Weekend Discussion
ShackBlog: Featuring the Not Ready For Front Page Players
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geedeck
replyDo you think gaming will ever have it's "Titanic"? Where a piece of gaming reaches the mass market, and resides firmly in our current consciousness, is impossible to miss and finally puts to rest the notion of gaming as anything but mainstream.
Do you think this could happen? If so, how? If no, why not?-
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WoW by far in away.
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So basically an Ico MMORPG?
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Yeah, that's totally one way of putting it. It wouldn't have to be that, but it's a good example. And with Moores law and such, eventually every cell phone is going to be a rather capable computer, so at some point everyone will have a capable client machine unlike today where we have to buy a computer/console.
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Titanic had emotional resonation?
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I always felt Titanic was Jurassic Park for girls. Don't get me wrong, I liked Titanic but its just special effects porn.
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And James Cameron made it, people must have been expecting Terminators and Aliens to appear and have suck that ship or something.
He pretty much went sea obsessed after that movie.
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JURASSIC PARK was jurassic park for girls >:(
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Jurassic Park 3 was for girls, as it was wimpy and didn't have enough blood and guts.
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jurassic park is one of my favourite movies of all time and is one of the only movies i can watch repeatedly and not get bored.
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I played that game. God it was a pile of crap.
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Hey I found my usenet post about it.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure/msg/579fabde9af9aa75?dmode=source
And in my year in review I actually appologized for trading it to someone. I forgot about that. i must of really hated that game, more so than I remember.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg/msg/2b578deb0185479b?dmode=source
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You're high. I thought it was awesome.
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It's on boxes of Kraft mac n cheese. There are Starcraft breakfast cereals. From what I understand, there are 2 or 3 television channels dedicated to nothing *but* Starcraft.
Of course, this is all second or third-hand knowledge. Isn't there a shacker in South Korea? Can't recall the name at the moment, but he'd probably be able to provide more accurate info.-
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:(
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er theres a fuckton of gamers in their early 30s
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I don't mean to contradict you, because you're quite right, there are people playing games in their 30's, but that is not what I was talking about, and quite beside the point. What these people play, and how they play it is not at all taken into account by the ESA, and it should be.
On one hand gaming is either idle diversions like mobile games, which render gaming down to a kind of toy, which is hardly the full potential of interactive entertainment, and is certainly not going to produce a Titanic, because while the casual gaming phenomenon could become quite prevalent in the abstract no one of the casual games will ever distinguish itself enough to achieve critical mass the way a film like Titanic can.
On the other hand you have the major consoles - the 360 and the PS3. Platforms like these, and games like Halo and Call of Duty are what any future gaming Titanic would look like. These are the games that make the bulk of the bank, these are the games that have huge marketing and are gaining mainstream media exposure. These being the things you need for a Titanic. The reason these games are NOT so popular already is because they are adolescent empowerment fantasies, which is where my 15-24 comment comes from. 30 year olds may play those games, but that does not mean that most 30 year olds would think Marcus Fenix is cool enough to spend hundreds of bucks so they could play him for 10 or so hours. Once games like Gears of War become only one section of big budget
There are a couple of very specific exceptions to this. The Sims and Rock Band most notably. But these two are more fusions of casual gaming and big budget gaming rather then an evolution of the big budget, high expense title. They're games that you pick up and then forget about, they're designed to not require any high amount of time investment or effort, they're designed to be fun and then if the player wants to take that further they can. Unlike your action games or strategy games for example which have a significantly higher entry cost in both time and effort, demanding that the player learn unique skills and master them rather quickly in comparison, and then develop them over a longer period of time to derive real satisfaction, whereas you can play a few Guitar Hero songs forever on a moderate difficulty level when your friends come over and never do anything beyond that to have fun with that game. Or how everyone just cheats themselves tons of cash in Sims 2 so they can doodle around build their house and not bother about sending their family to work, like every girl I know that plays that infernal game.
Once you have a game that people want to go through from beginning to end, maybe even more then once, the way people love to watch a good film or read a good book a few times over, and those people are not predominantly male and young, and the game is not about sticking a chainsaw in some dudes face, you will have your Titanic. At this point however, games are just what comic books were back in the day, and what Anime is in Japan right now.
