@notnert427: Thank you. I think you raise some good points. One way the sandbox provides choice for the game is that is you can go as serious or as ridiculous you want, both in terms of kill methods and costumes. Games generally don't let you nudge the tone about that much. I think there's also an interesting refutation in Hitman of that idea that making a game more accessible will ruin it for more dedicated players. I still think Hitman is further towards the inaccessible end of the spectrum, but it managed to introduce the opportunities and super robust tutorials that opened the game up to a wider audience while becoming even more appealing to a traditional gaming audience.
@old_school_gaming: I think the problems of accessibility go beyond just whether players can be strategic enough in a fight or complete advanced platforming. I think that basic control, understanding complex gameplay systems, learning controllers, and picking up on non-verbal/textual cues from games are all areas that people who don't regularly play video games struggle with. For these reasons, I think that just improving player stats even when they fail doesn't fully address the problem. I also think that casual players having to die over and over to reach their goal does not represent accessibility but discouragement.
Games like VVVVVV are niche and that's not a coincidence. The lack of a huge audience for masocore games like that is proof of their lack of accessibility, and it may be okay to have games that some people are just never going to be able to play, but none of these games represent the answer to making games approachable. I think talking about giving games an "addictive" quality goes down a rather dark path, but I assume you mean that if a game is engrossing, people will spend a lot of time with it. However, for people who are outside the medium or on the outskirts of it, they need a compelling reason to be engrossed. Entering the medium and being told "you failed" over and over does not endear people towards games.
@oldmanlight: I think that a "skip" button doesn't really have any utility when we're talking about side content like the Riddler Trophies in the Arkham games. A large part of the reason people might want a "skip" button implemented is because it stops the problem of them not being able to progress into new content, but the Riddler trophies don't hold you back from getting to the end of the Arkham games. For sure, some of them have infuriating designs, but I would still stand by my statement that the devs improving those designs would be a better fix than just a "skip".
@dinosaurcanada: I feel in two minds about Hotline Miami because while I want games to be more accessible, I also feel that Hotline Miami is never going to go out to that large a crowd, and that that game not having an "easy" mode forced me to power through and have a unique and mostly satisfying experience with it. Maybe it's not all about me, however, and maybe other people should be able to experience an easier game even if I lack the self-discipline to not turn down the difficulty now and then. Where I begin to worry with this is that 1. I think there are people who would have basic control problems with Hotline Miami even on an easy mode, 2. There are a ton of games out there which have mechanics much more complex and intimidating than Hotline Miami which would still confuse people on "easy". I think this is how we ended up in discussions like these in the first place. Because games already have easy modes, but in spite of that, many people still find them very difficult to pick up and play, and so that's when you hear solutions like "skip" buttons being introduced.
Obviously, disabled gamers should have much better access to games than they do, but maybe there is worth in distributing the same kind of controllers to casual players. These controllers are not something I have an extensive knowledge of. However, I do think it would be a mistake to think that we can discuss controller design independently from game design. Controllers are designed the way they are largely because they need enough sticks and buttons to let players utilise the fairly large range of mechanics we have in games today, and because of that I think controllers can be very intimidating. It may be the only way to make those controllers less complex would be to make less complex games, but even then there are complications. I think I can say fairly assuredly though, that huge tech companies are not going to start funding large-scale R&D for charities any time soon. They're in it for profit and that's another fundamental problem of the games industry.
Thank you for the kind words.
@mr_shufu: I completely agree with you about the need to distinguish accessibility for the disabled and accessibility in terms of difficulty. I think that even if we stated outright which one we're talking about at the start of discussions, that could help a lot. I hope it's clear which one I'm talking about here. Where I disagree with you is on the climbing wall analogy. It may be that not every game needs to be easy; in fact, I don't think I've seen anyone saying there can be no hard games, but I think the idea that we need to choose whether individual games are easy or hard often presents a false dichotomy. Very many games have easy difficulties and hard difficulties. In many cases, the debate of whether there should be an easy mode has already been settled. The problem is more that those "easy" modes don't actually serve as a good entry point for many players. That turning up some numbers and turning down other numbers isn't enough to make games open to everyone and we need to start thinking about accessibility features and changing games in a way that's more than skin deep.
This was a really enjoyable read so thank you for putting so much into it. I've only played a little bit of Everything but it was in finding out close to release that it included snippets of Alan Watts' talks which led to me buying the game. I don't remember when I first heard a portion of one of Watts' many talks but just over a year ago I listened to a number of them so when Everything came out I was interested to find out what role they played in the game and how closely they were tied to any part of it. I think you've done a really good job of digging into what the game presents of him and how the game mechanics are designed to serve as a means of further communicating the ideas that Watts presents. Having not played enough of the game to see the variety of snippets used and also having not listened to a large enough variety of his talks I can't speak to how selective David O'Reilly was or how much it covers, which might have an influence on the effectiveness of the game to try and communicate those ideas both by Watts and the games mechanics.
