Video Game Related Media

xot · 2010-06-12 22:55:59

I'll go a step further and say that most films don't bear watching even once. Did I say I was a film buff? I must have meant film snob. OK, OK, maybe that was a little harsh. Most films are certainly tolerable enough to watch once. Few, twice. As for always wanting to move on to something new, absolutely, I embrace that. Life is too short, and there are too many experiences to be had to spend one's time dwelling on one thing over and over ... yet some things never fail to charm me, again and again. I could never become tired of Frank Zappa's music, I could never get bored of hiking among the pure majesty of the Sierra Nevadas, and I'll never "outgrow" something as rich as J.R.R. Tolkien's use of language. But those kinds of things are rare indeed.

From what I've read, Indigo Prophesy seems like a very interesting game, but I think it would probably annoy me if I felt like I had missed significant amounts of the game after investing so much time into "finishing" it once. Forty hours is just too long to expect someone to play twice. That's something that's annoying me about KoTOR. It's a big game and you can play as the "light" or "dark" sides, depending on your choices, which implies you should play it at least twice. I'm simply not going to do that, and I feel like it's making me do things that are ultimately winnowing away the parts of the game I'm not "allowed" to see. Authorship is one thing, and then there's just being a jerk.

A game like Pirates! is short enough that it's totally worth it to try different difficulty levels, different nations, different eras, different strategies and player-defined roles. There's no real story per se, it's almost sandbox in nature, but there are some interesting challenges and subtle ways you can influence the game's world depending on your choices. The only real limitations are how much you can accomplish in a virtual life-time. There are no rails and that's why I always champion it as the only computer RPG I've yet seen that lives up to what pen-and-paper role-playing is all about.

I'm getting off on a tangent here, but I agree with Sid Meier's philosophy of game design: "At least half the game takes place in the player's imagination so we're going to let you imagine all these things going on, and give you the gameplay to trigger that. " To me, that's proper authorship. You should allow the audience the opportunity to interpret things, that's a wonderful part of the process in all forms of art and entertainment. It allows an artist, or an author, or a director, or an actor to collaborate with the audience. Actor Christoph Waltz, in an interview about his role as Col. Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, puts it like this.

Interviewer: In the script, what do you feel Landa is communicating non-verbally to Shosanna as they eat their strudels? He seems to be savoring the moment, or maybe its pure
Christoph Waltz: Well, its not so pure. Its not so pure. You see, its very, very important that I hold back on my explanation, my interpretations, verbalizations and descriptions of what I do. Its very important for, lets call it, the interior process. To arrive at something that translates into an action, thats what an actor does. Yet, I do not want to impede on any of your interpretations as a writer. This is what I do. I do it. And then you look at it. And you come up with a result. I am just, lets say, the intermediary, between Quentin and you.

After I read that, as a filmmaker, I thought about acting in a whole new way. There's no doubt in I my mind that his approach is what so enriches his riveting performance. He doesn't just refuse to talk about his interpretation, I'd bet money that he doesn't have one. One of the things in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings that people endless debate is the nature of the character Tom Bombadil. What exactly is he? How is it that the ring has no power over him? Is he God? It's never explained in the book, and Tolkien himself would never say out-right. Indeed, he purposefully meant it to be mysterious because he, perhaps influenced by his devotion to Catholicism, felt that somethings are, and should be, unknowable, even to the author. That was his way of letting the audience participate in the story.

Audience participation is the defining aspect of videogames, and I don't understand why so many designers try to block that off. This usually happens through excessive difficulty, narrowly defined goals and solutions, or cutting off large parts of the game due to the player's uninformed decisions. There is often a place for these things, after all games are just as much about rules and consequences as interactivity, but I think too often it does the form a disservice by interfering with overall accessibility and enjoyment for the player.

I don't know. Every game is different, I guess. Different strokes for different folks, and that. Sometimes I think videogames are destined to completely diverge into games of pure skill, virtual worlds, and interactive stories, with little connecting them but a name. Maybe "videogames" is far too narrow and simple a concept for such rich variety of potential experiences. Perhaps that's the disservice. Sometimes I feel shackled by such an incomplete vocabulary we use to discuss what videogames are.

Jesus, I must be tired. I'm just babbling now.

icuurd12b42 · 2010-06-13 02:41:07

I hate light vs dark option. Like in Mass effect of Knight of the republic... I dark side always pisses me off. Mass effect was pretty bad for that, but funny, if you enjoy that kind of humour. Indigo is definitly a keeper. I got it for 3 buck after I played it on the xbox. THough I never played it on the 360. I dont know if it'll run.

Me, I like rails, very much so. I lack the will to go off in a world with not particular purpose. I know people addicted to Second Life, not really a game. But I need rails so much, I can;t stay in the second life world too long because of that.

I do agree that most games should leave the player to imagine "the rest" or "the details". Growing up in the era of the first arcade video games, I had no choice, Most games started with no explanation on why you, the character, were there or what you needed to do. Also, I think we had a much greater range of options for game type. In fact, most game was it's own type.

Bombadil. interesting. I must say I never read the books, though I must have read well over a thousand books, LOTR has never been my cup of tee and I got bored with the movies. From what I can guess from wiki, his wife is suspected to be the spirit of the river. So he would need to be highly evolved to pull that one, if a man. Another quote, Goldberry says, "He is", and he refers himself in the 3rd person. as though removed, disassociated from his body. Now I have read a lot of things about becoming "aware" and from what I can grasp. once you become aware of the true reality, nothing physical realy matters to you anymore, even your own body, and little of the worldly folies can really affect you <mentaly> in the way it affects most people. In the reality of LOTR, he would be immuned to the ring simply because he is no longer anchored in that reality. At that point the only thing of matter is your existance, not your physicality. ergo when ask who he is, the only answer is "I am" or "he is", because one cannot say I am John Doe as this person (the phisical form) is so far removed from the true self one would only know for sure that they exist, not just as that person and so not be sure exacly what they are, the only certainty is existance.
So there are hints apparently that he is more that what he seems to be. You can extrapolate and imagine the rest (exactly what he is) from your own knowlege and belief.

But yeah. I ramble too. God I miss the GMC LOL...

Last edited by icuurd12b42 (2010-06-13 02:47:08)

icuurd12b42 · 2010-08-23 01:14:42

Here is an interesting animation method which could be used in a game

xot · 2010-08-29 20:48:01

Cool video. I saw that a few weeks ago. Really neat concept and the artist came up with some dynamite ideas. I'm intrigued by the notion of applying it to a game. Any specific ideas?

Finally found John Carmack's QuakeCon 2010 keynote. It's audio-only and about an hour and a half. It covers a lot of ground from portables, to ray tracing, to cloud computing, to input systems, to input latency, to CPU vs GPU vs memory, to lighting, to megatextures, to virtualization, to emulation, to development platforms, to everything else -- not necessarily in that order. As always, very interesting. Unfortunately omits the Q&A.

G4TV page with MP3 of keynote

One interesting reveal, aside from Rage appearing on an iPhone at all, is that it will be released on it first. Here's a short video clip of the keynote showing it off.

icuurd12b42 · 2010-08-30 19:49:39

A discussion about Good and Fun AIs

GMLscripts.com

#41 2010-06-12 22:55:59

Re: Video Game Related Media

#42 2010-06-13 02:41:07

Re: Video Game Related Media

#43 2010-08-23 01:14:42

Re: Video Game Related Media

#44 2010-08-29 20:48:01

Re: Video Game Related Media

#45 2010-08-30 19:49:39

Re: Video Game Related Media

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