I Hit X, Therefore I Am

When I attended the Practice: Game Design in Detail conference at NYU, there was one discussion titled “Game Design vs.  & Programming” (the ‘versus’ was crossed out, as shown).  It was run by Chris Hecker, Nick Fortugno, and Manveer Heir, and the talk was essentially asking the question, “how related are programming and game design?  Do programming skill help game designers?”  Not a terrible idea for a talk, but unfortunately, it didn’t go so well.  What happened was, Hecker would essentially argue “yes – programming is great for game designers, because it teaches you system design!”.  Unfortunately, his opponents didn’t use this obvious:  system design is useful, not necessarily “programming”.  It was never clear if they were talking about computer programming specifically, even.  So if you write down your rules, is that programming?

Essentially, the whole chat was sort of ruined because one term was ill-defined.  This happens a lot in my discussions about digital games online. Today I’d like to take some time to talk about a few definitions, so that we might improve the way we discuss these things.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution screenshot

“Experience”

One term I’d like to talk about today a bit is “experience”, as well as a few related terms.  What is an “experience”?  Well, the dictionary is extremely broad, and I think that that definition works just fine.  However, a lot of people seem to have an interesting use for the word when it comes to modern digital games.

I recently had an interaction that went a little bit like this:  I said that a very story-based game may be somewhat similar to watching a television program for an onlooker, i.e., someone who did not have the controller in their hand, but was watching.  I used the term “watching”, and the person I was talking to said that I should be using the term “experiencing”.

“But isn’t experiencing a result of watching?”  I asked.

“Well, yes, but a story-based game is trying to become an EXPERIENCE.”

So, if we look at the word “experience” in the normal way, this makes absolutely no sense.  It would be like a person saying “that’s not a dog, it’s an animal!”  So clearly he is using “experience” to mean something larger than the normal dictionary definition.  I asked for clarification, and his answer was not surprising.

To quote him exactly:

“In pursuit of that element[experience, his definition] a story-game has (to me) a huge advantage over any show or film, in that by getting me to interact with it I naturally become more engaged in the outcome of my actions, even if I’m not the sole director of my character or my choices are limited.

The Story-Game Myth

Right now, the status quo belief about games – or rather, about our modern digital interactive software – is that combining story and game turns a “mere game” (more on this later) into “something more”.  “An experience”.  “Immersive”.  “Art”.  Whatever.

Firstly, this isn’t even true.  As I’ve explained in meticulous detail here on the site, games and story do not add up (or multiply, as many seem to believe) to the sum (or factor) of their parts.  They damage each other along the way, and while you may be left with something decent, many compromises will have had to have been made along the way and you are left with something that has neither the strengths of a great story or that of a great game.

But worse, this is disrespectful and insulting to games.  When do we ever do this to other mediums?  Sure, film and music go well together, but are we going to go as far as to say that watching a well-scored movie is better than listening to a great rock album or symphony?  Or that because text and images go very well together in comics, a comic book is better than a great painting?  Very few people would go and say that “this combination of mediums is just better than that medium”, but I feel like it’s the status quo to believe that the “Story Game” is simply a “greater achievement” than a well designed mechanical game.  Use of terminology like  “mere game”, “just a game” or saying that games are just “blasting zombies” or some other such frivolous activity is another example of this.   I’ve used the term “Game Shame” to refer to this phenomena of gamers saying things that belittles their pastime.

 

I Hit X, Therefore I Am

I get into discussions regarding the relationship of story and games quite often, and there’s this even more wrong idea floating around that goes a little something like this:   “because I AM the character, the story is even more effective!”   To explain why this is wrong, we have to jump into stories for a moment and talk about how they work.

Stories work because we get to know the characters involved.  Because we get to know them, we feel empathy for them.  Only then can they be faced with a difficult decision.  For if we, the observer, do not know them and therefore feel empathy for them, we cannot know how difficult a decision is for them to make.  The “difficult decisions” are of paramount importance, as they are what happens in a climax of a story, wherein main character(s) are forced to make a major, game-changing, irreversible decision that illustrates something about how they have changed as a person.

Now the view seemingly held by most “videogame people” is that if you pressed a button to make that decision happen, it’s more meaningful.  “You are the one doing it”, and so it’s more powerful and a deeper sort of experience.  But there’s a huge problem with that concept.