It's been interesting to see an increase in the number of games trying to convey or discuss bigger ideas through mechanics as the primary means. I haven't played the games you mentioned at the top and bottom of your article, but the first game that comes to mind of recent is The Witness. While it's use of audio recordings is inarguably weaker in expressing parts of the games ideas, it's use of mechanics to do so is incredibly effective. The game that comes to mind which communicates an idea so strongly via mechanics and uses narrative in a less direct way is Papers Please and to this day I haven't played a game that accomplished it as effectively. Even so it does give me hope that more game developers are interested in exploring this approach to design and narrative. I've increasingly felt that games which can do this exceptionally are the ones that have reached a sort of apex of games as a part of culture. There have been many games which offer a window, but seldom few that have opened the door.
Through reading all of what you wrote I was reminded of the first episode of Cosmos where Carl Sagan said "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." and felt like it has a fairly similar culminating perspective to what Everything tries to present of Watts' philosophy.
Thanks for the kind words. I think the game is great about using clips from a variety of sources but keeping them based around one theme. It takes from multiple lectures over Watts's career and uses a considerable number of clips but always stays close to that idea that we are everything and explores the implications of us being everything. I've played quite a bit of The Witness but have only a general sense of what it might be about at this point. There could be some revelatory idea it has lurking under the surface but I've also played for about 11 hours without really having context for my actions in the world and that might be a flaw in the game.
Overall, I think while connecting gameplay design and narrative is a really important goal for games, I think we sometimes get too hung up on narrative as being the only thing in a game that allows it to project a message or feel human. While there are emergent narratives in games like Everything or Papers, Please, it's not important that the designs of these games convey a story as much as it is important that those designs allow us entry into new ways of thinking. I think we're partially as hung up on narrative as we are because most other popular media uses narrative as a delivery mechanism for human experiences and messages, but video games are not other media and have a different set of tools. Everything and Papers, Please allow their audiences direct interaction with the mechanics of the real world in a way that doesn't have to be explained via characters or plot and I think that's part of what's great about them. I think I feel similarly to you though, in that I think that most of the really respectable games around are the games using their parts to cohesively convey certain emotions and ideas.
Excellently written. Nothing to add other than you brought up the main reason why I love the game so much (other than its general tone and quirkiness) - it actually answers the questions it brings up. Even recent game stories entrenched in philosophy (The Witness, SOMA (although I should finish SOMA)) don't actually provide all the conclusive arguments needed for why I should consider what they say, and through gameplay. They just kind of make the statements.
What's also interesting to me is that Everything makes these statements and answers these questions while lacking a "proper" structured story, or gameplay loop, really. It just sort of, is itself.
Once again, great write-up.
I appreciate the comment. You might have a slightly different view on SOMA if you finish it. It is one of those games where the gameplay and the ideas the story explores usually don't have much to do with each other but they get closer as you move into the back half of the game and while the ending leaves a lot open to your personal opinion and does almost everything via story rather than gameplay, it does have something to say and gives you a very compelling reason to care about the philosophy it's discussing.
Great article/statement/forum post(?). CoD4 is a very good game to analyze, which is weird considering how blockbuster and bombastic the game is; usually one would analyze a quaint and feminine piece where the image is black-and-white and no one talks ever (aka, anything that tries too hard to be artsy-fartsy). But this game, man. When Halo3 came out on the same year, we didn't expect anything to top its influence and success, and this goddamn game did. The effect of CoD4 isn't going to make people like us shut up about it. It's that powerful.
People always tend to connect post-WW2 Call of Duties to Michael Bay, but they never consider CoD4 and how much it stuck to its franchise's qualms about war. In fact, I do consider CoD4's black-and-white portrayal of Western-Eastern conflict to be more on the teeth of Tom Clancy than Michael Bay. It did make the Russian and Middle-Eastern dudes straight up bad guys, but they also depicted the Brits and Americans as deeply flawed. The US Marines were chiseled, hardened heroes that saw external conflict irrelevant to their country as relevant, going in and sacrificing their lives for a greater good of not just their country, but for the world. This, and their inability to see sacrifice as necessary, gets them killed. And don't get me started with the SAS, who inhumanely torture people just to get answers. This depiction of modern war isn't romanticized as critics say - it's gritty and terrible as war should be and as a CoD game should be.