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the average age is 33. http://www.theesa.com/facts/gamer_data.php
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Thats rather dependent on what genre of game you are playing. I've played many adventure and even some FPS where i felt alot of emotion over something that has happened to a main character. Also there are some games i got absolutely into more than any movie, such as Red Orchestra during the UT2k3 phase. Or in Tie Fighter flying along side Vader.
I think immersion depends on blocking the entire world out and purely focusing on the game you are playing. I really, really strugle to do this with console games even with a massive plasma in my living room because there is just so much going on around me. Where as on my PC my screen is sitting right infront of my face about 40cm away and it takes up a good % of my vision, atleast much more than my tv does.
I also think controls dont need to be "realistic" like the Wiimote. They just need to be effecient and simple enough for you to forget your even using one. Again (and people will start hating me at this point) using a mouse and keyboard on my PC fucking owns any other controler in existence (for shooters atleast) because i dont think about using them its just completely natural for me. And im sure this is the same for people who are expert at gamepads, joysticks etc etc.
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This is in large part true, but there have been moments that really hit me hard, emotionally. In KOTOR, I was playing through as light-side. In the quest at that underwater city where you have to find out how some Imperial people were killed and whether the guy accused of the crime did it or not, if you investigate completely you find that he did, in fact, do it; had a good reason for doing it; and would be (iirc) executed if you were honest about your findings. I debated over what to do for several minutes; or, rather, what my character would do. Since KOTOR doesn't have the same range of alignments as AD&D with chaotic goods and lawful evils, I reluctantly decided that I would have to tell the truth. That decision, and his families wails as he was taken away, affected me emotionally much more than the average movie does.
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I think there is a certain point at which the individual player's DESIRE to be immersed becomes a pertinent factor. I have a buddy who used to tell me stories about how when playing Morrowind he would jack his intelligence up to 300 with potions, levitate himself so he could fly at supersonic speeds, and rain fiery death on all the townsfolk, laughing the whole way. I never felt the least bit of desire to so much as punch a guard in the face, much less incinerate shopkeepers (unless I wanted their goods...)
You use the example of shooting Nicolette DuClare, which is something that actually shocked me to even hear suggested.
Maybe it's because I've been involved in development and made a game or two myself, but when I play a game I feel a lot of desire to absorb it as its authors intended. So even though, as a programmer with design experience, I'm in a perfect position to know how to break the system, I'm loathe to do so because I'm not interested in testing the rules; I'm interested in seeing the world as art.
Shooting Nicolette, to me, is like hanging the Mona Lisa sideways under a blacklight "just to see what happens."-
Seconded. For me, RPG's are all about exploration, and so I'll happily do the good and the bad quests, to get all possible out of the game. That wasn't the case in Planescape Torment however. When the book asked me to sell one of my companions into slavery, I couldn't do it. It felt morally repugnant to me. Especially with say, Dakk'on.
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I've found quite the opposite in some games. Having control over the interaction is exactly what pulls me in, draws me closer to the character, especially in times of extreme tension. There is no thrill like narrowly avoiding detection by a guard in Thief while crouching in the shadows. To have him search you out and come face to face with you in the darkness, and decide it's too dark to see anything. Incredible, and nerve wracking.
It is true that being able to restart or load a game may diminish this factor but a well told story that cannot be severely adjusted will still hold its own as a medium for story telling. This doesn't apply so much to sandbox type games like the Sim's or Civilizations. -
Not to belabor the point, but I thought of another example just now.
Sometimes, even a game wherein there really IS no narrative can create an emotional investment simply through the repercussions of your own actions.
Remember Black & White? I had the giant cow, of course, and he kept eating things. Then I got a fancy new beach ball for him through one of the side quests. I played catch with him for a little bit, then went to check on something else. When I came back, no more beach ball. That goddamn cow must have eaten it! I was FURIOUS. I beat that cow within an inch of his life (and I was NEVER able to do so easily, so I had to be really mad.)
Not long after, I was gathering fish down by the beach, and what should I see? That's right. The ball. He hadn't eaten it; it had just rolled down the hill.
The guilt and remorse was soul-crushing. I had to go do something else for a while.-
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Please, don't have kids. :(
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Don't anger piggy: http://www.nflight.com/files/flashbangdevilpig.jpg !
