I haven't played Spore in months now, but the recent trailer for the Galactic Adventures add-on has me thinking it might be time to play again.
My main complaint about Spore has been that it's more toymaker than game. The creation tools are excellent and offer so much variety. Unfortunately, there's little you can do with them until you reach the Space stage. Actual gameplay is so sparse and shallow (though there are a few fun dynamics in the Creature stage).
Judging from the Galactic Adventures trailer, EA seems to have listened to feedback like that and has offered players something more like an actual game with rules, goals, and progression.
Still, there's another reason Spore quickly lost its shine for me. By the time you reach the Space stage, your design decisions no longer affect anything other than visuals. Gameplay is still personalized to a degree by the order in which you do things like terraform, conquer, and form alliances. But spaceships all work the same regardless of design, and your creature is just a talking picture in the dialogue screens. The Space stage would be more compelling if design decisions really mattered and led to unique experiences.
Spore players would share their stories, and not just their designs, more often and with more enthusiasm if each player had experiences which are truly unique and personal. It's not much fun telling someone a story they already know.
Showing posts with label video games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video games. Show all posts
Monday, April 06, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
in favor of gore and violence
I have mixed feelings about graphic violence in war games.
On the one hand, if you intend for a war game to be educational and didactic, then your depiction of war should be as realistically graphic as possible. There's a limit to how much reality most game consumers will take, of course. The full horrors of our world are not shown even in schools or on TV because relatively few people are willing to face absolutely everything. But the more education that can be sneaked in, the better.
On the other hand, it's easy and wrong to relish the gore too much. Some enjoyment is benign, I think. Young boys cross-culturally play war games (not speaking of video games), and enjoyment of violence goes hand-in-hand with that instinct. A thrill from battle is natural, including gory signs of victory. But that, like any instinctual desire, has a proper place and manner. The appetite for violence can and should be directed, moderated, and bloodlust (gore) with it.
Enjoyment of gore is founded in a taste for victory, I believe. When you see the head of your sniper's victim explode like a watermelon, it can be more satisfying feedback than simply seeing the victim fall down. When your battleaxe hits home and you hear a pained cry mixed with the sound of flesh tearing and bone shattering, that's a taste of competitive success.
I have great respect for films in which bullet wounds are intentionally invisible or merely red stains (like John Wayne films, or The Hunt for Red October). Gore can be good feedback or good education, even integral to storytelling, but subtlety can also be good. The absence of gore can better focus the audience's attention on other elements. Game designers should always ask which way better suits their particular game.
Anyway! As usual, I'm getting off track.
That article made me think of the irony that the game restrictions intended to honor social concerns are very often in the way of serving those values.
For example, children cannot be killed in games. Children in games like Neverwinter Nights, Fable 2, and Fallout 3 are invulnerable (yes, it's sad that I know this). Bioshock allows the player to kill the child-like "Little Sisters", but the screen fades out when this happens. Truth-conscious war games have yet to represent the reality that combatants are commonly children (often teenagers, sometimes younger) or even include them as bystanders. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is getting a sequel, but what are the chances it will have kids with assault rifles, militants residing with their families, or terrorists stationing supplies and soldiers in schools and churches?
Yet what would push home the nature of urban combat to gamers better than having to face women and children with guns?
Rather than forbid gore and uncomfortable scenarios, those interested in socially productive gaming should encourage developers to include such things and provide intuitive commentary.
Intuitive commentary means unspoken commentary; gameworld consequences and reactions beyond dialogue. Soldiers visibly shaken by the deaths of their comrades. Non-player combatants being crippled, rather than slain. The dead abandoned, their corpses stripped by poor locals and nibbled on by crows and dogs. Wailing mothers and grandmothers. Lost, crying children.
Intuitive commentary means reward and punishment. Save an ally and he might watch your back a little more closely. Spare what enemies you can and you might receive valuable information, face softer resistance from noncombatants, or even make a friend. Kill too many noncombatants and your allies will turn against you (the game ends... restart). Kill some kid who's aiming a gun at you and expect the family to seek revenge. Place a landmine, and don't expect to be able to control who dies by it.
As I said earlier, I acknowledge that there is a limit to what consumers of entertainment are willing to endure. Films like Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, and Black Hawk Down have demonstrated that the average consumer will endure a great deal if the presentation of that uncomfortable content is artful and meaningful. Games, being interactive, can probably not push quite as far, but are still capable of much more than the industry has generally been willing to explore as of yet.