But to be on topic with what you said, I think the use of Cold War fears to create a familiar antagonist for western audiences does stem from the game's drawing of Tom Clancy in someway. The author was writing books around the time of that war, and a lot of his books do deal with nuclear threats and world saving within the realm of the modern military. Developers aplenty do this a freaking lot, borrowing ques and themes from pop culture or what is big around the time: Doom with horror movies, DND, and metal; Medal of Honor and Call of Duty with Saving Private Ryan; and The Elder Scrolls series always adopting traits of the biggest fantasy film/TV show (TESIV with Lord of the Rings, TESV with Game of Thrones). Infinity Ward doesn't fall far from the tree; they always adopt things from pop culture, but in this case, it's war.
I don't think the comparison to Bay is entirely wrong. There are a lot of parallels in how those games and Bay's work rely on huge explosive setpieces and high-stakes stories of well-armed action heroes. While I think you're right that there are also serious parallels to draw with Clancy, I think Clancy was more likely to use quiet, stealthy tensions which is something that CoD shies away from and I don't think MW's exploration of Cold War tensions is necessarily derived directly from Clancy's work. Clancy is just one of many writers at the end of the 20th century who played on those themes and I also don't think Modern Warfare is all that critical of its protagonists. The soldiers are righteous action heroes whose downfall almost always comes as the result of some external enemy rather than big personal misconceptions about what they should be doing. In some situations they may execute on a plan less than 100% effectively, but they're almost always implied to be on the right track with a well-justified mission.
Interesting point! It's not that the "Russian Baddies" sailed over my head, but I'd never thought about it in context with the label "Modern Warfare." Black Ops may be more explicitly Cold War related, but the Modern Warfare games were definitely playing off those same anxieties. Thanks for sharing!
Yup! It’s why I think they could do something fresh and interesting in the modern setting. Something a little more modern, set during the very early days of the hunt for Bin Laden, covering how much brass missed the ball on that and a few of the major operations that occurred there, or maybe some SF stuff with the tribes in Afghanistan.
I’d like to see a genuinely more grounded CoD campaign that doesn’t need to be “end of the world” desperate but still hard hitting. Could be cool to do something with more intrigue or depth to it all.
I think a game like that could be fantastic and is the kind of thing that is very unlikely to be developed with the way that modern military games are. To some extent modern military is considered a little played out now, what with CoD having brought out these huge games every year and eventually deciding itself that modern military was old hat. The other problem is that if you're releasing a modern military game, you're going up against the likes of CoD and Battlefield and a company is unlikely to fund any competitor to them that isn't going to sell gangbusters. Those games sell the numbers they do in no small part because they are empowerment fantasies, not critical explorations of western military intervention.
Neat read; I hadn't really thought of it like that. Something to recall is that in 2007, the Iraq War was forefront in the minds of many, with the troop surge having just happened earlier in the year. I think Activision intentionally sidestepped a "Middle-Eastern" conflict because we were smack dab in the middle of one in reality, and just recycled Cold War fears as you mentioned instead. There were still anti-Middle-Eastern sentiments from much of the post-9/11 America hanging around as well, so it's probably best that those flames weren't fanned.
I think there is a way to write a story about conflict between western powers and the Middle-East that isn't just straight-up racist or justifying backwards foreign policy, and the older CoD games seem to have a fairly respectful look at both sides of WWII, but modern CoD was never going to be the super conscious on-point reflection on wars like Iraq and Afghanistan. To some extent I think it did reinforce images of scary Middle-Eastern terrorists fighting brave westerners, it just didn't go all the way with it and that was for the best.
I think its a fair critique of the setting and themes, I guess what was definitely 'modern', was unique mechanics and use of characterization, and I think that the crux for me, (as a completely non military person) showing the relationship between that unit, the crazy journey and GRR Martin levels of rug pulling across the three games seemed so fresh to me.
I think to some extent the good that the earlier CoDs did with story has been forgotten and I still don't think it was quite the cutting edge for games storytelling in video games at the time. For example, it came out the same year as Mass Effect and in my opinion didn't get close to that in terms of narrative and ways the player could engage the narrative. However, it did have a pacing and tightness to its story that was way ahead of the curve and those are two of the most important aspects to making a story work in a AAA game. It also had these elaborate sections that were just for theme and tone like the lead-in for Pripyat or Death From Above. Ultimately, the name "Modern Warfare" must have been a marketing decision to signal that this was a new kind of shooter game, although I don't think that invalidates the criticism that it's a little out of step with the story.
Interesting take, but I disagree with the premise - or not entirely.
