Quote: Original post by Lazy Foo

Quote: Original post by Oluseyi
Actually, the problem is that for every game which attempts to take on lofty issues/ideals in its narrative (Bioshock and objectivism), it ends up disconnected from its gameplay (shooting people in the face).

That's not a disconnect. When Ryan sacrificed his ideals for power, you got angry splicers, and the gameplay lets you feel the splicers firsthand.

You make a good point that it works as a thematic background, but let's use the SF trope test on this one: Could you remove all references to objectivism, say substituting some other philosophical conflict, and have pretty much the same game? Could everything that happened have been a result of a communist, fundamentalist or evil megacorp takeover of an undersea city? If so, then just like the SF trope test where lazy authors set the present or some other time period far into the future, the inclusion of the idea fails because it isn't crucial.

For the philosophy to be more than fluff it would need to be felt by the player. Except for saving or harvesting the little sisters (a nice touch if a bit ham handed) there aren't any choices in Bioshock where the philosophy makes itself felt. Kill or be killed isn't objectivism, even if "the jungle" might be argued to be one possible result of the ideology.

Ironically I don't think good FPS gameplay would be compatible with what's needed. If, for example, you decided that one dimension of objectivism would be lack of regulations you might show this through poorly maintained vending stations which periodically harmed the user. But in an FPS this would introduce punitive instability in the attack/expend resources/defeat/acquire resources loop that sustains most such games.

Quote:
In most narratives, the nitty gritty of war is at best touched on. Games have the advantage to make the many battles that make a war something we have time to step through.

There's no minutely detailed combat gameplay that I know of that can shed light on what war really is. War is not fun (at least for anyone who isn't a sociopath). Yet to sustain gameplay combat HAS to be kept fun, and that completely erases anything meaningful about war.

Contrast this to something like Saving Private Ryan. Everything changes when you are voyeur versus active participant. Material impossible (at least at present) and possibly even undesirable to subject a player to can be easily inflicted on a movie goer. In a movie blood and guts can be made horrifying. In a game with player as actor they're just part of the graphics.

Quote:
If you want to talk disconnect from story to gameplay in Bioshock, try the fact that death is at best an inconvenience or the fact that the much hyped final boss falls prey to an AI exploit used in freaking GoldenEye.

I agree. To your war point, though, I think it's the same thing. The game would practically need permadeath to give you more of the appropriate level of terror and dread. Yet that's incompatible with modern aesthetics, especially the idea that anyone can win.

Heck, you really want to make objectivism shine through? Make it so that only the most talented can win, and use the narrative to explain the inadequacies of the rest of us not so perfect beings. :P

Quote: Original post by Oluseyi
I tend to find that frustrating, and as someone without a completist urge I would simply abandon a game and go look for all the cutscenes on YouTube at that point. If the fundamental gameplay isn't fun, I stop playing. House rule.

Did you play and finish final fantasy 7? It's widely recognized as one of the best games ever, and it's gameplay isn't especially good. The gameplay is actually quite boring. The rich world and pretty epic storyline are what make that game. If there was no character development and every quest was just "Go here kill stuff" I doubt anyone would put in the amount of time they put into FFVII the way it actually is.

Is story necessary? no, but I don't need good gameplay to respect a good story. Obviously good gameplay with a good story is ideal though.

Quote: Original post by way2lazy2care
Did you play and finish final fantasy 7?

Of course not. I've never played a Final Fantasy game, and I doubt I ever will. The fundamental gameplay of the series, which I observed a friend play way back with FF III bores me to tears. I don't care enough for a mediocre story (in comparison to the novel or film as artforms) to inflict that kind of pain on myself.

Quote: Original post by way2lazy2care
Is story necessary? no, but I don't need good gameplay to respect a good story.

In a game, I do. I watch a lot of movies and "TVD" - in fact my PS3 sees more use as a Blu-Ray/DVD player and Netflix client than anything else - so I'm simply unwilling to sit through awful gameplay for a story that I can get better somewhere else. YMMV, and clearly does.

Quote: Original post by Eskapade
In that case I would kindly ask him to speak for himself...

Um, he uses the first-person singular pronoun "I". He is, by definition, speaking for himself. [smile]

LOL.

Games are not stories. Games can be combined with a story, but don't have to. The innovative thing about a computer game is that it allows the player to reach a certain goal and do all sorts of interactive things along the way. Just like the games that existed long before computers existed, except the computer technology allows much more complex interactivity.

Quote: Original post by Oluseyi

Quote: Original post by way2lazy2care
Did you play and finish final fantasy 7?

Of course not. I've never played a Final Fantasy game, and I doubt I ever will. The fundamental gameplay of the series, which I observed a friend play way back with FF III bores me to tears. I don't care enough for a mediocre story (in comparison to the novel or film as artforms) to inflict that kind of pain on myself.

Quote: Original post by way2lazy2care
Is story necessary? no, but I don't need good gameplay to respect a good story.

