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L.B. Jeffries has a nice essay up on the idea of 'games as languages' — a combination of coercing players to take certain actions and encouraging certain responses, creating a dialogue of sorts. As Jeffries says, "It’s not exactly talking to another person…but it’s not just rolling dice or pressing shoot either." As games get more complex, so does the 'language' aspect — choices are expressive elements, and the more choices one has, the more opportunities for unique combinations. Even the simplest of games involves communication — 'go here, do that.' With the influx of more diverse and user-created building blocks, it seems reasonable that the 'languages' would begin to emerge more clearly: More »
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Gamasutra has a fun essay up from Ben Schneider, formerly of Iron Lore Entertainment and currently narrative designer at Big Huge Games, on dialogue in games — and the challenges of getting it right. Schneider isn't calling for a removal of longer dialogues, but pointing out that short dialogue can function better than its longer cousin in many situations: creating ambiance in the background or delivering information (without interrupting or hindering gameplay) when in the forefront. Short dialogue should be like poetry, and poetry is 'a powerful thing': More »
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There's a very interesting article over at Eludamos, one of the open-access academic journals that's done a nice job of getting fascinating articles in each issue; this volume is no exception, and the article I found particularly thought provoking is on the issue of death in narrative-driven games. Jason Tocci isn't arguing that the death mechanic has no place in games, but it's a cop out for many narrative-driven games — and can create frustrating gaming experiences for end users. This is, in Tocci's view, a hold over from earlier design decisions when games were more limited in what they could do: More »
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Danc at Lost Garden has an interesting post up on themes in games and the effect on game design: while there are definite reasons for the same types of themes and aesthetics popping up in games over and over again, a careful balance needs to be struck between 'skinning' themes and mechanics and putting coherent game play above it all. It's better that a game 'reads' badly from a literary (narrative) standpoint, but makes sense in terms of game play: More »
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Michael Abbott of the Brainy Gamer has a great piece up on the straw man of the 'quality of narrative' debate that's been going on in the industry for quite some time now: things aren't as bad as the collective we make them out to be. Really, they're not. Sure, there are broken promises along the way, disappointments here and there, and certainly the future to look towards — but there are plenty of games who are doing pretty damn well, considering that most can agree that narrative design for games is in its relative infancy: More »
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Malcolm Ryan is putting together a most interesting list of game design-related books — except these are the ones that are flying under the radar as it were. Ryan describes these 'secret books' as "books that are not explicitly written about games, but which any game designer who reads them just knows that they are really about games." As part of this, Ryan will be reviewing a book a week on a variety of narrative and game-related topics (even if the connection isn't immediately apparent). In the 'secret book' category, he's got two examples: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud and A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander. More »
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I was chatting with a fellow Chinese historian this weekend when he confessed that his interest in Chinese history could be traced back to receiving a copy of Romance of the Three Kingdoms for SNES. I thought of that while reading Duncan Fyfe's essay on the potential 'educational' uses of regular, AAA titles — which isn't really so much on the potential to educate as much as inspire (as insipid as that sounds) in subtle ways: More »
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Michael Abbott of the Brainy Gamer has a nice little roundup of some of the current thinking on narrative designs in games — it's nice to have a couple of reasonably prominent writers/designers/etc. put together in one place, with easily digestible clips. And, as usual, the comments section is just as worthy of attention as the article itself. But is this emerging collective 'manifesto' really deserving of the title 'manifesto'?: More »
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I really like the idea of turning classic literature into games, mostly in the form of parodies (but moderately thoughtful ruminations are welcome, too). Over at GameSetWatch, Emily Short looks at the literature/game combination in the one genre that churns out book-related games at an alarming pace: the dreaded hidden object game. She concedes that it sometimes works really well (as in the case of Agatha Christie novels, or Sherlock Holmes), but the disconnect between the narrative and gameplay in examples such as The Count of Monte Cristo is frustrating (she does offer the caveat that she's not a fan of the genre in general, but her criticisms still stand): More »
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Are the ridiculous, wild goose chase puzzles of classic adventure games obsolete? Michael Abbott at the Brainy Gamer grudgingly says they may be — "A revealing slap in the face awaits the - shall we say "veteran" - gamer who hands an old adventure game to a young gamer with a hearty recommendation and an assurance of blissful gaming in store." The response is likely to be 'Is this supposed to be fun?' Now, I know plenty of people who still remember fondly games like Monkey Island and other classic adventure games, including their oftentimes bizarre and lengthy puzzles, but: More »
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The idea that crafting a compelling game involves multiple parts — narrative design, graphic elements, sound — is so obvious that it's a shame an article even needs to be written expounding upon that fact, but Sande Chen (The Witcher) has an interesting piece over at Gamasutra on just that. The real take away point is 'attention to detail,' I think — paying attention to visual intensity and how visual elements play into each other and the game; thinking hard about emotional intensity as it waxes and wanes throughout a game; really paying attention to sounds. It seems so basic, but a little attention goes a long way: More »
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What makes for a subversive game? Borut Pfeifer tackles the question with aplomb over at GameSetWatch, looking at games from Portal to Blacksite: Area 51 to establish the various ways in which games currently convey 'subversive' messages of many stripes: More »
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While I remain unimpressed with much of the discussion surrounding BioShock, Gamasutra has a reasonably interesting interview up with Ken Levine on 'narrative drive' and some aspects of telling stories in games. On the unreliable narrator, he's got this to say: More »
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We all know and love (or hate) the expansive list of video game tropes; the TV Tropes wiki has put together a shockingly extensive list (also home of a wiki version ofthe grand list of RPG clichés), spanning all sorts of genres and with plenty of examples. My favorite is "Malevolent Architecture": More »
