You boot up the game. Day one... you meander around some town, people are busy, you get hit by a truck. Day two... you fearfully watch for traffic, people are busy, someone stabs you. Day three... you set out across the crossing, people are busy, the bank explodes in front of you. Day four... you run to the bank, thieves are huddled outside, you warn the guard and become a hero. I'll explain this somehow... I think the problem is that I've lost my sense of center: simulation makes no sense to me, it lacks purpose. The solution seems to be to play a game in which I am not the center of my own attention, but in wihch my playing of the game centers me in the gameworld, over time. The more I think about it, the more I understand that I'm not trying to think of the best game idea, but that idea which is so good that I cease to be playing the game of thinking the game... and start to live it, outside the confines of the game I imagine myself to be involved in. If only I could remember the way it was before it is the way it will be when I don't want it to be. Isn't that every gamer's wish? Discuss? This brings me back to the question I didn't know I wanted to ask: is there a (subtle) progression of emotional development buried beneath the release of game after game, which explores the relationship we have to computers? System Shock was heralded as a unique and gripping game, was this because the game toyed with its own sense of authority and invited the player to run the gauntlet even as the game insisted the player wasn't welcome. Its only a contradiction as long as you consider the game as a self-aware development (via the developers). What would happen if you developed a game that was never self-aware but always aware of the player? Can you take it further than System Shock did? Imagine a game which recognizes the player as its source of... sustenance? Is that where the Matrix theory comes from? What if you take it further than that? What if the game recognizes that if the player believes in himself outside the game, any self-control the game has will end? Is that the Matrix conclusion? What if you take it further than that? Imagine a game that prepares itself to continually entertain the player at all costs beginning with all sorts of simple and easy choices, encouraging temptation and so on. But when the player gets sick of this and starts to leave the game threatens the player. Imagine a game where being able to quit was not a forgone conclusion but the very object the player would have the hardest time achieving. Is that where the hidden demonism of gaming lies? Is that why many game developers are preoccupied with Satanic imagery in their games? [edited by - deClavier on July 3, 2002 1:45:31 AM]

You know, I don''t know what you smoked before you wrote that, but you stated a really, really good point.

I''ve seen the movie Groundhog Day also, and you just made me think of a great idea for a game...

This topic definitely deserves some more feedback than this little few sentenced that I can offer in the short time I have.

Very good observation techniques my friend.

~Dwarf

Even better, how about Run Lola Run? Replaying the same scenario over and over, where each time a few little changes are made, and it effects the outcome completely...

Superpig
- saving pigs from untimely fates
- sleeps in a ham-mock at www.thebinaryrefinery.cjb.net

If only I could remember the way it was before it is the way it will be when I don''t want it to be.

Your a genius, pity no one else can see it (myself included).

visuals are the deception, my friend; your eyeball is a computer for what your ears hear in the absence of the impossibility that you enjoy as reality but abhor while you''re dreaming.

anyway, obscurities aside, there is a definate systemic link between presenting the game as self-contained (& involving), critically detaching oneself as a way of designing the game and the progression of imagined realities produced by game developers. I think that, imaginatively, two polarities are being explored: perpetuality and escape, which are fundamentally incompatible but coherent as an emotional development from curiosity to self-satisfaction... or something. If only I could figure out the key terms I could understand why story is becoming less important and _disinterested_ AI is becomming more important. The key issue is that time is irrelevant to computing but the absence of "the awareness of time" is crucial to gaming (and both have their own unique pleasure/pain feedback loops).

yeah... I have no idea what you just said...

George D. Filiotis
Are you in support of the ban of Dihydrogen Monoxide? You should be!

*passes out*

and yeah, are you trying to confuze us all with your good english skills? or are you really trying to make a point? if yes, is it really that deep?

write in more simple english then please!

quote:
"If only I could remember the way it was before it is the way it will be when I don''t want it to be." -deClavier

could i use that as my signature please? :D

ps. the above quote, what does it mean?

---
shurcool
my project

Well hey, the day I play a self-aware computer game (one which would actually feel threatened at the thought of me stopping), is the day I lose complete awareness of time. By the way, I like ducks.

ok

breakdown =

"If only I could remember"

If only I could anticipate

"the way it was"

what the game is coded to do

"before it is the way it will be"

before the running of the game reaches that state of affairs

"when I don''t want it to be." -deClavier

which resulted in my character being defeated the last time around

DarglehÄng?

I guess what I''m trying to say is that as long as you believe the computer doesn''t care, games will inevitably reflect a humanistic attitude to the indifferent. If there is any kind of emotional progression, like that following the death of a loved one, games will inevitably match that progression in tone. There is evidence of this.

Will you start to believe that because I care enough to type this, the computer is therefore capable of being caring? What sort of a world will you create inside a computer that cares, if you believe me?