The Russian faction from the games is a group of Ultranationalists. In the years since the game came out Russian nationalism has become an increasingly large concern for people in the west. Likewise nuclear fears which have been very in the news recently, but I think were always a part of the fear of middle eastern terrorism (cf 24, the "10 minutes to torture the location of a nuke from a terrorist" conversations).
The idea of an ultranationalist Russian faction who are intervening in the Middle East in ways which go against US/Western interests seems pretty up to date, given the sort of narratives (I say narratives mostly because I don't want to start a whole political conversation) we have around Syria and Russia now.
EDIT: With the obvious caveat that a lot of the tension between east & west that pervades our current culture could itself be seen as a resurfacing of cold war sentiments and rivalries that never fully went away.
Well, I was mainly talking about the game as a reaction to what modern warfare looked like at the time. After all, CoD couldn't react to events that hadn't happened yet. Even taking into account current events, I don't think CoD 4 bears much resemblance to the modern world. There are lingering tensions with Russia but not in a way where America still fears them as a Communism power and certainly not in a way where it seems like them launching nukes at the U.S. will happen any time soon. Russia has been involved in Syria but in a way that is combating the terrorists rather than aiding them.
I am also surprised pirates never became more of a staple in games in general. There have been a couple mmos that never panned out, Black Flag, and of course Sid Meier's Pirates!, but it never became as ingrained as "High fantasy europe" or "post-apocalyptic earth" in the typical set of video game settings.
I mean there are reasons why pirates never became as big as LoTR-style fantasy or desolate wastelands. The sea is largely empty space that's it's difficult to populate greatly with enemies, collectables, etc. and you have have to navigate it using a bulky vehicle without a great turn circle. Even considering that though, I expected a little more popularity from the genre. I would point to Puzzle Pirates as a specific but long-running pirate MMO that did work out.
Both MS and Sony showed giant rafts of games, but I feel like what a lot of the people, at least the ones active on social media seem to want, is some huge surprise thing that just blows them away, so Twitter finds every presentation lacking either because it shows whats already been leaked, or because they have a very narrow subset of things they want, and consider anything else shown to be a waste of time. In 2016, this was pretty apparent with how much twitter loved Zelda, and you saw all the "Nintendo wins E3" tweets, when they only had one game there.
I think you're largely right, although maybe a little cynical about audience. Mario + Rabbids for example, was something we already knew about and it got a huge reaction, that was something that really did seem to blow people away. I think Nintendo might have hit on the same thing with Super Mario Odyssey's showing again this year and that already had a trailer out there. I just think that a lot of the big names failed to hit that height. There are usually more "Oh shit!" moments in a Microsoft press conference and that wasn't really there this year.
Personally, from both MS and Sony, I saw a hugely diverse set of games, it's not the RPG frenzy of two generations ago, or the shooterfest of the last generation. Perhaps we're finally seeing a kind of balance, though I suppose open world games still command a larger slice of the pie chart - but even they can no longer sell on being "big". I think Fallout 4 and Mass Effect: Andromeda showed that. They have to be interesting as well.
I think this is a really good point. I remember E3 not that long back when you couldn't move for people using the phrase "Shooter fatigue" and understandably. I think we've known for a while that big games can crash and burn, and that hasn't stopped the companies up until now, but I think there's this strong push from the other end. It's not just that big games can die, but that we're now seeing that what used to be more fringe games have a larger audience. We're seeing different kinds of shooters, we're seeing 3D and 2D platformers, we're seeing a new Crackdown. Life is Strange is this really amazing thing in that it's a story-driven teen drama game that gets to be shown in the Microsoft press conference. I feel like our industry has come so far in so little time and Microsoft have really been influenced here by the indie space.
@zombiepie: Yeah, I'm mostly with you. I think it helped that not only did they have multiple big name games that weren't just sports titles but that they kept almost everything that wasn't Battlefront within a tight one hour slot. I strongly suspect that they've been doing the multiplayer esports section at the end because they know a lot of people are going to tune out from that, but if anyone bails at that point, at least EA has been able to show them everything else they wanted them to see. So much of EA's e-celeb stuff was cringy, but it was at least entertaining. It wasn't just a boring slog of executive brand hype or what Ubisoft's been doing where they realised people laughed at their press conferences and tried to lean into it with really poor results.
@rikiguitarist: While I didn't have the same experience, I get what you mean. I wouldn't call this Thumper moving beyond being a rhythm game, all of the elements of the genre still seem to be intact in what you're describing, but you are talking about a different kind of rhythm game. Maybe what we could really do with is a game that refines the Thumper formula, getting us to react to audio cues but making those cues more reliable.
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