In a game, I do. I watch a lot of movies and "TVD" - in fact my PS3 sees more use as a Blu-Ray/DVD player and Netflix client than anything else - so I'm simply unwilling to sit through awful gameplay for a story that I can get better somewhere else. YMMV, and clearly does.

He sure uses "I" in that text. He also uses "us" and "ourselves" and others.

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Games ask us to save the princess, save the country, save the world, save ourselves—but no one plays games to achieve those ends.

I'll just ignore the "LOL"-elitist behaviour.

Quote: Original post by Wavinator
And they're failing drastically, on a thematic level and in how gameplay fits with narrative. Thematically they're juvenile, if not infantile-- B movie fodder filled with monsters, aliens, space marines, zombies and knights. There seems to be an unspoken assumption (possibly not incorrect) that the AAA audience can't really handle anything more in depth IN THEIR GAMES (nevermind what they can tolerate in movies and books, which is often far more).

Yeah...and movies are so much better, right? Nearly 9/10 of all popular mainstream films(that is, not french films that only french watch, and not iranian films that nobody watches), are about zombies,robots,pirates,superheroes from comics,marines and aliens. No, seriously, let's break it down. Here's the most successful movies of 2009, taken from this site: http://gossips.indivibes.net/successful-movies-1823/(don't know if it's the most reliable one, but I doubt the numbers are inaccurate).

10. The Blind Side – Total Gross: $184,387,000

Whoa, a movie about real people. Yep, the rotten apple in the bunch, you won't see any of this further down the list.

9. Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs – Total Gross: $196,573,705

Cartoon. About dinosaurs. Okay, it's a cartoon though, but still it's on the Top 10, isn't it?

8. Monsters Vs. Aliens – Total Gross: $198,351,526

Cartoon. About...uh...well, monsters and aliens.

7. Avatar – Total Gross: $212,268,000

The movie everyone raves about. It's about aliens. And marines.

6. Star Trek – Total Gross: $257,730,019

Yep, spaceships and aliens and shit.

5. The Hangover – Total Gross: $277,322,503

Oh wait, this has real people in it too...well at least it is assumed they're real people because they don't have any superpowers...in any case, a non-funny comedy about pulling your own teeth out and be disgusting and fat and pissing on fountains(I don't remember if that actually happened, but it could have).


4. The Twilight Saga: New Moon – Total Gross: $280,924,000

Vampires and werewolves.

3. Up – Total Gross: $293,004,164

Another cartoon.

2. Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince – Total Gross: $301,959,197

Magicians, demons, ghosts and some other crap.

1. Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen – Total Gross: $402,111,870

Giant alien robots. All started from a goddamn toy franchise.



Yeah, so there you have it, the most popular products of the movie industry which is oh so mature than the lame videogame one...all of them with as much as plot and substance as the first 15 seconds of say, the Shawsank Redemption. Now tell me again, which industry exactly is trying to imitate which? Hell, especially since the most succesful "movie" of all, Avatar, IS a videogame, they just never gave us the controllers in the theaters.

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It makes me laugh to think about how game developers would tackle something like Othello or MacBeth-- as a real-time strategy game, maybe? (Don't laugh. Based on how they've adapted works exploring speculative ideas or what it is to be human, that's not unlikely.)

Uh...seriously? How game developers would tackle...Othello? That's like asking how a theater play writer would tackle Pacman.

You guys are repeating the same tired rhetoric that videogames are "childish" and are trying to imitate movies...that's not it. *Most* of today's mainstream art is like that. If anything, movies and books have dropped to the level of the videogames with the lamest "stories", like Gears of Wars(which,yes,also includes books and an upcoming movie). Every time I enter a bookstore, the books displayed are all about vampires(seriously, how many book series about vampires exist anyway? And it's not even cool vampires that want to suck your blood, they have feelings now and want to have relationships with human girls and crap),angels,ghosts,spies and of course the eternal romance novels(which most of them is about vampires anyway, but whatever).

It's not *just* the videogames. Videogames didn't have problems with creativity 15 years ago, when adventures thrived, and you could pick from silly but wonderful comedy adventures(for instance, Day of the Tentacle) to more serious one like I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream(hey, might not be your cup of tea, but you can hardly say it was 'juvenile'), filled with more interesting,weird,original characters that you could handle.

Quote:
When he looks at video games from a critical distance, Bissell is concerned mainly with their lack of narrative meaning. Games ask us to save the princess, save the country, save the world, save ourselves—but no one plays games to achieve those ends.

My god, what an outstanding remark. I guess Bissell read the Odyssey in order to really reach Ithaca and reunite with Penelope...it's not like those goals are just a device to tell an interesting story...they're actual goals and we read books to achieve them. Good thing he wasn't eaten by Cyclops or something, and was able to return to his kingdom and write this excellent article!