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I was never able to beat up my cow, it made me feel bad :(
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Black & White was cooler than Black & White 2.
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Take a look at what you did to him... go on. http://www.bit-tech.net/content_images/2005/07/black_white_2_screen/bw5.jpg
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I think Lost Odyssey got it right on how thweir story is introduced portrayed and played out throughout the game.
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well yes and no. Most of the cut scenes are real time in game fashioned like fmv. Theres alot of game there. It's basically a real successor to ffx.
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But can't that incorporation of your actions make it all the more powerful? Take Starcraft for instance, I teared up when Tassadar did his thing at the end. Now I had had choices in the game, but game narrative isn't 100% player driven. And really, even if I had needed to push the W key to move the ship into a dive, it wouldn't have been as good. But that's what cutscenes are for, no?
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I think that's correct. But what that leads to is that the interaction and decision-making in games needs to be as natural and seamless as possible in order to avoid building a wall between the experience and the viewer. The act of playing a game can't be truly mainstream unless it could be almost as natural as the real world. In other words, if we had the holodeck from Star Trek, then everyone would use it. Real, complex AI is an important part of that equation.
Games today can give you a certain level of experience in terms of exploring, or shooting guns, or maybe operating some vehicle. But those things aren't enough to have the universal appeal of movies.
From my experience in arcades it's clear that the most mainstream-friendly games were the ones with real-world interfaces, whether that was guns, steering wheels, paddles, or the physical interface of a basketball game. The Wii is a step in this direction. In 20 years, 50 years... maybe we could have a holodeck.
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I know this thread is dead and no one will read it, but I was really impressed with the way Indigo Prophecy handled character interactions. It was all mechanized like any game, but the sense of urgency about it keeps me invested on a level that I'm not used to for dialogue trees. It's a heavily overlooked game for a lot of valid reasons but I think it does a LOT on the right track in these kinds of matters.
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Beyond Good & Evil did. Although it required input (which I fully agree with you that it secludes the player from the overall "feeling") it became more than a game, or a story for me.
The game's flow was so natural, the controls so smooth and there was almost no hud, it became a movie, even more; it became an experience. I'll never forget the game. -
Interactive, shinteractive..bleah. I play games to have fun - not to solely be immersed or worry about "emotional resonance". If it's fun AND it has some of those other fine qualities, than great - if it's only fun but has no immersive qualities or emotional resonance, I would not be upset at all.
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I completely disagree. Having a degree of control over the progression of the story can make the unfolding of the story even more satisfying than if I was just watching it. Take KOTOR for example. You can play through the game ignoring the story, sure. But I played through it talking to all the characters, learning about them and developing bonds with certain ones. I cared about those characters, and I felt immersed in the story BECAUSE it was my initiative to learn more about the game world around me that allowed the story to be told to it's fullest. I felt great saving Juhani from the dark side. I found myself annoyed constantly with the whiny Carth. And when the great revelation of Revan's identity happened I was SHOCKED. My emotional resonance with this story was not decreased by my interactivity with it. It was INCREASED.
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I disagree, and I find horror games a perfect example of how your interaction with the enviroment adds to the impact of the emotional rollercoaster that is supposed to be the gaming experience.
No movie has ever frightened me anywhere nearly as intensely as some horror games. When movies do manage to get a jump out of me, it's usually by using some sort of cheap "boo" scare trick. And when a scary situation is waiting to unfold, you just sit back and watch it. You don't get the same thoughts running through your head as you'd get in a game where you were in control.
In a game you usually have the choice between fight or flight, whereas in a movie, you don't find yoruself concidering either on the character's behalf, you just sit there and watch them, wondering what will happen with detatched interest.
In a game when a scary situation presents itself, your first reaction might be to panic, flee or flail your weapon around like an idiot. Games are also able to create that "No way I'm fucking going in there" feeling. Or if you just went into a room that seemed ordinary but turned out to have something horrible in it "No fucking way I'm going back in there". Movies can't do that to you, you just sit back and watch what happens.
The fact that at story does not progress unless you make it is a major selling point for me when it comes to horror games, there have been times in the fatal frame, resident evil or silent hill series where I've been scared to continue. I've never felt that with a movie.
