Actually you know what, I think scripted events are great but full blown scripted scenes or cut scenes where the player must relinquish total control and spectate is almost always bad.

I was looking at the Alan Wake trailer and much of it appeared to be footage of an opening introductory scripted scene. I was immediately reminded of how in Half Life 1.0 (Portal also) you were literally "playing" right from the opening credits. There was no opening movie describing who you were and what you had to do. You went to work on the tram. You got off and found out what you needed to do next by talking to co-workers and the amount of time control was stolen from you and you were forced to spectate was very limited. You were playing nearly non stop from beginning to end.

Full blown scripted scenes and cut scenes are like bad movies that have too much exposition; scenes where everything stops and some plot point or history or background information must be explained via dialogue. Alan Wake seems to be going down that path where entire chunks of relevant character history are just explained away via an intro scene and other fully scripted (non interactive) scenes occur throughout to advance the plot. LAME! If you can't figure out a way to advance your story in a FULLY INTERACTIVE manner by now then you need to go back to school.

I'm reminded of games like Max Payne where you had to play an entire section of the game stoned after being drugged. An inferior game would have used a giant cut scene for that entire experience but in Max Payne you could actually play it.

Anyway I think a concrete suggestion game designers can try to adopt is to try and tell their game's stories with zero to minimal exposition and minimal cutscenes and non interactive scripted sequences. Let the character PLAY and EXPERIENCE all relevant aspects of the character's history and of the story's unfolding.

p.s

And I think that if this is your modus operandi, it will force you to write a better story and to be more creative technically in order to accommodate the telling of the story in a fully interactive way. If you cop out and just say "we'll just use a cut scene here because anything else would be too difficult" then odds are your game is going to be mediocre at best.

I have to argue against the general notion of boring gaming. Even in the most tedious games I've ever experienced (Oblivion), I found much enjoyment and hope for the future. In fact, every time a game hits a very positive nail on the head, but fails to deliver a perfect overall game, I end up with more hope for the future.

What about Outcast ? It's old, but I thought "future" games would be like that. A game in which when a crafter tell you to come "later", it is realy *later*, not when the scripted event is reached.

Quote:

Actually you know what, I think scripted events are great but full blown scripted scenes or cut scenes where the player must relinquish total control and spectate is almost always bad.

I think thats a problem with a lot of games even the newer half life's. They seem to think the story is so important the player must stand there and have the exposition forcefully delivered to them. They use cheap tricks hacked from movies, to try and get players emotionaly involved. They dont seem to work in games as well.

Alot of games lack maturity. They have to come up with bad convaluted stories to justify that they want the player to kill loads of aliens. I think the original Doom and Half life were more mature than their forebears now, as they just said to the player, your in hell now get out of it and see how many monsters you can kill along the way. They focused on making that gameplay as fun for the player as they could.

Quote:

Original post by Calabi Quote: Done that with Portal, Bioshock, and Assassin's Creed. Blockbusters are not that bad. I'm not saying their bad, their just not enough. With the exception of portal, those games take themselves way too seriously. The high point of games now is a game, with a story where they hack in some wierd cliche sci fi nonsense(cause sci fi is cool man!, that story is surely insulting to its audience). Assasins Creed is a perfect example, this huge beautiful city, but dont you dare do anthing untoward or outside what the designers allow.

Go play Crackdown. It's a big, free roaming "vertical city" with lots of free-running-eqsue platforming, much like Assassin's Creed, except it's all very over the top and clearly doesn't take anything seriously. Possibly my game of the year for 2007.

Quote:

Original post by JimDaniel Is this happening to you too? More and more I feel like I'm in a state of anticipation for something to happen in gaming - I keep waiting for any game to give me an experience of something new, but I'm not getting it and its starting to drive me crazy! Every game I pick up nowadays turns out to be a bore on some level, even the best ones!

I totally agree, it is the reason I got into game development. I don't think I have ever played a game that absolutely 100% satisfied me. Although Fallout and XCom apocalypse came close. My main source of inspiration is actually bad games, because they make me realise how good they could have been.

I think the problem is that we all have this perfect game experience in our heads, and when we read a hyped-up review we get excited and imagine its the one thats finally going to fulfill that perfect experience. But then you play it and there's always something missing.

I think the perfect game would be one that allowed you to play that perfect experience while allowing you to do absolutely everything you want to within that world, and doing it well. Few developers are ever going to have the budget for this though, especially if they're being hen-pecked by suits.

The worst thing any game can do is restrict its players in any way at all. It totally goes against the essence of what makes a game. Invisible walls and barriers, linear level design, any kind of artificial restriction will damage the experience. This especially includes cut scenes too. If you have to restrict the player because the plot requires it, then you should be making a film not a game.