(And to prevent the counterargument that's coming, no, we don't even read Odyssey in order to watch *Ulysses* reach Ithaca, otherwise we'd just flip the book to the very last page. We read it to enjoy the good story in between, and we're actually a bit sad that the hero made it, because that means the good story is over).

mikeman wrote the post I would have if I cared enough. My preferred unrespectable pastime is comics rather than video games, but I see the exact same attitude in the comics community. "Why can't we could achieve the literary merit of movies and books?" That's setting the bar damn low. Just about any half-assed effort from competent professionals can match the quality of your average book or movie.

In the case of comics, there's a trend to discuss comics in terms of movies and television and even some unnecessary (at best) emulation of film and television forms in the comics themselves (and don't get me started on hack television writers turning out dismal comic scripts and getting praise for it). Judging just by a comment or two in this thread and by the "lens flare" thread, most of you would agree that a similar trend exists in the game industry. It seems to me that this constant comparison to, and emulation of, other media by both the comics and gaming community (including the creators) is borne of a need to be accepted as legitimate by mainstream culture. (I realize games could be argued to be mainstream now, but the communities sure act, and over-react, like they still feel ghettoized.)

As long as I'm posting, to the OP:

Quote: This is one of the most suspect things about the game form," Bissell writes. "A game with an involving story and poor gameplay cannot be considered a successful game, whereas a game with superb gameplay and a laughable story can see its spine bend from the weight of many accolades—and those who praise the latter game will not be wrong." What's the solution to this quandary?

What quandary? This sounds like he's worried about the legitimacy I was talking about earlier, depending on what he means by "laughable". I can imagine a story that is laughably cliche (again, not uncommon to also find in the respectable arts of film and literature), for example, yet which adequately services the game and does not detract from it. The story has fulfilled its purpose for the game as whole. That this one component does not rise above the minimum standards required for it in no way reflects upon the quality of the gameplay. Who thinks that the backstory for an FPS free-for-all match is of any importance at all? You don't hear film buffs lamenting the laughable gameplay of The French Connection, do you? You are not books or movies, you're games! Embrace it!

Certain games would probably benefit from better-written stories, but the author is talking in such sweeping terms that it's necessary to point out the specific cases where his complaints fall flat.

Quote: Should games invest more in story, in an attempt to bring us narratives that are on the level of those of the other popular arts?

"Games" as a whole shouldn't do anything. Each specific game should have at least the quantity and quality of story it requires. Anything beyond that may be appreciated, but the lack of anything beyond that is not a mark against the game.

Quote: Or should games abandon story—is the video game, as a form, simply incompatible with traditional concepts of narrative, and must game designers instead find other ways to invest their creations with lasting meaning?

I've skimmed every post in this thread and I don't see anyone else bothered by this guy's sweeping use of "games".

I only read Oluseyi's posted snippet, but if the central question of the article is "are games a waste of time?" then why are so many of you answering the question (including, apparently, Bissell) in terms of story? Is there an underlying assumption that anything that isn't a story is a waste of time, and so evaluating the story content of games is the key to determining whether or not they are time-wasters? If so, that's absurd, and it goes back to my point about a need to feel legitimate - "books and movies are evaluated on story, so must games if we are to be taken seriously". Or did most of you just go off on the "story" tangent and ignore the "waste of time" question?

If your goal for the next couple of hours is to unwind with some light diversion, and nothing lightly diverts you like Nethack, then it would be inefficient for you to do anything other than to play Nethack. Reading Shakespeare would be a waste of your time.

[Edited by - BerwynIrish on June 27, 2010 12:45:26 AM]

I agree in general with the first post that gaming is a waste of time (I'm here because I'm interested in rendering and programming, plus it closely relates to my work). Many have the point of view that it is no different from other forms of entertainment which also serve no purpose besides entertainment. And this is true, except that games on average tend to take significantly more time than other activities. In my experience, most people that play games at all play many hours and there are few actual "casual gamers". On the other hand, watching movies, for example, doesn't occupy as much of the average enthusiast's time. The only other leisure activities I would regard as much a waste of time is that of the person who watches TV most of the time, and golf. Other things have redeeming factors--music can be consumed in parallel with other tasks and has connections to neuro/psychological developmental effects, outdoor activities have health benefits, many hobbies develop various skills, reading improves vocabulary (even tabloids, given the usual readership demographic), etc.

Beyond this, it is my honest opinion that the dismal future in which the majority of the population is mostly living in a tapestry of virtual worlds to the neglect of the real one is the one dystopian vision from fiction that is the most likely to become reality.

On a side note, I used to be a gamer years ago, and contrary to the post that said that games suffer from narrative because they are inherently nonlinear, I always enjoyed games that had a strong central linear progression (despite apparent nonlinearity of side tasks) because they were in essence an immersive novel and preserved the impression that it was a journey headed for somewhere (The Thief series is a great example of the back story being a big bonus to the game and at the same time definitely _not_ making up for any lack of interactivity). This is also why I absolutely hate Dungenons and Dragons type games--not because they're extremely nerdy, but because there's no overarching story.