An experiment in excessive freedom

[Wilbefast]

That's an interesting thought actually: once upon a time plays were very codified - among other things the entire intrigue had to take place over a period of, was it 24 hours? Something like that. Anyway, doesn't it strike you as odd that most game stories are continuous, without much ellipsis?

Rarely does a game take place over a period of, say, 50 years, unless of course it's a strategy game. But I'm talking action games here: mostly it'll be a period of months. I'm thinking a novel way of raising the difficulty would be for the characters to gradually get older each level - so we visit him or her at various points during their life when interesting things happen.

You'd start of in your prime, and end up old and grey, with the children of people who've killed trying to hunt you down...

[Assaultman67]

... Rarely does a game take place over a period of, say, 50 years, unless of course it's a strategy game. But I'm talking action games here: mostly it'll be a period of months. I'm thinking a novel way of raising the difficulty would be for the characters to gradually get older each level - so we visit him or her at various points during their life when interesting things happen...

If you count a "game" as a series you could say that RF and HL (kind of) would fit that category ...

In Red Faction, the series skips from RF1 to RF:G in about 50 years after terraforming was partially complete ...

Where does RF2 fit in? ... ???

Then again, that series is probably THE most inconsistent series i know of ...

[Wilbefast]

Far Cry?

[Renegade_Turner]

You'd start of in your prime, and end up old and grey, with the children of people who've killed trying to hunt you down...

Hahaha. You mean instead of growing in power, you get older and shitter? That sounds like a great idea!

[Assaultman67]

You'd start of in your prime, and end up old and grey, with the children of people who've killed trying to hunt you down...

Hahaha. You mean instead of growing in power, you get older and shitter? That sounds like a great idea!

There needs to be gained something that will balance things out though ... such as experience ...

maybe later in life you will be able to recognize similar scenarios in which you've encountered before, so you have more experience at dealing with them ...

[Wilbefast]

Hahaha. You mean instead of growing in power, you get older and shitter? That sounds like a great idea!

I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic, or sadistic so I'm going to opt for the former: can you really not imagine a world beyond the status quo?

I was playing "Borderlands" with a few friends a couple of weeks ago. In Borderlands, you grow increasingly more powerful as you play, and so does everything else. As a result the game feels utterly pointless: after about 12 hours of killing masked dudes we'd finally killed some special masked dude who had a key that unlocked a door, so we go could through this door and kill some other, even more special masked dude, who had a piece of another, different key, that would open up another door behind which, presumably, they'd be even more masked dudes to kill.

I say "feels utterly pointless" because it was a feeling, not a concious evaluation. So what is it that makes a game "feel" like it means something? What, in short, makes us give a damn? I'm not saying the game wasn't fun - hell, we played 12 hours of it - but we all basically regressed back a couple of years to a time when we were teenagers, exulting at our indestructibility, our seemingly never ending increase in strength.
You'd think that with most gamers now in their thirties, teenage power-fantasies would stop being so popular. In fact they're more popular than ever, because we enjoy this regression.

That said there's a little more to the human condition than those few years spent paralytically enraged, confused and aroused.

There needs to be gained something that will balance things out though

Why? Games are supposed to get harder as they go along - what better way to make the game harder than for the character to be older and older?

I'm thinking of the film "Fearless" - Jet Li starts of being brilliant but arrogant, and because of his arrogance he ends up destroying everything he has going for him. Eventually he is thrown into a situation where he's out of his element: rather than being the master he's the village idiot. This helps him learn humility. Okay, so the amount of propaganda in that film is stifling, but it's still a good film.

What about this scene (the first):



Okay, so it's cut short, but from memory one the guys goes on to say:

"Enemies? I've lost count of my enemies..."

Then he catches a fly out of air he says:

"Time was I'd have caught all five..."

The film isn't about getting stronger and stronger, it's about getting old and weak, and your past catching up to you. "Watchmen" was slightly above par for the same reason: it's not an exultation of unlimited power, but rather a pause for thought. With gratuitous violence every few minutes to wake up the audience.

I'm sure you'll agree that if these films were only about infinite power, they'd probably still be fun to watch, but they "feel pointless", not because the feeling of invulnerability (the cult of youth) isn't meaningful, but because we've been there, done that so many, many, many times...


edit: another choice quote:
- "men you step aside for... none."
- "that's the kind of arithmetic I like."
- "so did I when I was your age."

[Assaultman67]

There needs to be gained something that will balance things out though

Why? Games are supposed to get harder as they go along - what better way to make the game harder than for the character to be older and older? ...

People enjoy challenges yes, but if you present that challenge in the form of a handicap or a "punishment" for succeeding it will piss people off ...

most games keep a player playing via achievements, challenges, and rewards ...

But implementing a aging system that effects stats would be similar to playing a FPS in reverse ... you start off at the end with all the weapons unlocked and as you play to the beginning you start to lose weapons, and capabilities you once had ...

