What games are (not).
By deactivated-57b1d7d14d4a5 40 Comments
A quick visit to a Skyward Sword thread reminded me of an issue that isn't really related to the thread itself, but has been bothering me for a long time. It is, to me, a growing problem within the industry today with roots going back several years. Particularly, it is a problem with the popular perception of games. What they are. What their role is. What they are supposed to do. So let me make this clear.
Games are not movies.
As much as I love Half-Life, I think it is the start of the problem I'm talking about. I think people are getting to caught up in cinematics. The reason I respect games as a medium isn't its ability to mimic film. It's that and so much more. It's everything else. For video games, the sky is the limit. The sheer magnitude of the possibility space (Will Wright is an idol of mine) of the medium is awe-inspiring. That's why it is disappointing to me that developers often get caught up in one or two templates that encompass an insignificant portion of the whole. It was 2d platformers and JRPGs once. Then for PC it was RTS games. Now it's cinematic first person shooters and open world games (usually shooters) that also focus on cinematics. Of course, gamers do realize that cinematics aren't everything. They have little influence on multiplayer, which is popular as ever. But when it comes to single player? If a game isn't cinematic enough, it's considered a flaw in design. Good thing the audience don't design the games. They're idiots.
Wait...What does this have to do with Skyward Sword?
People complain that the series is stagnant. That it hasn't evolved with the times. How would they like Zelda to evolve? They want it to be M-Rated and they want it to be more cinematic. Like I said. The audience are idiots. Now, there is something to be said about the critisism that Zelda games have been very similar since OOT, but that's not the issue I want to bring up. Here is an old quote from GiantBombs own Jeff Gerstmann in his review for Twilight Princess...
The entire game is done in text. At this point, that's practically ancient. Maintaining links silence is one thing, and and sure enough he doesn't have any lines of dialog in the game, but in this day and age, everyone else in this game should speak. Buttoning your way through pages of dialog during cut-scenes is pretty disappointing.
And he's not the only one who thinks so. I've heard several times that there is no excuse for games these days to not have spoken dialog. That such a direction would be a stylistic choice seems to be a completely foreign concept, so let assert a concept that I think is pretty common to design throughout a lot of different mediums, including games. The more abstract a presentation, the more room for interpretation from the audience. Adult me would interpret the characters in OOT much differently than I did when I was a kid, and I would be perfectly capable of doing so because the characters and story are left with a certain level of abstraction.
You can easily see this concept at work by watching anime. Animation is often used to cover material that would be difficult to cover using a live audience. So why is there anime dealing with everyday settings that would just as easily work with live actors? Because abstraction is more than just a work-around. It is a an artistic choice and just as importantly it is a tool. Oftentimes, Americans will comment that anime characters look Caucasian. To the Japanese audience, they look Japanese. Why the difference? Because anime characters are abstractions, and a certain level of character interpretation is left up to the audience.
Games are not stories.
Another common misinterpretation of the industry is that every game needs a structured, linear story of some kind. Even open world games like GTA or Morrowind are a (set of) pre-defined story(ies) that the player can approach in dynamic ways. I've heard several gamers say story was the thing they looked for most in a game. Personally, I love a great story. And really great stories are painfully rare in the industry. However, there is an expectation that games should have some sort of structured story, even if the implementation is infantile. Deviation from this ideal is unforgivable!
From GameSpots Mount&Blade review...
This isn't to say that there isn't anything to do in Calradia. There is, but you have to do a great deal of wandering around to find it. Removing any sort of story hook from Mount & Blade makes it only appropriate for the hardcore role-playing gamer who plays RPGs just to explore a fantasy land, not to accomplish anything or become an epic-level druid or whatever.
And I thought the preview guy for Warband sounded almost offended that the developer didn't change one of its core design ideas that the review industry decided to present as a flaw.
Even though you can do just about anything you want in this medieval sandbox, from roaming around as a mercenary commanding an army of troops to carting goods around as a dinar-grubbing merchant, the backdrop is so lightly sketched that it can be tough to stay interested. Anyone looking for the drama or color of the usual medieval RPG will be disappointed by the absence of story and motivation here.
Now. Some of the criticism is well deserved. Is the learning curve high? Yes. Should there be more intuitive tutorials and could it be easier for new players? Yes. Could the dialog be better written? Absolutely. But a big part of the criticism is that there is no story at all. The design philosophy isn't new. It's basically Pirates! with a different setting. The idea is essentially, as Will Wright would put it, that if the player is allowed to create his own story, that story will have significantly more value to the player than anything the developer could come up with, regardless of quality.
So...Wait...What are games?
Well, games are movies. And games are stories. Seems like I'm contradicting myself? Games are everything! I'm certainly not saying we should discount cinema as a valid design direction. And I'm not saying games shouldn't have stories. I'm saying that games are so much more than just movies or books. The skies the limit. We shouldn't be limiting ourselves to FPS, RPG, 4X, etc. We should constantly be experimenting. There is always room for the next Zelda game. We should stick with what works. And we should also ignore it completely! I'm tired of Half-Life. I'm tired of Zelda. I want an intuitive platform where I can make my own game. I want to manipulate 2d environments. I want to explore a dead galaxy! I want to make a galaxy! So what are games? Games are the ability to explore new environments. To do the things you never could in real life. Games are simple mind exercises and they are everything in-between. Games are a medium for art, so stop telling me what games are (not) for fucks sake. Stop telling me there isn't an excuse not to have voice acting and stop telling me the game doesn't have enough story. Tell me. Is this game fun for you? Is it for anybody. That's enough for me.