I'm not saying all war games should be seriously toned and educational. I'm just saying that if you're making a serious game, gore and other nasty elements can be used toward noble ends. They don't have to be about feeding immoderate impulses. The industry is currently bound by certain social restrictions, but designers will have more and more room to explore mature content if they can demonstrate to society how it might be done tastefully and productively.
On the one hand, if you intend for a war game to be educational and didactic, then your depiction of war should be as realistically graphic as possible. There's a limit to how much reality most game consumers will take, of course. The full horrors of our world are not shown even in schools or on TV because relatively few people are willing to face absolutely everything. But the more education that can be sneaked in, the better.
On the other hand, it's easy and wrong to relish the gore too much. Some enjoyment is benign, I think. Young boys cross-culturally play war games (not speaking of video games), and enjoyment of violence goes hand-in-hand with that instinct. A thrill from battle is natural, including gory signs of victory. But that, like any instinctual desire, has a proper place and manner. The appetite for violence can and should be directed, moderated, and bloodlust (gore) with it.
Enjoyment of gore is founded in a taste for victory, I believe. When you see the head of your sniper's victim explode like a watermelon, it can be more satisfying feedback than simply seeing the victim fall down. When your battleaxe hits home and you hear a pained cry mixed with the sound of flesh tearing and bone shattering, that's a taste of competitive success.
I have great respect for films in which bullet wounds are intentionally invisible or merely red stains (like John Wayne films, or The Hunt for Red October). Gore can be good feedback or good education, even integral to storytelling, but subtlety can also be good. The absence of gore can better focus the audience's attention on other elements. Game designers should always ask which way better suits their particular game.
Anyway! As usual, I'm getting off track.
That article made me think of the irony that the game restrictions intended to honor social concerns are very often in the way of serving those values.
For example, children cannot be killed in games. Children in games like Neverwinter Nights, Fable 2, and Fallout 3 are invulnerable (yes, it's sad that I know this). Bioshock allows the player to kill the child-like "Little Sisters", but the screen fades out when this happens. Truth-conscious war games have yet to represent the reality that combatants are commonly children (often teenagers, sometimes younger) or even include them as bystanders. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is getting a sequel, but what are the chances it will have kids with assault rifles, militants residing with their families, or terrorists stationing supplies and soldiers in schools and churches?
Yet what would push home the nature of urban combat to gamers better than having to face women and children with guns?
Rather than forbid gore and uncomfortable scenarios, those interested in socially productive gaming should encourage developers to include such things and provide intuitive commentary.
Intuitive commentary means unspoken commentary; gameworld consequences and reactions beyond dialogue. Soldiers visibly shaken by the deaths of their comrades. Non-player combatants being crippled, rather than slain. The dead abandoned, their corpses stripped by poor locals and nibbled on by crows and dogs. Wailing mothers and grandmothers. Lost, crying children.
Intuitive commentary means reward and punishment. Save an ally and he might watch your back a little more closely. Spare what enemies you can and you might receive valuable information, face softer resistance from noncombatants, or even make a friend. Kill too many noncombatants and your allies will turn against you (the game ends... restart). Kill some kid who's aiming a gun at you and expect the family to seek revenge. Place a landmine, and don't expect to be able to control who dies by it.
As I said earlier, I acknowledge that there is a limit to what consumers of entertainment are willing to endure. Films like Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, and Black Hawk Down have demonstrated that the average consumer will endure a great deal if the presentation of that uncomfortable content is artful and meaningful. Games, being interactive, can probably not push quite as far, but are still capable of much more than the industry has generally been willing to explore as of yet.
I'm not saying all war games should be seriously toned and educational. I'm just saying that if you're making a serious game, gore and other nasty elements can be used toward noble ends. They don't have to be about feeding immoderate impulses. The industry is currently bound by certain social restrictions, but designers will have more and more room to explore mature content if they can demonstrate to society how it might be done tastefully and productively.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Gameplay, not narrative, defines the game
In a recent issue of Game Informer, Mathieu Ferland defends the idea that Splinter Cell: Conviction is not a break from the Splinter Cell franchise by saying "I think there was a natural progression with the narrative."
I'm a fiction writer and a lifelong RPG fan, but I just don't buy that narrative ever defines a game. If a game was designed so that the gameplay is, not just heavily dependent on the narrative, but at its very essence little more than the progression of a story, then I might agree that narrative can define a game. But I have yet to play a game in which my primary interest is the narrative.
