulous kind of control, but it is not an irrelevant or useless kind of control.

• I don't buy the hypothetical claim a "negative" experience cannot be done in the game. Most of what we think here when we say "negative" amounts to GAME OVER BECAUSE YOU DIED kind of scenarios, where the designer penalizes the player arbitrarily. A musician can choose to have ear-piercing spectrum tape noise sampled in the song. That is a similar kind of thing that would alienate listeners.

There can be a reason for doing both, but they are not any kind of roadblock to making games or songs that do interesting things.

• Chrickakes (Chris+Nick+Jake portmanteau anyone?) critiquing and deconstructing FarCry 2 is a more exciting example of looking towards the future of game design than these kinds of loose and non-specific This Shit is Neat, Yo kinds of articles that devolve into Fun vs. Art arguments.

People who don't care for the FarCry 2 discussion, who see it as pretentious drivel, will not be drafted into thinking about neat things to do with games, while people who do care are already there with you. I don't think this was necessarily the case five or ten years ago, but it definitely applies in 2010.

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I'm not sure I agree with that, but then, after reading your post over a couple of times, I'm not entirely sure I understand your idea either. If you could elaborate a bit more?

Oops, sorry I skipped that, I would gladly elaborate but I'm not sure what is it that you don't get or what is ambiguous in the point of view I propose ?

1. Gamers - mostly composed of douchebags who like the same shit wrapped in different packaging despite claiming to yearn for originality

Well, you can call that bunch "people" as in "the majority of humans in the "North"" that, no matter what they consume, do not give a fuck

2. Designers - high barrier to entry means they're all serious gamers already and therefore learned everything from "just for fun" games

You're not being a douche there, it's pretty true in my experience that some game designers / level designers don't even have to be forced to make the same game, they would do it on their own.

- 2.1. Obligation - to, therefore, make games fun for twitch audience

I feel there is no real obligation… You could make any game really and sell it to people,if it's good, it'll sell, I'm sure Mirror's Edge 2 would (I don't know if it's been cancel in the EA meltdown) oversell it's predecessor as is the case with AC2. You just need time.

3. Other media - being already developed

Well, I don't see how that stands in the way of developping better games :)

5. "Maturity" - Dante's Inferno

I laughed there.

6. Publishers - they want money

They want not only money but SURE and GUARANTEED and BIG money, so no matter if the benefits are different (I feel that Braid made 2 billion times it's cost and MW2 or AC2 having huuuuge teams working on them made less in terms of profitability but I don't have solid numbers on that)

7. Games journalists/writers/critics - see "2."

Or they are the leftovers from 2 for some :P

9. The term "game" - implies both "fun" and a rule structure in which an opponent is involved, but we're stuck with it despite its complete inadequacy

Nope, not fun in game's definition ;)

The most accepted in the theory fields I work with is

An activity that is

  • Free as in chosen
  • Separated from space and time
  • Uncertain, the issue is not knowable in advance
  • Improductive
  • Ruled
  • Fictional

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