Deus ex Machina, Fog of War (Games' Alteration of Terms)
By ahoodedfigure 9 Comments
Fog of War
To me, the term fog of war has always meant that under wartime conditions, things that seem like simple choices become a lot harder to make. Too many things are moving at once, too many different factors are involved, and sometimes you'll find yourself standing right next to the enemy and neither party knows the other is there, all because there's so much pressure, so many life-or-death decisions to be made, and no way to objectively evaluate every moment, every strength and weakness, while simultaneously trying to survive.
Now, I'll hear people use the term fog (for a common tactic used by programmers to limit draw distances) and fog-of-war interchangeably. When there's fog at a distance, it can just easily be called fog of war for some. Of course this isn't right, but I think the reason this happens is because the use of fog-of-war was inched away from its original meaning through Real-Time Strategy games like Warcraft. Instead of just the enemy being obscured, the map is obscured, encouraging exploration and sneak attacks, but in a purely material way that can be alleviated by posting a scout at the edge of the wilderness (or turning off the semi-transparent fog-of-war that obscures even explored locations). To me, fog of war includes the mental realm, and is a way of characterizing the chaos that erupts when people with definite plans clash.
I prefer the original meaning, because it encompasses far more than the latter modification. But a game that takes steps to approach that original meaning gain my respect.
Deus ex Machina (The God out of the Machine)
As I learned it, the term can have a strongly negative connotation, referring to the way some playwrights in Greece liked to resolve their plot tangles. Things would look bad for our heroes or victims, when suddenly a god would come down and whisk them away at the last moment, using a "machina", a machine, which in this case was likely a winch and pulley system, with an actor portraying a god hanging on. There's probably some more concrete definition lurking in a wiki, but I'm trying to just go by memory here. It's said that when a deus ex machina plot resolution is used, that the writer has written themselves into a corner, or just lacks the skills to resolve their story.
Gaming, as well as popular fiction, has expanded the meaning in a way I find interesting. Taking the literal definition, the god out of the machine, people have used it to refer to animism in the realm of the human-made inanimate world. This takes on special significance when we talk about near-future advances in artificial intelligence, as depicted in the animated Ghost in the Shell, the replicants of Blade Runner (the movie, not so much PKD's book), or the reasons behind the title of the Deus Ex games (EDIT: although, upon further reading, maybe I misunderstand its original usage as it applied to the game. I'm willing to bet, though, the common understanding of the title as it relates to the games refers instead to something other than the first two reasons Warren Spector referred to in this interview). Despite this being a confusion of ideas that muddles the original meaning, seeing how dramatically the world has changed as computers have become more ubiquitous, it's easy for me to see the value of the personification, or at least classification, of these machines that are so much a part of so many lives.
In this case, I like both meanings. Yeah, it's confusing to have them overlap like this, but each has its value. I just hope when people use the term they're aware of both definitions, so they don't run the risk of clouding a discussion.
Any terms you all can think of that have taken on new meanings in video games? You find these changes irritating, or improvements, or something else entirely?