The problem is, if I am making decisions for this character, then this character is not a character.  We can never get to know him, because his decisions were the very thing that would’ve let me get to know him, and I am making his decisions for him.  So, “he”, be they Link, Cloud, or Adam Jensen (from Deus Ex: Human Revolution), is much more closely related to a tennis racket than they are to a character.  I’m a person who believes that tennis is actually extremely deep and elegant and beautiful, so I have no problems with tennis rackets or purely mechanical games.  But because a lot of these “story-games” were attempts at creating a good story, yet have main characters who are not characters, their gameplay is extremely thin.  When a story-game’s story isn’t good, you’re left with a crappy mechanical game.

I want supporters of “story games” to defend this point.  So let’s say there is a decision coming up, and we’re giving the player control over what that decision is.  One of those choices will make for a much better, much more meaningful and consistent story.  One of the choices will make for a kind of mediocre story, and one is just absurd and totally throws the story into a non-sensical direction.  Like, perhaps an example might be deciding to randomly kill someone you just saved.  For sake of argument, let’s say that this action would have nothing to do with the overall theme that the game has been establishing up until this point.

The point is, some of those decisions make for far better stories than others.  And so, are we saying that there is a “right way” and a “wrong way” to play such games, assuming everyone wants a great story (look at me with my wild assumptions)?  If so, why are we giving the player a choice in the first place?  Because the simple act of pressing a button to cause an event to occur makes it mean more somehow?  Does a film mean more if I was the one who pressed play on my DVD player instead of my friend doing it?

 

It’s IMMERSIVE!

Oh that’s right.  It’s more “immersive” – another word which needs careful definition (quite literally, since my spellchecker apparently thinks it is not a word).  You feel immersed in the game because you inputted the command.  Whereas you don’t feel immersed in an excellent episode of The Sopranos?   All good art, be it interactive or otherwise, is immersive.  The user should forget himself and be in the atmosphere.

In short, if people are going to claim that the act of having made the choice yourself rather than having simply watched or read it played out is inherently better, then they have to support that claim.  Yet it generally seems to be just this thing all digital gamers automatically accept.

The concept of a story game really is quite insulting to authors, screenwriters and playwrights.  It says to them, “you know what?  I can improvise a story that rivals anything your ass can come up with after years of toiling over each and every scene.”  I really think that videogame people have a lack of appreciation for what goes into writing a great story, how rare and fragile they are.

What really bothers me about the “immersion” concept is how tied it is to the technology arms-race.  Nobody would ever call Final Fantasy VI “immersive”, despite being extremely story based, because it doesn’t have today’s (or tomorrow’s) level of technology.  You’re parroting ATI and nVidia’s PR talking points with your “immersive” talk – I hope you’re aware.

 

Interestingly, people even make the argument that simply "doing what you are supposed to do" in Portal makes the story more immersive, implying that "choice" actually has nothing to do with it after all

Starting Over

Let’s start over, and lay out a few ground rules for discussion.

1.  All games are art (and note that “art” does not mean “good”).  If you mean “art” in some way beyond “the product of human creativity”, then you need to define it up front.

2.  All games are an experience.  If you mean “experience” in some way beyond the dictionary definition, then you need to define it up front.

Beyond that, I’m eager to hear some responses from everyone on this article.  Why/how does it “mean more” if I am the one who caused an action to happen on screen?  I am not saying we shouldn’t experiment with the idea, and I do know that some very interesting interactive art-installation pieces have already been made.  My argument is that we should probably not call these things games, and it should not be the norm to combine stories and games.  If there were 5 or 10% of developers doing that, it wouldn’t be a problem.  But right now it’s like, 90%, and I’m tired of stories hurting my games.

Posted on 02/24/2012 by keithburgun. This entry was posted in Culture, Game Design. Bookmark the permalink.
  • http://blown-to-bits.blogspot.com Kdansky

    While I agree with what you say nearly completely, I would not put all of it quite as one-sided: Games with story are not inherently worse than games without story. Super Mario doesn’t suffer for the few lines of story it has. In fact, those lines are necessary to give the player a frame of reference.

    On the other hand, a few select games would just not work at all without story. Portal 2 without any talking would be very dry. Story can for example be used for pacing of gameplay. After a really hectic part of gameplay, I’m content to sit back for a moment and just listen to the story unfold. Other games, such as Dwarf Fortress, do not have a story, but due to their emergent design generate a fresh narrative for every game. That, I think, is where story and games become more than the sum of its parts. Sadly, that is the far opposite end of what the AAA studios are doing.