The same would apply to aging ... you could implement a system that changes the appearances of the character but if you started decreasing their health, their speed, etc. its going to piss them off a bit i would imagine ...

Im not saying the game wouldn't be interesting, i just don't think it would be very successful if you punish your players for success ... hence why you would need something to balance out the aging effect ... realism in games shouldn't ever be a top priority ...

I also want to add that the entertainment perspective is much different, if you watch a movie, you watch the main character grow old, lose his capabilities, etc. but in a game "you are" the main character that grows old and loses capabilities ... I think that particular story theme is better suited from an external persepctive.

[Renegade_Turner]

Hahaha. You mean instead of growing in power, you get older and shitter? That sounds like a great idea!

I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic, or sadistic so I'm going to opt for the former: can you really not imagine a world beyond the status quo?

Hahaha come on now you're becoming a broken record with all this "Think outside the box!" rhetoric. I was saying it sounded like a cool idea.

...but we all basically regressed back a couple of years to a time when we were teenagers, exulting at our indestructibility, our seemingly never ending increase in strength.
You'd think that with most gamers now in their thirties, teenage power-fantasies would stop being so popular. In fact they're more popular than ever, because we enjoy this regression.

You've just tried to jump on the horse, but went too far and fell off the other side. I appreciate what you're trying to do but you seem to project your thoughts on what you think should be seen as "regression" onto everyone else as if it's indisputable. I suppose this is the nature of giving one's own strong opinions, but I must dispute your idea of what regression is.

Why should we invest more of ourselves into a game rather than just play it for the fun of playing it? There are other games for emotional investment of oneself in a game, Borderlands is not one of them. The story, like in Lugaru's case, is simply a vehicle for all the ass-kicking. I don't see it as regression. Is this your way of calling the game immature, that it's beyond someone who's 30 years of age? That's bizarre.

Anyway, everyone keeps their inner child. Society forces people to lock it away in a cell, unfed and uncared for, because that's what society expects. Trends dictate our emotions. When I'm playing a game, I don't like it based on my age and whether or not the content is upholding the expectations of my "mature" age-empowered ego. I like it based on whether or not it's great fun, if it satisfies what I'm looking for in a game. What I'm looking for in a game has no correlation to my outward appearance in established society. People's personalities evolve with time, but not necessarily to "mature" in the conventional sense of the word, so games like Borderlands will always please certain people.

You don't like it? I accept that. Saying it triggers a regression in people? I don't accept that.

That said there's a little more to the human condition than those few years spent paralytically enraged, confused and aroused.

There's also a little more to those few years you're referring to. I assume you mean the teenage years? I don't think I feel enraged. Confused? Probably. Aroused? Undoubtedly.

Wait, I'm not a teenager. I keep forgetting that, it happened so recently. Shit.

What, in short, makes us give a damn?

Bioshock made a good point in showing us that, at the end of the day, in games we're told what to do. You can coat it up in reasons to care and free will and choices all you want, but generally we're told what to do. We're instructed. Even if you came up with some example where you're not expressly told to do anything in particular like Facade, you're still given a general task to cover: go into this apartment and talk to this family until you get them to come to terms with each other or you're told to GTFO.

I will agree that emotional investment in a game can never be a bad thing, but nor is it a necessity. If a game can get me to care about its characters and want to see how things unfold, that's great! Grandia did that. I loved it all the more. I was 10, I loved the characters, I loved the story, I loved thhe gameplay, I felt like crying when it ended. However this is the inexperienced part of your life where everything is new to you, everything fills you with awe, everything is fresh, and you're more likely to fall in love with something. The longer you go in life, the less reasons you have to give a shit about a game and its characters. The MORE reason to make a game fun and be satisfied when games are loads of fucking fun.

Because at the end of the day, what are games only another way to make the hours until we die pass by quicker?

[Wilbefast]

Because at the end of the day, what are games only another way to make the hours until we die pass by quicker?

A lot more, potentially. I'm not attacking games like Borderlands for being mindless fun: I even said I enjoyed playing it for 12 hours. What I'm saying though is that I yearn for something more than just mindless fun, because mindless fun is about all we have at the moment.
Wait a minute, why am I even writing when I can just post links to Anthony Burch videos?



I find it hilarious that he has almost exactly the same opinions as me. And a little creepy.

I'm not saying the game wouldn't be interesting, I just don't think it would be very successful if you punish your players for success.

"Punishing"? That's going a little far! Was it "punishing" the player when **SPOILERS** "Portal" threw you into a furnace or "Modern Warfare" had you die slowly of radiation sickness? These scenes are powerful because they flip the conventions right around.



This is starting to scare me

[Renegade_Turner]

I find it hilarious that he has almost exactly the same opinions as me. And a little creepy.

This is like in that game where you're looking for that guy because he killed loads of people and then you discover that it's you with a split personality! Except this time it's a guy with opinions on games and it's not as dramatic...

You mean you agree with me about when I said that's how I imagined you? Cool.