Quote:

Name some other games that have "changed your life." How did they change your life? Have you ever played a war simulation (Falcon 3.0, Close Combat, Harpoon, Hearts of Iron,etc) that changed your life? Maybe it turned you into a pacifist? Have you ever decided to become a pro golfer or basketball player or race car driver or football player because of playing a video game?

You are taking it a bit too literally here. All good movies, books etc that we watch change us very slightly, whether we realise it or not. Not a great deal, but in our own perspectives on life. Like the Matrix makes you look at your own life and country in a different way, or Saving Private Ryan makes you appreciate the horrors of war and death. But games? I'm not too sure that they do that. They're just more fun. So how ARE they lacking? We may not have a solid answer, but by knowing the question is there we can all improve our game design and aim for the next level.

Quote:

Original post by CaptainDeathbeard Quote: Name some other games that have "changed your life." How did they change your life? Have you ever played a war simulation (Falcon 3.0, Close Combat, Harpoon, Hearts of Iron,etc) that changed your life? Maybe it turned you into a pacifist? Have you ever decided to become a pro golfer or basketball player or race car driver or football player because of playing a video game? You are taking it a bit too literally here. All good movies, books etc that we watch change us very slightly, whether we realise it or not. Not a great deal, but in our own perspectives on life. Like the Matrix makes you look at your own life and country in a different way, or Saving Private Ryan makes you appreciate the horrors of war and death. But games? I'm not too sure that they do that. They're just more fun. So how ARE they lacking? We may not have a solid answer, but by knowing the question is there we can all improve our game design and aim for the next level.

Hypnotron was responding to Argus2, who sprach also:

Quote:

Experiencing the works of Shakespeare in no way changed me as a human being. The number of games that had a greater effect on me are countless.

Emphasis his. Regardless of how Argus was defining "change", that's a pretty serious assertion, and one which strikes me (and, I assume, Hypnotron) as a bit silly.

Quote:

Original post by CaptainDeathbeard You are taking it a bit too literally here. ... All good movies, books etc that we watch change us very slightly, whether we realise it or not. Not a great deal, but in our own perspectives on life. Like the Matrix makes you look at your own life and country in a different way, or Saving Private Ryan makes you appreciate the horrors of war and death. But games? I'm not too sure that they do that. They're just more fun.

You, in turn, are taking it a little too simplistically. Have you ever played a puzzle game to the point that you begin to recognize its sequences in the world around you? See tetraminoes in the street? Think that if that fruit vendor just moved that orange over by that pineapple, you could get a cross-pattern bonus?

Have you ever seen a vehicle and thought it would provide excellent cover while you held an advancing army against the "choke point" alley behind you? Seen a curve in the road and figured the ideal racing line lay just so?

If you really play and enjoy games, they're changing you all the time. Just not in ways you wish to gush over. So what? Games aren't books. Games aren't movies. The story is NOT the most important element in a game - or, at least, not in the way it is in films and books and plays. In games, the stories that matter are the stories that you create. Good games give you a premise, and then let you go fill out the conclusion. My girlfriend plays The Sims like an addict, and then regales me with oral histories of her little Sim-families - stories she created, in the game. Lots of people do the same with GTA.


Games today are tedious because:

1. they're too long, in an effort to please die-hard fanboys who have neither jobs nor family responsibilities (I'm sorry, I can't spend "40+ hours" completing the single, linear story just once!);


2. their required length leads to lots of filler gameplay, repeating the same things over and over again (okay, I need to assassinate nine dudes, but how come the approach to each one is the exact same thing overlaid on different backgrounds?!);


3. developers have not fully embraced or figured out how to exploit open-world design, sometimes due to technical limitations undermining design ambition, so the various contrivances placed to delay your progress are an insult to your intelligence and gamer sensibilities (really? I can't get to that hill over there that I can see a single road to because it's "too far," even though I have a horse?); and


4. Hollywood ambitions/delusions cause some developers to constantly take control away from the gamer, placing them in a passive observer role rather than the actor role. Some people like this, and swear that Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid are game design classics as a consequence. Some people - like me - say that those games may be "electronic entertainment" classics, but they only shine in select places as games.

The floor is yours. [smile]

Quote:

Original post by Oluseyi Have you ever seen a vehicle and thought it would provide excellent cover while you held an advancing army against the "choke point" alley behind you? Seen a curve in the road and figured the ideal racing line lay just so?

I remember walking around Westwood right after finishing Prince of Persia, looking around--mostly--up--and thinking to myself "shit, I could totally climb on that."

Your first three points, I think, all have the same solution: data-driven game development. That is, pull out the same old engine and load it up with all new gameplay. That drives development costs down, which drives retail price down. Once games drop to $20, it becomes a much more reasonable proposition to have them take 5 hours to complete instead of 50. And once they only have to be 5 hours long, they can concentrate on less potboiling and end up with more innovation per second. As for #4... well... if you want MGS you know where to get it. It's not a trend which extends to all or even most games, just to a few high-profile ones, so I think normal market forces will decide how good an idea it is.