    You are also right that “I chose X therefore the immersion is better” is utterly wrong. I could imagine a game where you shape your character in the beginning and then the later half of the game would have less choices and more automated responses. I will make up an over-the-top example: At the start, you get asked whether to murder a criminal, or let him go free because he needs to feed his children. In the middle of the game, a similar choice is offered, but this time, if you let him go free, you can choose between “give him small jail time” and “let him go free and give him some of your money”. Which means your character has already been shaped as a nice guy, and you can now only choose between variants of that. In such a game, you’d get a different ending depending on your choices, and still a consistent character.

  • Screwtape

    I’m not going to argue that “the act of having made the choice yourself rather than having simply watched or read it played out is inherently better”—because what is “better”, anyway?—but I will argue that it’s different, and it produces a different effect on the player.

    From a very early age, humans are taught about “responsibility” and “consequences” and “choice”, and they bring all that emotional baggage along when trying to understand the world and interacting with other people, even the tiny toy worlds and dumb-as-a-brick NPCs that most games provide. When the player chooses something affecting the character they control, they get just a little bit more invested in the story — even if the “choice” is just a cheap But Thou Must loop (of course, it’s better if the player doesn’t notice that’s a cheap loop at the time).

    In a way, this is an extension of all kinds of player choice. If you clear a line in Tetris, you’re likely to consider clearing another; if you clear 99, you’re very likely to try clearing the hundredth. Even in games that don’t have a “story” as such (hundreds of hours of cutscenes! In-game lore encyclopedia! Rescue the world!), the act of playing the game creates a very basic story just through the choices the player made. The more choices the player makes, the more connected they feel to what’s going on, and the more they care about it.

    In a way, I think this accounts for why stories in games are so terrible. When a movie needs to set up a villain, they have to spend time introducing us to the progtagonists (so that we care about them), then introducing the villain and giving them a vaguely plausible motivation (so that we take them seriously), and then show the villain doing something bad to the protagonists (so that we can understand why the conflict between protagonists and antagonists exists). After all that, the basic conflict necessary for drama is established, and the story can commence. By contrast, in a game you can literally have some random stranger pop out of nowhere, punch the player’s character in the face, and run off. Conflict is present, drama is online, and off we go. The player already cares about the character, and doesn’t need to know about the villain’s motivations because the player is already convinced that the villain is bad, in a far stronger and more visceral way than if the player had watched a five-minute scene of the villain kicking puppies. Since a game (or other interactive experience) can grip the player better, more quickly, than a movie (or other passive experience) can, why would games bother investing in better writing? It’s not a case of searching for stories that work; everything works, amazingly well, so why put in more than a minimum of effort?

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      Firstly, I never use “better”. I talk about consistency and what makes sense given the fundamentals. If someone likes something that makes less sense then that’s their right and to them, that’s “better”.

      >the act of playing the game creates a very basic story just through the choices the player made.

      This is very, very different than what you know I meant – tying the game to an authored story. The “the act of playing the game creates a story!” type of story actually happens not only from every game, but from any activity, and therefore is useless to bring up.

      I disagree with you about everything “working” in games, and I don’t understand why you’re saying that. 99% of story-based single-player games to come out in the last 15 years have been idiotic, insulting, and uninteresting.

  • Padi

    Playing games for the narrative is like watching science fiction for the fashion.

  • Pingback: Super.licio.us | Superlevel

  • http://www.gruesomegames.com/ Darren Grey

    Heh, I always like story in games, but I find myself agreeing with all your points…

    I don’t think story has to get in the way of the game though. In many it does of course – bloody unskippable cut-scenes, and tedious quests. In these the fusion of story and gameplay makes both worse. But a game with story on the side suffers no less than a movie with a good accompanying soundtrack. Indeed, it can benefit, since you can enjoy a light story with good gameplay, and it doesn’t need to compare to a well-written book to be appreciated. When the elements in a game have characteristics and motivations in line with both the setting and the gameplay then it can be an extra flavour on the palate to be enjoyed, much like nicely drawn graphics or a well-composed score. When done really well it can make one take the game more seriously and add emotional tension to the play. There’s a difference between a quick game of Tetris and a climactic boss fight in a good RPG.

    What no game has ever gotten 100% right I think is how to fuse story and gameplay. Exposition of story needs to be in-line with natural gameplay, not jutting the player away from meaningful choices. Too many games have story and gameplay entirely separate. You could take many games and fit entirely different stories around them and it wouldn’t seem any less consistent. The very mechanics of the game must relate to the story for it to work well. The optimal situation is for the very mechanics of the game to tell the story.