Call of Duty: 3 might come closest, and I played it for only 15-20 minutes before giving up on it. The game (the beginning, at least) was so dependent on cinematics that it felt like I was just going through motions to reach the next cinematic...and my impression was that it was a terrible game. If I want to watch a movie or read a book, I'll go do that.
This medium is about interaction. The narrative might be extremely important, but interaction will always be the core of any game. The more one-sided the game's progression (the more pace, plot, setting, and so on are controlled by the developer and not the player), the less it is a game.
The goals that make the most sense to me as a writer for games are:
I certainly believe that there are many admirable ways in which game writers may create a variety of narrative-gameplay combinations. But, ever since I played my first MMORPG (Everquest), the avenue which most attracts me, and which seems glaringly absent from the modern game library, is a central narrative theme...only moderately predetermined...surrounded and fulfilled by the spontaneous and creative narratives of individual players.
Player input, not the narrative that input may reveal, is the game. Dev-written stories extracted by the player will always be somewhat peripheral to core gameplay.
I'm a fiction writer and a lifelong RPG fan, but I just don't buy that narrative ever defines a game. If a game was designed so that the gameplay is, not just heavily dependent on the narrative, but at its very essence little more than the progression of a story, then I might agree that narrative can define a game. But I have yet to play a game in which my primary interest is the narrative.
Call of Duty: 3 might come closest, and I played it for only 15-20 minutes before giving up on it. The game (the beginning, at least) was so dependent on cinematics that it felt like I was just going through motions to reach the next cinematic...and my impression was that it was a terrible game. If I want to watch a movie or read a book, I'll go do that.
This medium is about interaction. The narrative might be extremely important, but interaction will always be the core of any game. The more one-sided the game's progression (the more pace, plot, setting, and so on are controlled by the developer and not the player), the less it is a game.
The goals that make the most sense to me as a writer for games are:
- To design and anticipate possible player decisions, and accomodate that free will through gameplay trees, ala Deus Ex.
- To design a context for player actions: a world which demonstrates interest in player choices, rewarding/punishing those choices according to its own interests and concepts of right and wrong action.
- To provide elements with which the player may build (consciously or not) his or her own story; to build a world with room for creative, and not just explorative, gameplay.
I certainly believe that there are many admirable ways in which game writers may create a variety of narrative-gameplay combinations. But, ever since I played my first MMORPG (Everquest), the avenue which most attracts me, and which seems glaringly absent from the modern game library, is a central narrative theme...only moderately predetermined...surrounded and fulfilled by the spontaneous and creative narratives of individual players.
Player input, not the narrative that input may reveal, is the game. Dev-written stories extracted by the player will always be somewhat peripheral to core gameplay.
Friday, February 16, 2007
LOTR Online: initial impressions
I got an invitation to the preview period yesterday, downloaded the game this morning, and have played on and off since. The NDA was apparently lifted last week, so I'll go ahead and express my disappointment here.
I have created two characters, a human minstrel and a dwarf champion, both level 4. Many would say that this is far too soon for any sort of review, but I disagree. If a game doesn't grab me in the first hour or two, it's unreasonable to expect me to submit myself to further boredom or frustration to reach the good stuff (and the fun at the high levels doesn't matter). With how many products other than MMOGs does the developer say, "Sure, it sucks at first, but it'll grow on you"?
THE GOOD
I enjoy the moments when my character is frozen for half-a-minute as scripted events unfold before me. I was excited when my NPC companion shouted encouragement to Gimli as the hero faced a giant cave troll. I was excited when Gandalf turned the troll to stone later on. These events felt like genuine drama.
I like the various cultural backgrounds and settings offered for each race. My character isn't just a dwarf, but a dwarf of the Grey Mountains...as opposed to a dwarf of Lonely Mountain or three other options. Any extra depth the developer can offer to player characters is great.
The artistic design is plain, but impressive. There's a nice sense of scale, with a good range of elevation in the terrain. The visual customization for characters is limited, but better than WoW's.
The minstrels can apparently compose their own music (to a very limited extent). I'm not sure how legality plays into that, but it's great to see players being given a means to be so creative and productive.
THE BAD
The graphics setting automatically chosen for my computer was High. That lasted about 5-10 minutes before the first wave of horrendous lag. The lag still plagued me at Medium, so I eventually stuck with Low. Because of the graphical style (similar to WoW's), the differences between High and Low were hardly noticed. But the lesson is this: for the many gamers (unlike me) without experience in games and graphics adjustments, automatically selected settings should be more practical. Don't set the graphics based on the character selection screen; test the setting with moving objects and large render distances. The amateur gamer should rarely have to enter the Options menu.