*First Video About Meaning In Games*

He seems to be giving out about people saying "Games shouldn't be serious." That's not to say no game can be serious. It's saying that no game NEEDS to be serious. I reject his idea that games need to quest for some higher purpose and blah blah blah. He cited "games can be about eating breakfast" in one of his examples. WHO WANTS A GAME WHERE YOU DO THAT? Sure games like Every Day The Same Dream were cool, but that's not going to entertain me for more than 10 minutes. I'm not going to pull that out time and time again for another whirl. "Oh look he petted the cow, that was great." It's like the opening sequence of Heavy Rain that NO ONE LIKED, where you ate breakfast and drank milk and played with your kids and all that other boring stuff that no one actually wanted to do.

In the same way you're saying games should have a reason for you to want to care about them, games should have a reason for you to want to actually play them. Some rewarding sense of satisfaction from playing them. If all you can offer is sitting down with your old buddies to have a cup of coffee and try to reconcile their relationship, that's not enough incentive for me to play it.

And there are plenty of other games that aren't about killing anyone and aren't about macho self-importance. He seems to be disregarding all of the games that don't just provide mindless killing for 10 hours, and focusing on the games that do and saying "That's all we have." There's plenty of other emotions which have been shown in games than just KILL KILL KILL.

I'm not saying I don't like games that are more about thinking and dialgoue and stuff like that. Most of the classic adventure games are that way. I love them. They have their place. But so does Bioshock.

How is he going to criticise Bioshock for having killing in it? Especially when later on in the game the game basically admonishes you for all that killing even though you couldn't help it and you were being mind-controlled. That makes you take a pretty hard look at yourself. But then you find your own reason to kill, i.e. "That fucking asshole tricked me."

If critics like Roger Ebert want to say games can't be art, let him, because he clearly hasn't played a game like Bioshock or a game like Shadow Of The Colossus or a game like Loom. Video games aren't for everyone. They're for us.

[Assaultman67]

... "Punishing"? That's going a little far! Was it "punishing" the player when **SPOILERS** "Portal" threw you into a furnace or "Modern Warfare" had you die slowly of radiation sickness? These scenes are powerful because they flip the conventions right around.

In those cases did you know you were going to be thrown in a furnace or die of radiation sickness?

In this case the more the player plays the older the player gets ... which makes it a much more predictable scenario of whats going to happen in the end ...

This is what i mean by being punished for succeeding ... the player will recognize the pattern quickly that "even if i get past this level, ill just have to do a harder one with a frailer character ..."

[Renegade_Turner]

Just like that thing with Mario from the blog post. Or was it from the blog post? About how you'd get to the end of the castle and at the end of the castle would be a mushroom head going "Oh actually the princess isn't in this castle either!" and you're always thinking "Oh, she'll be in the NEXT castle." I think that relates to your point about punishing the player and recognising a pattern...kinda. "Oh, she won't be in the next castle either and it's probably going to be harder than this one." The same as "Oh I'm just going to be older and things are going to be more difficult. Fuck, this is shit."

[Wilbefast]

You mean you agree with me about when I said that's how I imagined you? Cool.

Believe it or not, I look almost exactly like "Tony" from "Skins" (the boy from "About a Boy"). So much so that I've been asked for my autograph by strangers. I also had a stalker once. Now that's creepy

The first time I saw one of the "Rev rants" - I thought the guy was a bit... well, watch this:



First, if "Passage" brought you to tears there's something very wrong with you. It was poignant, yes, rather like the end of "Don't look back", but not the sort of thing that makes you break down and cry. Unless you a bitch
Second, he goes round and round in circles at the end - sure, his point makes sense and seems reasonable the first time round, but by the 5th repetition in a row it's getting a bit old.

He cited "games can be about eating breakfast" in one of his examples. WHO WANTS A GAME WHERE YOU DO THAT? Sure games like Every Day The Same Dream were cool, but that's not going to entertain me for more than 10 minutes. I'm not going to pull that out time and time again for another whirl. "Oh look he petted the cow, that was great." It's like the opening sequence of Heavy Rain that NO ONE LIKED, where you ate breakfast and drank milk and played with your kids and all that other boring stuff that no one actually wanted to do.

I don't think he's being entirely serious about that, but yeah, this is where I disagree with him: how many books or films do you know of that are all about eating breakfast? Probably none, because if they were they'd be just as crap as a game about eating breakfast. Actually, if you gave your breakfast-eating game a "Toribash" type control scheme:



Well, you'd have yourself a fairly interesting game about the difficulties of performing menial tasks when you've just had a stroke

That's besides the point though - I said in a post ages ago that Games need to be fun - they're entertainment, they need to entertain, period. That doesn't mean they can't have an interesting point to make, but they need to give people a reason to play. If you're watching a "deep-and-meaningful" film you generally expect it to keep your attention: why should games be excused from having to keep their audience's interest?

[capn.lee]

games do not need to be fun, they need to be entertaining. there is a huge difference.

[Wilbefast]

Please explain this difference - sound a lot like splitting hairs to me