    A really good story in any media is centred around characters which we can become emotionally involved in. Perhaps in games this is ultimately impossible. We can watch these characters die after all, or perform actions that are inconsistent with the rest of the world. We see our heroes get given super powers, and so lose empathy for them. And most importantly of all it’s hard to have regular gameplay full of challenges and choices that can really portray meaningful character development or can remain in line with the character’s personality and emotions. How would you feel after killing 100 zombies? Would your trigger finger still stay steady?

    But I think there’s some interesting potential here to make much better games with significant story elements by having game design better informed by game writing, and vice-versa. I’m not sure the AAA games are really anywhere near on the right track for this though. The focus is far too much on linear, movie-esque games, resplendent with lengthy cut-scenes and restricted or boring gameplay. I personally think it’s an insult to the potential of game stories that we feel the need to copy another medium so literally. Games can do stories in new and innovative ways, and can be better for it too.

    Games don’t need a story of course, and certainly aren’t made better by it. There is a real problem with gameplay-focused games feeling they need anything more than a light dressage of story. But that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate story elements in games. I don’t find Portal particularly immersive, but I do enjoy the funny jokes as I go through the interesting puzzles, and I certainly don’t think it negatively impacts on the game. Would the game be better without the story…?

    • Padi

      If you look at Auro and the other articles on this blog, it’s apparent that the issue isn’t with story in games as context or flavor, such as in Portal or Braid- Auro has a story, and lots of personality thanks to the great art and expressive idle animations. Puerto Rico the tabletop game has a contextual story, as does Chess if you think about it even briefly. The issue seems to me to be confusing arbitrary or superficial interactions on the part of the player with “mechanics of the game that tell the story.” These would include the currently popular choose-your-own-adventure “dialog systems,” in something like Deus Ex as well as half-baked imitations of game mechanics like Simon-says quick-timer events and “platforming” sequences where there is only one valid path and all the animations are totally canned so that timing, momentum, and positioning are no longer factors, such as in the Uncharted series. These are supposed to immerse the player more than simply watching a cut scene, but I would argue that sufficiently shallow button-pressing is actually worse at this purpose than a skip-able cut scene. I actually enjoyed the “interactive fiction” of Deus Ex because the moral conundrums were nuanced enough to make me actually pause and think, especially knowing the game wouldn’t judge me on a moral continuum that I don’t necessarily identify with as is the case with some games. However, it is erroneous to view these parts as related to game play since they only barely, if at all, effect how play progresses; in contrast a tough call in Chess is an interesting, arguably “immersive” decision that is the result of past decisions and will effect future decisions in the game. It is decision that matters.

      There are some amazingly talented people making these narrative-focused games, I have nothing but props for them, even if I don’t want to play their games. But how long must the race for better and better tech and larger and larger teams go on before we acknowledge that maybe tightly authored narratives just aren’t what these game things do best? Even the most cinematic and detailed games are just soaked in cognitive dissonance. Even games more focused on freedom for the player, the world simulators like the Bethesda oeuvre, will always feel like a frail diorama until tech reaches Holodeck heights, and so it’s planned obsolescence in game form- each game with a more impressive degree of detail basically invalidates previous games, if this is held as the ideal. Meanwhile, people are still playing Go. People are still playing StarCraft, and Street Fighter II, and Nethack and Ms. Pac Man and Missile Command and Tetris, and they aren’t wishing the NPCs had more lifelike facial animations or wondering what the next game will permit them to “do” that the current game doesn’t, because the mechanics of the above examples are enough to produce strong feelings of stress and triumph and excitement, and even more nuanced feelings! Sacrificing a city in Missile Command to cover another one feels pretty awful. Go and Risk are like turn-based Osmos, the indie game where life and death are examined quite frankly as unicellular creatures absorb one another and divide as the key game play mechanic. I don’t know, at this point I’m kind of rambling but ultimately I think these Dinofarm guys and some others in the industry are simply asking that we stop and really think about what we are doing as players and what the game systems themselves are doing more than simply what the player’s avatar is animated doing and clinging to assumptions about what is worthwhile based on what is in the biggest text on the back of the most retail boxes.

      • http://www.gruesomegames.com/ Darren Grey

        I think dialogue is something many games do badly. Perhaps dialogue simply has no place in games… The only game I can consider it done well in is Fallout, since your available choices depended on a variety of skills/stats, thus allowing for different dialogue experiences with each playthrough dependant on your gameplay choices. Plus dialogue choices could have a meaningful impact in that game, rather than being dressing around a linear conversation. It still ain’t perfect though.