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Emily Short, the interactive fiction designer/author, has an interesting look at Portal's story from the perspective of someone who does IF. I always like reading critiques from people who are engaged in the 'gaming' world, though perhaps not in the way we're expecting. It's a thoughtful look at what went right, what went wrong, and maybe why people were so excited about it: More »
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I've got a couple of game related books on my 'someday, someday I'll have time to read these' book list, and I've just added a new one after seeing a post on Grand Text Auto: Jeff Howard's Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives. While "each theoretical section is followed by a practical section that contains exercises using the Neverwinter Nights Aurora Toolset," something I'll never be using, the meat of the text sounds really interesting, blending literature and game design. Says Nick Montfort, an assistant professor at MIT: More »
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Speaking of games being juvenile (maybe), Steve Gaynor threw down the gauntlet over at Fullbright with some incendiary comments that were of course going to start a firestorm, and were indeed designed to. His contention? The video games are going to be stuck in the same ghetto as comic books — always marginalized, forever juvenile, doomed to never being 'a relevant cultural medium': More »
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Rock, Paper, Shotgun has reprinted an older article of John Walker's that appeared in The Escapist: a discussion of narrative versus graphics, old versus new. It's an inherently flawed argument (which the author freely admits), singling out the FPS genre in a move that is a bit unfair, but it's true that a strong narrative can overcome a lot of problems in the graphics department, assuming other pieces that make a strong game fall into place: More »
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David Braben, who developed Elite and has recently been talking up his latest, the espionage-themed The Outsider (and giving backhanded compliments to games like Bioshock in the process). Gamasutra has an interesting interview up with Braben, talking about new paths for narrative design, what he and Frontier Developments are hoping to do with The Outsider, and what everyone in the industry is doing wrong: More »
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Long, long ago, before I threw myself into my current path of East Asian specialist, I was a classicist-in-training with a focus on first century BC Roman lyric poetry. So I read with interest a piece in the Escapist comparing modern MMOs with the epic forerunners of centuries past - the likes of the Illiad, Odyssey, and Aeneid, among others. Anyone who's ever waded through any of the epic classics can relate to the formulaic nature of the stories - epithets abound (Aeneas is always faithful, Achilles is always swift-footed, Dawn is always rosy-fingered), structure is repetitive, stories are familiar. The repetition isn't merely the mark of a lazy story teller (or game developer), oh no: More »
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In comparison to most of the stuff I read about improving story telling in games, which includes lots of literary theory, some pie-in-the-sky 'Wouldn't that be nice?' ideas, and formulas more complicated than many chemistry formulas, this week's HDR Knowledge over at GameSetWatch is practical and unpretentious. I especially liked the points about the perils of cut scenes - a number of games I've played in the past year or so have suffered seriously from an overload of cut scenes (nothing encourages me more about the potential of game than wanting to sleep through the first ten hours). Probably the most egregious violator of the cut scene issue that I'm really familiar with was the Xenosaga series - in the first installment, I dreaded the prospect of yet another cut scene that would take up half an hour of my life: More »
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I love the essays put together by Daniel Cook (aka Danc) of Lost Garden - they're frequently complex, but always enlightening. This week at Gamasutra, he tackled the challenge of creating strong emotional experiences via game design: it's a powerful aspect of media and one that has been discussed in a lot of forums. He pins down the (general) problem of game design when it comes to evoking emotion - designers tend to rely on one of two methods. Either games fall back on other forms of media ("And then we show a movie of the faithful heroine being stabbed by the evil villain!") or what he terms 'copious handwaving' ('"See, this pink pulsating blob represents 'Feelings'", explains the designer to the confused player.'). His solutions? Taking a look at several different methods (most with a long history of other applications), their uses and limitations, and how technology can help. Some general thoughts?: More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=315889&view=rss&microfeed=true Just in case you blinked and missed it, the Grand Text Auto exhibit at UC Irvine's Beall Center for Art and Technology opened on Thursday, with opening symposiums and performances on Friday. Even if you missed the opening events, the exhibit will be open until 14 December. More information on the exhibit after the jump: More »
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It's nothing that hasn't been noted in a million blog posts over the years, but in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Daniel Radosh is saying it again. Too much emphasis on graphics, not enough emphasis on narrative - and sometimes those purty cut scenes can be a hindrance to a satisfying game experience (Radosh points to Halo 3 as an example, picking up on something our very own Crecente pointed out in his review of Halo 3). More »
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In the wake of BioShock has come more than a few thought-provoking posts from various corners - I've become more interested since my boyfriend picked up a copy and I've been watching to see what happens next (any game that uses Django Reinhardt in the soundtrack gets mega-bonus points from me) - and some of the most interesting takes have been coming from Leigh Alexander (the writer behind the Aberrant Gamer column at GameSetWatch, Sexy Videogameland and Worlds In Motion). Most recently? Some musings on the 'mechanics of choice' in games - plenty of people have clamored for more choice, more options, more chances to control a character's destiny in games. But as Alexander points out, most of the choices are superficial, cost-benefit decisions at best, not making a huge difference in what happens, but (perhaps more importantly) in a well-planned and well-designed games, they can seriously impact how it feels to play the game. More »
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Gamasutra has an interesting (short) interview up with Stephen Dinehart, "narrative designer" for Relic Entertainment, the Vancouver arm of THQ. The topic? Well, Company of Heroes in general - more specifically, narrative design, violence, and historical accuracy (or lack thereof). I've read a fair chunk of thoughts on narrative design in an academic context, so it's nice to read how people think the stuff is being applied in real-world situations. Dinehart hopes that these sorts of games aren't just excuses to shoot stuff, and feels that his narrative crafting helps facilitate a more mature examination of violence: More »
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