It''s not about you. It''s about the fall of civilization! It''s about love itself! It''s about human courage! It''s about sacrifice! It''s about the epic! What the h*ll am I talking about?!?! Um, I''d actually like to know. What does a game have to do to get you to feel like you''re part of something greater? Side question: Do you even WANT a game to do that? I''ve been watching a TON of Babylon 5 reruns. J. Michael Straczynski did an awesome job of making viewers feel like had a window into a universe that was bigger than them, or story, or the characters. Can games do this? And is the only way to do this through a story? Or can you, instead, have great events of great import happening in the background, of which the player can influence and be a part of? Or are games far too focused on the details of doing stuff in game for this sort of experience? -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...

What needs to be done is to put the player in a position where he genuinely feels he isn''t quite in control, without making him feel that urge to reload his last save or quit the game.

But how do you do that?

Wav, I remember when you were just a systems-design nazi. With this post, you''ve officially come to the dark side... welcome...

Focusing in on MMORPG''s, it seems that this will become critical to success. Asheron''s Call does this now to a limited extent, but I forsee a time when this becomes more the norm than the exception. And the reason this becomes doable is because there is no end to the game. Most games you play can be completed - adventure, rpg, even RTS. The player thinks in terms of "completing" this mission or this game, instead of "immersing" themselves in the game. MMORPG''s do away with this kind of thinking. Actually, to be fair, MUD''s did this years ago - MMORPG''s just tacked on some nice graphics.

This is what is so interesting about these types of games. What I''m working on and would like to see supported in-game is a way to keep track of the rich history of the world. If a player does something significant, it should be recorded. After you''ve played the same character for a long time, you should be able to look at the history of your character and his/her exploits. And as players are able to affect the world around them more in the next generation of games, there should be a global history that is available for all players to view. Asheron''s Call does this a little with the books they have in-game which you may purchase/find and read - but that''s only the tip of the iceberg IMHO.

Wavinator, you are 100000000% right !

I think B5 is the greatest thing ever. The first 20 episodes are just introduction, the second 20 are so dam incredible and you think it can''t be any great / more fascinating. But it just gets better all the time. It has this X-Files feeling, where you are dying just to see what happens next. B5 is such an incredible series. I love SF, but what I hate about Star Trek is that the characters are so incredible flat. They have no life, no meaning, and there''s no tensions because it''s so damn obvious what happens ;-)

The only game that make me feel like B5 was DeusEx, it used the same unpredictable mechanism to drag you into this big universe.

I would love to see something like B5 as a game, but it would be incredible challenging to put such an incredible story line into a game.

Tim

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glvelocity.gamedev.net
www.gamedev.net/hosted/glvelocity

I think the problem is that games tend to be short sighted.

You take B5 as an example, and I''ll tell you why I think you are right. It''s because everything seems to be (was) planned beforehand. Throughout the various episodes, you will see small hints of something bigger coming. When you watch the later episodes, you get to understand things that happened in the first ones, and suddenly all make sense. Or you get the "I knew it !" feeling (I could give examples, but that would require too much SPOILER warnings).

Take Lindo for instance. In Star Trek, he would have changed side in one episode. One day he is nice, the second is soul has just been bought by the Evil side ... In B5, you see it coming. Not only do you see it coming, but it''s not just one thing that trigger a chain of events. It''s a lot of subtle changes, events, choices, that finally make him end up being a Bad guy. And you see the gradual change throughout the episodes, and the inner conflicts. You also get glimpses of what his own little personal problems echoes throughout the whole universe, probably making him responsible for the start of the War, and definitely for the destruction of his own planet...

Does that make any sense ? I could know try to make that more general, but I am a bit tired

youpla :-P

Sorry i''ll read all the posts after i get this off my chest.

quote: by Wavinator
Can games do this? And is the only way to do this through a story? Or can you, instead, have great events of great import happening in the background, of which the player can influence and be a part of?

This is one of the reasons i like horror movie becuase it takes away that safety seat of the viewer and places you closer to the realm thats being presented to you from the movie.

Personally i thought Doom did a lot of what you were talking about because you could be scared and when you were scared you completely forgot that you were sitting in front of your PC and that the monster was about to smash your soul into hell. This for me made me feel like there was other universe and i was a part of it. But you could probably say that horror is cheating becuase it uses the same old emotion to provide the effect you''re talking about Wavinator (fear). So what you''re talking about is being able to provide that sence on neo-reality whilst being able to tell [almost] any story?!?




A designer doesnt need to know everything about code, they just have to have an appreciation for its limitations and how those limitations affect features they may wish to include in their design. - Drew

You guys played System Shock 2? Sure scared the crap outta me when I played it. The concept of not knowing where they are coming from, when they are coming, knowing you have limited ability to deal with them, but you can _hear_ them coming...ugh...nasty.

Oh, and what about Aliens v Predator, playing as the marine makes me lose my wits sometimes.

I think it is possible to make a game generate an emotive response from a player, but we are only just beginning to find out how. Its very different from a movie or a novel.


Drew "remnant" Chambers
Game Designer
Irrational Games

The Lord of the Rings is the best example (in my opinion, of course) of a world where you feel there is more going on than just the main character''s life. By following several different characters around at the same time you get to see what is happening in middle earth on a grand scale, while still getting to know all of the origional characters in great detail.
And there is no shortage of detail in The Lord of the Rings. While traveling around, characters pass through certain historical places (of course I can''t remember any of them at the moment), and Tolkien goes WAY back in history to talk about the crafting of the rings and such. And then to make the world even more believable there is the book The Silmarillion (sp?) which tells about the history of middle earth (actually not just middle earth) on a HUGE scale. Put everything together and you get a very believable, very interesting world where the exploits of one little hobbit are epic by themselves, but miniscule in the grand scheme of things.
This feeling that there is something more can be recreated in games. The most important thing is to include plenty of detail of the past and present. If the character visits a village, every villager should say a unique thing, and the occasional villager should tell a story about the past. There should be the occasional newspaper or book lying around (dues ex had these and they helped tell your story from a different perspective).
Another way to give you the feeling that there is more to the world is to make the protagonist someone who isn''t really in a position of great power. Plenty of games already do this already, but plenty also ruin things by making your little under-dog of a protagonist become too powerful in the end. Grandia 2 is a recent example of this - in the beginning you hear the occasional story about the battle of the 2 gods Granas (good) and Valmar (evil), and by the end you are killing Valmar yourself. While killing the god of evil is good for my ego and all, it sort of makes the whole conflict feel less important, and gives me no feeling that there is a greater cause.
Games that take place in a licensed world (the Mechwarrior series, for example) have an advantage. There are already plenty of books written on the subject, and the complete history is already laid out for the developers. The battletech world, full of power struggles between clans, would make a great game if ever put into a game WELL. Unfortunately, mechwarrior games really haven''t placed enough emphasis on plot...

Of course you need a story if you want to "involve" the user. How else will they be immersed!! Think about it, involving the player in your game by way of story can be created in various ways. Directly: the player is a main character in the story and it unfolds due to the players actions. Or Indirectly: the story lays out the past and goes on in the background and the player is a subplot or a small role in the grand story (good for partII, III, or MMO''s). However you unfold it, its a story that involves them, which i think is pretty obvious.

aka John M.
Never give up. Never surrender!