        I have no problem with world simulators personally. I like how the story is pretty much optional in them, but they can immerse the player in other ways. And it’s not just about graphics – Morrowind is more fondly remembered than Oblivion for instance. I think classics in these genres will have just as much staying power as Tetris if they’re good enough games. The problem is that there are very few games actually on that par in any genre. And another problem is that many commercial developers have little interest in creating such classics. Immediate sales take precedence over lasting legacy.

        • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

          Even in Fallout, they’re exhausted after 2 or 3 playthroughs. That’s the problem with dialogue, is that it’s inherently “inherent complexity”, not emergent complexity. It doesn’t naturally emerge, it has to be hard-coded, so it’s exhaustible.

          I also have no problem with world simulators, or interactive fiction, or interactive art installations… I just think we shouldn’t call EVERYTHING digital and interactive “games”.

          • Darren Grey

            Heh, well I’m not sure you’ll have much luck getting the word “game” redefined. It’s already an immensely inclusive term, including sports and card games and role-playing. Activities of pure chance like Snakes and Ladders are called games, alongside children play-acting doctors and nurses. Any interactive activity ends up bearing the moniker.

            Is there a special term we should use for engaging digital games? I’m not sure there’s anything appropriate… And there are far too many grey areas around.

            • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

              I dont need to redefine it. There’s already several definitions for the word. There’s just one definition that I want game designers, specifically, to understand. This concept of a game as a “system of rules in which agents compete by making decisions”, or more concisely, “a contest of decision-making”.

              It’s not about engaging, exactly… anything can be engaging, really. But what’s special about games is that they are this special combination of contest, and systems of meaningful, ambiguous decision-making. Because of this they are the most fantastic system for increasing the skills of users ever conceived.

              • http://www.gruesomegames.com/ Darren Grey

                I wonder what proportion of games actually feature a large amount of meaningful decision making…? I prefer to think of the term “interesting decisions” myself. But then I guess for me the ultimate game is something that brings up the feel of Chess. Real-time games (which almost all modern games are) just don’t offer the time to think and make interesting choices. More than the obsession with graphics I hate the obsession with real-time, face-paced, twitch-based gameplay.

                • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

                  Right. Over this past year as I discovered the world of designer boardgames, I realized that interesting, meaningful (and btw, I mean meaningful as in “has effects inside the system”, not something ‘makes you think about your relationship with your son’ or something) decisions were what I was dying for, and not getting, from digital games.

                  Real time games can be really fantastic too. Just because they involve twitch, accuracy, timing, doesn’t mean that they can’t have interesting decisions (although I could definitely see the argument that when something is turn based, the cap on how interesting a decision could be is higher). Sports are good examples of solid real time games, but also certain first-person shooters (such as Counter-Strike or TF2 – especially those ones which require teamwork and have objectives other than killing) and some fighting games might also be good examples.

                • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

                  The thing with real time is that you have to be really, really conservative with how many actions you allow the player to take, and put an elegant cap on how much dexterity can help you. Tetris is a good example. Pac-Man might also be.

        • Padi

          And here I thought I was in the minority preferring Morrowind to Oblivion; I liked the more varied and navigable-relying-less-on-the-map geography, and I definitely don’t want to make sweeping statements about what is and isn’t worthwhile since I can certainly enjoy media outside of my ideological comfort zone. Reminiscing about that game reminds me that sometimes dissonance has an endearing effect that is just really hard to deal with critically, kind of like the concept of camp in film, like “is it intentional?” “Does it matter?” I’ve always liked musicians who tastefully incorporate dissonance, like my jazz faves Monk and Coleman, but in music dissonance has such a distinct emotional effect that it is easy to tell when it is used with a specific purpose (of course when improvising the performer might not fully understand her or his “purpose” until listening to it later).

          • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

            You *are* in the minority preferring Morrowind to Oblivion. You just also happen to be correct! :D

            I’m not anti dissonance. But I think that the world of games would be a better place if a stronger fundamental understanding of games *existed*. If people choose to ignore it, that’s fine. But right now it just doesn’t even exist.

            • http://blown-to-bits.blogspot.com/ Kdansky

              I’m not sure about Morrowind being the minority. Sure, more people have played Oblivion (and even more have played Farmville, that doesn’t make it the better game), but Morrowind generally is praised highly in forums and comment threads, whereas Oblivion always gets dismissed.

      • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

        I appreciate the support, Padi! Glad to know some people see what we’re going on and on about.

  • Pingback: Dinofarm Games » False Choice: Bad for Stories, Bad for Games, Inevitable in Story-Games

  • Matt

    I think the fact that a lot of people love story games completely dismisses your article, I would agree that bad story games are bad, your not watching the character as you describe, your becoming the character which is what makes it immersive. Also comparing them to movies is stupid. Narratives function differently in games then they do in movies.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      >I think the fact that a lot of people love story games completely dismisses your article

      That is an invalid argument.

      >your becoming the character which is what makes it immersive.

      Did you read the article? Because I addressed this very thing. Also read the latest article on the blog if you would.

  • Pingback: Story in Games » Renegade Interactive

  • Dan

    An excellent article – definitely the sort of meaningful analysis the industry needs more of these days.

    ‘Immersion’ is probably my most hated word in the industry over the last few years, as there doesn’t seem to be a single person who uses it that actually has any idea what they’re talking about.

    The easiest-to-understand explanation of immersion that I can think of is when you decide to play a game for an hour before bed, then look up ‘a minute later’ to see the sun rising. I have had this with games, books, even anime series. Anything that holds your attention to the exclusion of everything else around you – *that’s* immersion. Anything that breaks that, either through incongruous/illogical behaviour, or by simply becoming boring/repetitive, causes you to ‘break the spell’. The widely held misconception that greater realism will lead to greater immersion, that pressing buttons here and there throughout a movie will somehow make the experience more ‘meaningful’, shows just how much the industry has started to believe its own marketing…

    “Why/how does it “mean more” if I am the one who caused an action to happen on screen?”

    Typical response:

    “Because it was YOU who did it! It didn’t just happen on its own – you MADE it happen!! See?!?”

    Sorry, but no.

    In the case of Chess or Pacman or Tetris (for example), each decision has definite (and usually, identifiable) long-term repercussions. Each move in Chess, each turn in Pacman, each piece placed in Tetris can mean the difference between victory or defeat – even if they do not immediately have that effect. Every decision you make has significance and consequence. You can almost always point to a specific decision, or series of decisions that lead to the outcome. (Your other examples of sports and fighting games, and also a lot of strategy games, also follow this to a degree – although there are usually a lot more opportunities to make up for mistakes, so the impact of individual decisions is often lessened somewhat)

    The more heavily story-based a game becomes, however, the less this can be allowed, otherwise the narrative will no longer make sense. The end result is that either player actions have no significance, or the ‘game’ is separated from the story and the story simply waits for the player to complete the current game sequence before continuing.

    The thing many developers appear to fail to understand is that making player actions necessary but irrelevant breaks the immersion more than almost anything else they could do: immersion requires the participant to be continually mentally engaged – if the player decisions are no longer meaningful due to the needs of the story, then the game component is not mentally engaging, and if the story is continually being held up for the game component, then the story is not mentally engaging either.

    In a similar vein, I thought Master Chief’s handful of lines throughout Halo made the experience far more immersive than Gordon Freeman’s total silence in Half Life 2 – the idea that a silent protagonist allows you to ‘project yourself onto them’ or ‘be you’ fails when every NPC in the gameworld already knows ‘you’ as someone very specific (everyone keeps calling him by name, and talking about his past – he’s not exactly a blank slate) – it just made no sense to me that Gordon wouldn’t say a single word to people who were clearly his friends.

    I’m not saying that story has no place in games – I loved the original Halo as much for the mystery of the world and its lore as for the combat, and I thought the God of War games used narrative to thread the levels together in entertaining fashion – both the gameplay and the story are entertaining in their own right, yet neither was sacrificed for the other. On the other hand, the Mass Effect games try to weave an intriguing story where the player’s decisions have consequences, yet fumble player agency with such a ham-fisted dialogue system that most decisions end up requiring little-to-no thought. (this could arguably be due to the inclusion of the so-called ‘morality system’, where players almost inevitably end up choosing the responses that will give them access to the gameplay mechanics that go with being sufficiently ‘good’ or ‘bad’, as opposed to choosing a response based on the narrative outcome)

    TL,DR:

    Ultimately, a decision can only ‘mean’ anything to the player if the decision itself actually has any bearing or consequence – pressing x to watch a cutscene has neither.

    • http://www.dinofarmgames.com keithburgun

      Dan, thanks for your thoughtful comment. You’ve got a good way of phrasing these ideas.

  • Pingback: Dinofarm Games » On “Indie Game: The Movie”