So no, control only adds to the immersion if done properly, but it damn well has to be done properly. -
Totally disagree. This is an extremely surface level example, but in Grim Fandango, I think part of the reason the story has as much pull as it does is because you're actually controlling the character, not watching him. In that story, you're literally there with him every step of the way, because he doesn't move unless you press an arrow key.
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But unlike movies, games have the ultimate chance for immersion BECAUSE of the reasons you stated. Of course if you put it in a cold sense like that (a machine with buttons and levers) you are inflating your perspective to belittle games in an emotional direction. Not everyone will like Titanic and they will reflect upon their own lives and own experiences by connecting with the characters differently. Just like people will have emotional connections to characters in games. Who didn't twinge when Aeris' died in FFVII? Your example assumes everything should be possible in a game yet the funnest games and most immersive/emotional are the ones that have a basic rule set in them.
It depends on the game and it depends on the role of the player. -
Nah. Having pure, unbridled fun is a very powerful emotion. I'd go for that.
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Games like Deus Ex and System Shock 2 were to me the most immersive of all, simply because I "was there".
The games emulate real world rule-sets so I tend to accept the environment more easily as "real". At a certain point in the game I usually forget about controls (even thought both aren't shining examples of easy controls.)
I rarely fooled around in Deus Ex because of my real life experience, I was always careful what I did because of what might happen. That made it even worse if some AI reacted in a wrong way or overreacted, but that is to be expected and didn't happen too often anyway. I explored a lot and little details totally strengthend that feeling. Like finding the sniperrifle on the top floor in HK or reading those little entries in totally story-unrelated buildings in Paris. It gives the game a background and "life". Something happened there long before the player was first spawned and the player-however important he might be-ain't the centre of the universe.
Usually first person games are the most immersive of them all but if done right any game can be. Torment totally pulled me in though or even because it was full of text. Some of those text passages took half an hour to pass but it was more immersive and more tense than most other games. The "mind trap" and the talk to ravel come to mind especially. You forget it's simply a game and get totally drawn in. -
The mark of a good game is when the opposite is true.
A game where you are encouraged to make harsh and significant decisions and suffer the consequences. Design elements which contribute to this include realism, in which one mistake can get you killed, forcing you to care about your decisions, and persistant world games, whether multiplayer or singleplayer, where there is no 'quick load'.
These are, without a doubt, the most effective games for me.
Unfortunately, these games usually rely upon the restraint of the individual, rather than forcing the consequence. Personally, I've the willpower to resist the urge to quickload an RPG, to live with the consequences of my mistake, I find dealing with accidentally setting off an alarm in Deus Ex is far more fun than using quickloads to beat it perfectly through trial and error.
If some players don't have that willpower, I can only blame them, not the developers.
All the same, MMOs, at least, the old MMOs, were the very best for encouraging this immersion and emotional connection, because in a persistant world where all data is held securely on a server, rather than on your computer, is entirely immune to your efforts, benign or malign, to manipulate things in your favour.
Choices are made, and the past cannot be rewritten.
Sadly, without any death consequences, corpse looting, theft, or freedom of combat, the carebear userfriendly attitude of modern MMO developers have neutralised this. -
I just wanted to comment a little bit. I think this piece is very well articulated and I do agree with most of it, however...I've felt an emotional response to a game. I mean, there hasn't been a really good one in a bit, but Bioshock got that sorta response from me, same with the Syberia games.
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Thinking about it I've deducted that the mods didn't quote this message because they agreed with it, but because they wanted us to lynch the bastard. And it's worked!
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gaming is already mainstream, isn't it a larger market than movies already? We're just waiting for all the 60+ editors and writers of entertainment media outlets to retire so people who understand what is relevant to the actual consumers can move in.
Video games _are_ art, anybody who partakes knows that, we just don't have the same interest in game criticism as the previous generation has in over-analyzing movies and TV. We also don't care as much to have an authoritative critic tell us whether something is good or bad, because we're willing to gather information about games from more organic media sources (like the shack)
Roger Ebert is irrelevant, he just doesn't know it.-
Isn't the "larger market" thing based on amount of money? So, consider that it takes 10 cinema visits to buy one game...
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Not exactly. That 30 million is worldwide. For the sake of argument, even if it was only the US, and assuming an even distribution, still only 1 out of every 30 people you know would actually be playing it. I'm sure that lots more have heard of it, but even assuming the best case for this discussion, it's not down to moms and bank tellers.