THE UGLY
Words can't express my disappointment that MMOGs are changing so little.
Like many veteran MMO gamers, my first taste of an MMOG universe (EQ) was glorious, but MMOGs since have been less and less able to hold my interest. I've played and tested almost a dozen MMOGs (Everquest, Shadowbane, Asheron's Call 2, Star Wars: Galaxies, Wish, Horizons, Everquest 2, City of Heroes/City of Villains, World of Warcraft, Vanguard, and LOTR Online). It's come to the point that I'm no longer interested in MMOGs; at least, not until there's a revolution (not just an evolution) in core gameplay design.
The "quests" are wretched. "Go kill X number of Y to change nothing and get the same reward I gave the last guy!".
The NPCs stand like PEZ-dispensers, waiting to honor every unique savior with the same trite story and promise of grey glory. I'm reminded of The Incredibles: "when everybody's special, no one is".
The combat is boring. "Auto-attack" may not exactly be jargon for "instant win", but it's still captures the essence of the experience. So many hotbutton-skill choices! yet all just waiting for players to find the perfect sequence and apply that to every fight. The really clever games include a "match this character action to this NPC action" whack-a-mole system. Yippee.
Creature locations are neatly divided into level categories and utterly predictable. Since when is predictability attractive in adventure entertainment? Perhaps that's my mistake...to believe that true adventure was ever a goal.
SUMMARY
Notice what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that LOTR is bad as MMOGs go. I'm saying that it's MMOGs in general that are the problem.
And, of course, the problem only exists if one is concerned with game quality and not just profit from the novelty of a virtual world. It's my long experience with MMOGs that has led me to this point of disinterest. I'm sure the basic idea of a virtual world can still suck in plenty of newcomers.
Eventually, I'll probably return to the genre. In the meantime, I'm going back to single-player adventure games. I hate to speak so pessimistically about anything, but I'm not seeing many reasons to hope here.
I have created two characters, a human minstrel and a dwarf champion, both level 4. Many would say that this is far too soon for any sort of review, but I disagree. If a game doesn't grab me in the first hour or two, it's unreasonable to expect me to submit myself to further boredom or frustration to reach the good stuff (and the fun at the high levels doesn't matter). With how many products other than MMOGs does the developer say, "Sure, it sucks at first, but it'll grow on you"?
THE GOOD
I enjoy the moments when my character is frozen for half-a-minute as scripted events unfold before me. I was excited when my NPC companion shouted encouragement to Gimli as the hero faced a giant cave troll. I was excited when Gandalf turned the troll to stone later on. These events felt like genuine drama.
I like the various cultural backgrounds and settings offered for each race. My character isn't just a dwarf, but a dwarf of the Grey Mountains...as opposed to a dwarf of Lonely Mountain or three other options. Any extra depth the developer can offer to player characters is great.
The artistic design is plain, but impressive. There's a nice sense of scale, with a good range of elevation in the terrain. The visual customization for characters is limited, but better than WoW's.
The minstrels can apparently compose their own music (to a very limited extent). I'm not sure how legality plays into that, but it's great to see players being given a means to be so creative and productive.
THE BAD
The graphics setting automatically chosen for my computer was High. That lasted about 5-10 minutes before the first wave of horrendous lag. The lag still plagued me at Medium, so I eventually stuck with Low. Because of the graphical style (similar to WoW's), the differences between High and Low were hardly noticed. But the lesson is this: for the many gamers (unlike me) without experience in games and graphics adjustments, automatically selected settings should be more practical. Don't set the graphics based on the character selection screen; test the setting with moving objects and large render distances. The amateur gamer should rarely have to enter the Options menu.
THE UGLY
Words can't express my disappointment that MMOGs are changing so little.
Like many veteran MMO gamers, my first taste of an MMOG universe (EQ) was glorious, but MMOGs since have been less and less able to hold my interest. I've played and tested almost a dozen MMOGs (Everquest, Shadowbane, Asheron's Call 2, Star Wars: Galaxies, Wish, Horizons, Everquest 2, City of Heroes/City of Villains, World of Warcraft, Vanguard, and LOTR Online). It's come to the point that I'm no longer interested in MMOGs; at least, not until there's a revolution (not just an evolution) in core gameplay design.
The "quests" are wretched. "Go kill X number of Y to change nothing and get the same reward I gave the last guy!".
