A pair of blog entries, along with my own Fable II experiences, got me thinking today, and that's never good for my loyal readers. You can start by reading this (the Fallout 3 entry) and this before continuing.
The question these two articles presents is: how responsible are we as gamers for the enjoyment we get out of the games we play? Both authors noted how they had to shift their views of the game in order to fill in something that was missing for them. Is this a consequence of some lacking in the game's design? or is it an opportunity for the game makers to make the worlds they truly want to create?
Face it, most games are designed to just be picked up and played, with the player more or less mindlessly doing whatever the game requires of them. Setting, story, moral issues; these things really don't come into the picture often, regardless of how much the designer wants them too. Does a cut scene showing some impending invasion really spur you on to go out and shoot everything that moves in Halo 3? It's just not needed, and often skipped (not by me, I love them, if only for a break from the action.) But here we are presented with game worlds that either invite, or demand, that you take it all in. Your participation is practically required, and richly rewarded. And that might be leading to a new wave of game development.
Designers could decide to start creating more and varied worlds, rich in characters or scenery or just general fullness, and allow the players to make out of them what they want. The GTA 3 line did a lot of this, and it was a huge success. But GTA 4 tried to take it a step further, and stumbled along the way. Through the cut scenes and dialog, it presented a protagonist who seem to truly want to change, but couldn't given the world he inhabited. A good enough story, no doubt. But it was the sandbox part of the game where this fell down. If you just wanted to GTA for a while, driving down the sidewalk or getting the star level up, Nico seemed to enjoy it, shouting out what amounts to encouragement to the player, and in these comments, betraying the Nico the Rockstar had built up in the main game.
These new games, however, allow you to decide what your story is. Sure, there have been complaint about the main quest in F2, but the blandness might be necessary for the person with the controller in their hand to really be able to craft the character that they want, and connect with them on a level rarely seen in video games. And while F3 seems more story driven than open (haven't played it yet), it does present you with a world ripe in detail, and abounding in opportunities to take it in, and work it into your own version of the quest.
It will be interesting to see if these developments continue over the next few years, and if it get to be more incumbent on you, the gamer, to create your own enjoyment within their worlds.
Bill and I had a discussion on this, which follows, spelling errors and all:
Dib
so here is an interesting thing
a couple of game blogs i read have stories on how, upon playing fable 2 and fallout 3, they realized that they were missing something, and that they needed to adjust how they saw, and thus chose to play the game, the fill that in
Sent at 12:51 PM on Wednesday
Bill
that is interesting.
did it sound like the same sort of willing mental engagement required when reading a book, or something different?
Dib
no
like you needed to pick a way to play the game
or at least refocus what you wanted out of it
Bill
i've been having a not-too-different experience with KotOR
Dib
yeah?
Bill
yeah - I started a character with the intent of going dark side
... but then i kept doing "nice" things with her
and, as bizarre as it sounds, got frustrated with that
Dib
makes sense
i wanted my fable chick to be revenge seeking, and have that come out in her decisions, so that when something came it, she would do whatever furthered her agenda
Bill
ended up starting over, after 8 hrs play time
Dib
but, she's been too nice
Bill
all of this, whatever else it may be, sounds like the mark of a richly built world
Dib
true
when i played baldur's gate, i made the decision from the start to play a pally, and always pick the most righteous (sp) options as they came up
and had more fun playing that game than most any american rpg i had played before
and i played a lot of bards tale
but, it is harder, for me, to play the bad guy (er, girl, wearing blue hot pants, a red and blue corset, and boots)
Bill
final fantasy tactics was that way for me
but in a different way - that game had very little actual rpg element
but there were 3 or 4 characters who, in my mind, i knew how i wanted them built eventually
and homing in on that personal goal was the most satisfying part of the experience, looking back
But, should we be surprised to see this?
Isn't it natural that the true sandbox games that manage to be hits - SimCity, the Sims, etc. - would be instrumental in teaching game makers industry-wide how to build worlds that let players introduce their own, additional, objectives?
hell WoW is a great example of that.
Dib
what's nice is the combination of the sandbox world with the freedom and opportunities to take your character in a direction
Bill
i agree.
Dib
that is where GTA 4 fell short
it gave you a protagonist that truly wanted to redeem himself
Bill
maybe
Dib
but didn't give you as the player the opportunity to do so
and then sent conflicting signals no matter which way you went
Bill
but at the same time, the freedom to go "be bad" with Niko wasn't really given either
Dib
right
Bill
right.
Dib
my point
Bill
yeah
Dib
so, baldurs gate did allow you choice, but within a tightly defined game world
fable 2 is giving you a more open world, and more opportunities to do as you wish
the mtv multiplayer guy realized something
now, im not sure if he had a set character in mind before starting
or just played as you do most games, doing what you are supposed to do, pretty much mindlessly
Bill
right
Dib
but at some point, he realized what his character had become was not what he wanted
and he had to change how he played the game to get out of it what he realized he wanted
which COULD denote a fundamental shift in game design philosophy
or at least a new branch thereof
Bill
seems like it could, yeah
in the past there have been "storied" games, and those not so much
and if you were playing a "storied" game, you were taken where the writers of the story took the story
there you went.
you might be able to equip a different sword, or change your horse's name, but you couldn't elect to let the princess die.
unless the writer's explicitly accounted for that choice, and wrote two stories from that point on.
games like GTA, Oblivion, and Fable may be showing a new way to "story" a world.
an "emergent" way, for lack of a better term.
Dib
perhaps so
Bill
or hinting at one, anyway.
Dib
will GTA 4 be looked back on in 5 years as the archaeopteryx of this genre?
it seems like it tried, but was too beholden to it's lineage to branch out
Sent at 1:45 PM on Wednesday
Bill
perhaps.
Dib
now the fallout guy is a different idea
but still a readjustment of expectations
Bill
oh?
Dib
http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/
good site, read it often
Bill
i'll take a look... it'll have to be later though
can you summarize?
Dib
Something was wrong.
The more I played, though, the more I suspected that something was wrong with me. I couldn't quite make out why, at least not for several hours, but finally, I realized what was happening.
Many of you have read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. At some point, he mentions that the less detail there is in a character visually, the more universal it becomes, because our brains can fill in the gaps any way we want (thereby adding our own meaning). In 1997, when Fallout was released, developers were constrained in terms of what they could put on the screen. Fallout had appealing graphics, but they were simple, and the detail of the world was limited. It was the suggestion of a world, but that suggestion was so expertly done that I filled in all the gaps with my imagination.
Fallout 3 isn't like that. It's the Fallout universe made flesh. In many ways, there's more detail in the first settlement you visit than in the entire world in the original Fallout. Instead of being suggestive, it was incredibly specific, and that specificity freaked me out.
At first.
Then I slowed down. I stopped trying to rush past the detail, and instead, I started absorbing as much as I could. I started trying to live inside the game instead of inside my head.
That's when I started finding the irony, started seeing moments of poignance that took my breath away.
Bill
That is fascinating.
Dib
yep
now combine the two ideas, and see where that take game design