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the non gamer management staff at a place i do work for plays wow. lol
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Eventually. I think games will pass through a few other "movements" before we get there. Currently we are moving past our realism/classical movement and into an abstract impressionism type phase with the wii and mobile. With the next big technical boom Im thinking we may pass through a renaissance which will make for some high quality and accessible games. Then we will have a load of abstract movements again, then mainstream.. which may or may not be kinkade bs. Who knows, could be interesting.
That is all of course if games tend to fallow the fine art track... which i think it could.
pong = cave paintings anyone? -
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I'm a gamer and I have never played wow. None of the people I work with have played it (there only one gamer in the bunch besides me). Several of my gamer friends have never played it. Point is, everybody knows what it is, but it's far from universal. I think what the OP was talking about was more like how *everybody* eventually saw Titanic. It wasn't that everybody had heard of it, or everybody knew somebody who had seen it. I literally can't think of a single person I know who hasn't seen it, which is quite different from wow.
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Sure, wow has a lot more penetration/recognition than most games. But still, the number of people in the us who have never played it outnumber the ones who have by something north of 30-1. I don't think that would compare favorably with any really huge movie like Titanic, which was the point of the OP.
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If you're asking for the movie seen by the most people at the time of its release then it would have to be Gone with the Wind. Titanic is only sixth on the all time domestic box office list when you adjust for inflation. Star Wars is second, and given its popularity with subsequent generations on home video and dvd I would guess Star Wars has been seen by more people than any other movie. And lol at "recorded history". Film is only a century old, dognose! There are no Egyptian blockbusters lost to time because the papyrus rotted.
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LOL, same for me - I was too young to care too much about Titanic when it first came out, but a friend and his family were going, and so I went with. And I was in the beta for WoW (I've met Micheal Morhaime - he's a fraternity brother/alumni) but just didn't care much about it and didn't like what I played of it.
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I've never seen Titanic, nor ever played WoW. However everyone knows about both. I think they occupy the same mindspace in popular culture. When you have 13 year old boys, 60 year old grandmas, 45 year old professional males and cute 25 year old girls all playing together, you've reached something like Titanic's incredible mass appeal and success.
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I'm pretty sure it's not, most people I know have no idea what it even is.
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Tetris was that game.
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exactly
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I ate too much candy so I'm going to ramble.
All of this shit about "choice diminishes emotion" is bullshit.
It's david freeman grade emotioneering crap. It has nothing to do with modern video games.
We've got an unprecedented platform and medium available to us. Fuck Titanic. Fuck Citizen Kane. Fuck Books, Music, Paintings and Movies.
We're not emulating them.
As a platform, as a medium, we're in our own goddamned space. We are a format that stands equal to other art forms. We stand toe to toe with modern entertainment, not as an imitator, but as a peer.
We don't need to focus on forced emotions. We might use tricks of the trade from other mediums, but our implementation, our experience will be something brand new.
Think of the shift in emotional context as the same as introducing free-will to mankind.
It is very easy to look at these experiences as win/lose zero sum games. It is easy to get too close to games, to become cynical, to look at them as solely challenges to be beaten and shelved, moving on to the next challenge.
You play to win. That is all.
I'll admit, I can treat them this way at times. It's easy, especially as someone who works so closely with games on a daily basis.
But when you can look at them with fresh eyes, look at them as an experience, a dream realized, play them like a kid nowadays, especially with these modern designs, well, that's where you see something astounding.
Bioshock, Mass Effect, COD4, Drakes, The emotions from these are handled more elegantly than ever before. And it's not ham-fisted exposition. It's mature and tactful, playing to the strengths of the experience.
Are they high art?
Dunno.
Does it matter?
Not really.
Player choice is the only reason you would ever feel an emotion in a game.
Because if there isn't player choice, what the fuck are you doing? Pretending to watch a movie?
If player control fucks up immersion, fucks up the emotional impact, fucks up the value or importance of the experience..
Well, it means we did it wrong.
[end candy soaked ramble]
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Its ironic because what's in the bubble now, goes directly against what he is saying about video games.