The NPCs stand like PEZ-dispensers, waiting to honor every unique savior with the same trite story and promise of grey glory. I'm reminded of The Incredibles: "when everybody's special, no one is".
The combat is boring. "Auto-attack" may not exactly be jargon for "instant win", but it's still captures the essence of the experience. So many hotbutton-skill choices! yet all just waiting for players to find the perfect sequence and apply that to every fight. The really clever games include a "match this character action to this NPC action" whack-a-mole system. Yippee.
Creature locations are neatly divided into level categories and utterly predictable. Since when is predictability attractive in adventure entertainment? Perhaps that's my mistake...to believe that true adventure was ever a goal.
SUMMARY
Notice what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that LOTR is bad as MMOGs go. I'm saying that it's MMOGs in general that are the problem.
And, of course, the problem only exists if one is concerned with game quality and not just profit from the novelty of a virtual world. It's my long experience with MMOGs that has led me to this point of disinterest. I'm sure the basic idea of a virtual world can still suck in plenty of newcomers.
Eventually, I'll probably return to the genre. In the meantime, I'm going back to single-player adventure games. I hate to speak so pessimistically about anything, but I'm not seeing many reasons to hope here.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Video / Non-Video Games
Every once in a while, some nut suggests that we need to start calling them something other than "video games". At first, proposals for labels like "interactive [something]" struck me as just people taking themselves too seriously, disliking being pegged as "game" developers instead of something that sounds more artistic, serious, and publicly respectable.
But I'm starting to warm to the idea since a realization I had today. I admit to being slow and completely out of touch with the world sometimes, so I'm sure this realization hit others years ago.
It's very common in disputes about the quality or superiority of a "video game" for one side to point out that the graphics are not optimal while the other side points out that a game can be fun despite sub-optimal graphics. What's happening here is a problem of categorization. In a "video game", seemingly by definition, the "video" is a pivotal element. If a game places little emphasis on graphics, it's haunted by this label which demands a graphical standard. A better terminology could greatly benefit marketing and project proposals alike.
I was surprised when I first heard the term "graphic novels". It has become a common phrase, at least vaguely familiar even to those with absolutely no interest in the market. I don't know the history, but my guess is that either: 1) someone with a measure of public respect didn't want to risk their reputation by admitting to enjoying a well-written, even depthful, "comic book", or 2) a marketer of comic books thought he could fool people into giving particular comic books a chance, and succeeded. Which one of those (if either) was the prime mover is important, because the answer suggests to the game industry whether a new terminology for "video games" can come from within or must come from without.
As for what terminology... Perhaps games can co-exist under one term in overlapping categories, similar to movie DVDs. DVDs are divided into genres like horror and drama, as games are divided into FPS and RPG, but they are also divided into Widescreen/Fullscreen, and include cross-genres (action comedy, action horror, etc). I'm not sure if there's any benefit in hard-dividing "more video" games from "less video" games.
Anyway, if this is all boringly obvious, then I apologize for wasting your time.
But I'm starting to warm to the idea since a realization I had today. I admit to being slow and completely out of touch with the world sometimes, so I'm sure this realization hit others years ago.
It's very common in disputes about the quality or superiority of a "video game" for one side to point out that the graphics are not optimal while the other side points out that a game can be fun despite sub-optimal graphics. What's happening here is a problem of categorization. In a "video game", seemingly by definition, the "video" is a pivotal element. If a game places little emphasis on graphics, it's haunted by this label which demands a graphical standard. A better terminology could greatly benefit marketing and project proposals alike.
I was surprised when I first heard the term "graphic novels". It has become a common phrase, at least vaguely familiar even to those with absolutely no interest in the market. I don't know the history, but my guess is that either: 1) someone with a measure of public respect didn't want to risk their reputation by admitting to enjoying a well-written, even depthful, "comic book", or 2) a marketer of comic books thought he could fool people into giving particular comic books a chance, and succeeded. Which one of those (if either) was the prime mover is important, because the answer suggests to the game industry whether a new terminology for "video games" can come from within or must come from without.
As for what terminology... Perhaps games can co-exist under one term in overlapping categories, similar to movie DVDs. DVDs are divided into genres like horror and drama, as games are divided into FPS and RPG, but they are also divided into Widescreen/Fullscreen, and include cross-genres (action comedy, action horror, etc). I'm not sure if there's any benefit in hard-dividing "more video" games from "less video" games.
Anyway, if this is all boringly obvious, then I apologize for wasting your time.
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