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Choice
As we all no doubt know, films were not always considered art. It was when movies like Citizen Kane came out that people started to take films seriously. The reason this is is that Citizen Kane used the medium of film to its full potential, doing things that can only be done in film. In the same way, Watchmen did things that could only have been done in a comic book.
For a while now, video games have been trying very hard to emulate movies in their storytelling. The introduction of the cutscene changed the way stories were told in games, but this is not the way for video games to evolve as an art form. Video games need their Citizen Kane, their Watchmen. Games like KOTOR, Mass Effect, and Fable try to break the mold by having choice influence the story. This may seem like it could only be done in a video game, but choose your own adventure books did it first. Not to mention that your choices can only be made at specific points, and these points draw a lot of attention to themselves, which feels very mechanical. Infamous is on the right track, letting your actions determine your alignment rather than your choice on a dialogue tree. But still it draws a lot of attention to itself by stopping the game for a moment and having a narration tell you what your choices are, with prominent text in the corner saying "KARMA MOMENT." Still, it's kind of necessary because otherwise, you wouldn't know that a choice could be made.
It seems clear to me that dialogue trees and scene-stealing karma moments are not what is needed to evolve games as an art form. My question to you is what can game developers do to make choice seem more organic?
For a while now, video games have been trying very hard to emulate movies in their storytelling. The introduction of the cutscene changed the way stories were told in games, but this is not the way for video games to evolve as an art form. Video games need their Citizen Kane, their Watchmen. Games like KOTOR, Mass Effect, and Fable try to break the mold by having choice influence the story. This may seem like it could only be done in a video game, but choose your own adventure books did it first. Not to mention that your choices can only be made at specific points, and these points draw a lot of attention to themselves, which feels very mechanical. Infamous is on the right track, letting your actions determine your alignment rather than your choice on a dialogue tree. But still it draws a lot of attention to itself by stopping the game for a moment and having a narration tell you what your choices are, with prominent text in the corner saying "KARMA MOMENT." Still, it's kind of necessary because otherwise, you wouldn't know that a choice could be made.
It seems clear to me that dialogue trees and scene-stealing karma moments are not what is needed to evolve games as an art form. My question to you is what can game developers do to make choice seem more organic?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by ProtoEva00 on -
Better computer generated content, especially voices. Right now, we have moved beyond reading text, and expect to hear voice actors instead, but this becomes very expensive, with Mass Effect as a example, containing around 20000 lines of dialogue. This is worsened by a game with choice trees, as there is the potential that the user could skip large quantities of created content, and never get around to seeing what has been created, and there fore, shortens the gaming experience, with "wasted" dollars spent by the developers. We are probably a long ways off from completely doing away with a human voice, but If enhanced computer generated "voice models" were created from actual voice actors, perhaps smaller segments of dialogue that were specific to the players choices, could be inserted.
The general idea being, once the algorithms or models have been created, and tested, developers will feel far more comfortable placing more options that let you pick your own rout, as they didn't need to hand create the options you "missed"
I thought there was real hope in computer generated content, way back when I was seeing some of the very sophisticated algorithms being used in map generation in Diablo II, or perhaps side stepping the issue with "simish" speak, but so far both of those areas have stagnated since then. Even Spore was a bit of a let down, with how "from here" to "there" it felt in game play.
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Permalink Reply by Undeed on -
I'd like to argue the opposite: Citizen Kane received acclaim because of it's technical achievements, because it used a number of techniques and methods that had never been seen or used effectively in movies before. Any number of games could be argued to do the same: Mario is the Citizen Kane of platformers, setting the standards of control and motion for most any game in the genre since. Bioware is the patron saint of karmic choice games. GTA is one of the earliest examples of a solid sandbox game. Doom for FPS, etc. And movies have been around for nearly quite some time, while video games are a fairly new media. The technology is advancing fast enough that we expect more, but the developers are working on an immensely steep curve.
If this is about making choices specifically and having them effect the game, then yes there is a long way to go. I have yet to play a game where the good and evil are anywhere near ambiguous. Usually you get to pick between taking care of the kids at an orphanage or burning it down. Choices need to be more gray, and they need to have more subtle effects on long term game-play. It would be nice if every action had a small effect on the world. Fable almost does this, except the effects are not very subtle and the choices are fairly stark. But it seems a step in the right direction
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Permalink Reply by C.H. Gorog on -
I think the thing that separates video games from other media such as film, other than the possibility of choice, is the fact that one can truly explore the world of that universe. The sickness one feels of the overexposure of advertisements in GTA4 is a subtle stab at the sickening capitalistic material obsessed country Americans live in these days. One can explore and discover the detail of the Game Developer's craft. In Bioshock, audio logs allow you to delve more into the story, giving the player more connection into the world. Video games allow us to interact with that specific universe; for instance, Dead Space, is constantly terrifying since the player does not know 100% with complete certainty what will happen.
In video games, Choice is becoming a more prevalent aspect. In Mass Effect, it's used to such great extent on so many gray areas whereas the player has to question his/her own convictions and beliefs before proceeding, something that can't be done with a static book or film. And while choice hasn't been perfected, it's certainly getting there.
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