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I... I'm going to run out and get you some more candy
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nose candy
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All kinds. moved to Finland about a month ago so I'm eating all their candy.
I got a bag of Re-Mix+ choco. It says suklaan maku puskee pussiin! on it. It has orange ones, black ones, yellow ones and a few with chocolate. It smells like paint thinner.
I also had some candybars from fazer (pieces of them). One had hazelnuts and raisins, the other had chunks of what I think are cookies.
The candy here is weird.
I got a bag of menthol licorice accidentally. It tasted like a horrible candy factory accident.
Salmiaki is growing on me though.
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People don't understand player choice yet. As long as it's done as clumsily as it is in games right now, they probably won't for a while.
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Great post. Fantastic summation. Keep eating weird candy.
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I don't disagree with your analysis, but unfortunately I have to say that it means that you're mostly doing it wrong. The way game narratives and character interactions play out, even regarding the player control, are considerably more sophomoric than the best of what literature or film has to offer. I simply have never been vested in the story/fate of any video game character like I have the characters from my favorite movies. I'm not sure if I know the reason for this, at least not in concrete terms. But, there's something missing from how games have traditionally presented emotional content that must be hard to achieve, since so many of them try but fail. I just don't think that games have yet reached the level of sophistication that would allow for the true kind of player choice and interaction that could elicit any kind of strong emotional response from players.
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The multiplayer FPS titanic: Quake 3 arena
The strategy titanic: Starcraft
The casual/everyday gamer titanic: Sims
The hardcore RPG gamer titanic: World of Warcraft
The fantasy RPG gamer titanic: FF3
The racing gamer titanic: ???? (hasn't been one yet)
The puzzle gamers titanic: Tetris
The fighting gamers titanic: ??? (hasn't been one yet. maybe soul calibur?)
The action/adventure gamers titanic: Zelda: Ocarina of Time
The Survival Horror gamers titanic: ???? (hasn't been one yet)
Am I not right?-
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KOTOR 3 has my money already. Those fuckers need to get on that shit STAT.
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Depends what you mean. Just on a level of icons, gaming reaches mass market, but so does Ronald McDonald. On a level of story and higher meaning, I don't think it will happen soon (because there's very little in the way of developer movement supporting it now) but maybe someday.
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I think Wii Sports is that game, it's the one game that everyone I know is conscious of and most everyone I know has played or seen it.
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*has = have
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You're so indie and so cool.
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(and Halo)
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and cs
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I played Doctor Mario with my mom.
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I used to play Duke Nukem 3D and Doom with my dad.
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i played doctor with your mom too
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I liked games better when they were underground.
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You do know that the Titanic sank on it's maiden voyage don't you?
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and the Germans lost WWI & WWII
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awww...I had money down for them
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to think they were doing so well!
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And the north won the American Civil War
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unfortunately for the North.
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They've already had their revenge by electing dubya.
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More like Waterworld.
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Waterworld Of Duke-Craft
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Don't say that, after watching the recent teaser I am starting to get all Dognose about it!
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I think Starcraft has already done that.
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Maybe in Korea...
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I would say that the Wii system before I would pick a specific game.
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You mean the point where it's made clear the movies should be made for idiots and good movies are relegated to a small niche? Yeah, that already happened. That's why the Rainbow Six series is now a dumb action game, Ghost Recon too, there are no sim games anymore, and BF Heroes is the next big thing for the BF series, just to name a few.
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Not to pimp my own recent article, but: http://www.polycat.net/1240
Basically, I think the only way for a game to have the same emotional resonance as a movie like, as you said, Titanic (which I abhor, actually, but I'll keep it for my point) that they have to come into their own as a medium. Right now, the games with the greatest stories and best narratives are, for the most part, driven by cutscenes -- an inherently movie-like way of conveying narrative. For a game to evoke an emotional response on the level of Titanic would require a far better understanding of the interactive nature of video games which, for the most part, developers have yet to really "grasp."
Bioshock is the best recent example of a game which manages to tell an incredibly unique and interesting story entirely through the scenery of Rapture. -
Yes. And like Titanic, it will be mass appeal, flawed, and shallow.
You could consider games like Halo 3 a precursor of that future game.
Not inherently bad, just not that fantastic, critically, but the right mix of shallow indulgences and pretty visuals to please, as you said, the mass market.
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