Comments on What Happens Before Game Design?: Illusions of Choose Your Own Adventure

@Simon It's wandering a bit but the wandering is a...

2009-06-12T06:21:13.066-07:00

@Simon
It's wandering a bit but the wandering is a bit intentional. More and more, I feel like a singular, complex argument is on the tip of my tongue but I need to adjust certain perspectives so that I can finally make the whole thing. I would like to call out AAA design but yeah, it seems as though any sort of academic influence is met with an amazing amount of apprehension (and for good reason given there isn't a solid amount of good works to choose from).

I would love to see what you describe, Simon, in that I think that it is what players of video games probably want but don't really realize they want it. If they didn't want it, Fable 2 wouldn't be a success, for example.

It's one game but is trying to head in a direction of player freedom but is based on player direction only in so much as player is disconnected from the world at large with exception of their deeds and morals.

@AlanJack
This is a dangerous argument and central to the "Science Wars" in the 90s (and I guess is still being fought). If multiple interpretations of one thing are multiple realities, in this case multiple games, then a large variety of things shouldn't make sense to everyone. For me, Mario would be an asshole trying to ruin a lizard's day by taking his shallow girlfriend home whereas others would see Mario as a Hero rescuing Peach as she is in great peril.

Post-modern arguments never made much sense to me in that they seem to want to say something of the relative nature of things but only go so far as to include some things in interpretation and not others. Further, the thing being interpreted isn't changing and it's a reality for the user, not for multiple people. The game is still the game, Mario is still Mario, nothing changed.

Basically it comes down to, is it relative to what? Interpretation as game play or movie watching comes into trouble when you ask what it is you're interpreting. For this movie, it exists as it is given that it will never change, it is the reality and it cannot be changed (much like scientific reality). I cannot express myself in a game other than by doing things that cause a game over on purpose.

Your last statement is the argument that drove this post. It's a series of feelings and references that i've been exploring for the past month and want to write into a much larger piece. Video Games have potential to unlock from the traps and confines of movies and board games, but designers are creating more walls around video games than they are trying to tear them down.

Games can be interactive in that my actions could determine a whole slew of things, this is sort of where games are headed. However, unintended consequences cannot be taken into account. There are only consequences inside of a game that are accounted for. I'd like to turn your statement around and give players tools and background, areas already explored, and then allow them to do as they see fit, however they see fit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2dO-LqGaD4#t=3m06s...

2009-06-12T03:20:25.631-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2dO-LqGaD4#t=3m06s

As Warren Spector puts it "Games are at their best when they are saying something about the user, not the designer".

Games are not interactive movies. Interactive movies are interactive movies. They're kind-of games, but when you want to stretch logic like that, movies are games too. Especially art movies - those movies that are open to interpretation. If I interpret a movie one way, you interpret another, have we chosen our own movie adventure?

Games that realize the potential of gaming also allow us to express ourselves in the way we play them.

What I would ask, then, is whether or not a game should be designed with a singular purpose or concept in mind. I like to approach game design with the idea of putting across a sensation or experience to the player - but doing so by presenting the player with an environment that allows the player to explore, express and - more importantly to learn through experience.

This wanders a bit, and I'm not a Star Trek affici...

2009-06-12T01:21:53.338-07:00

This wanders a bit, and I'm not a Star Trek afficianado, but I like where you ended up going with it. I know you're not willing to go there, but this pretty much looks like a call to unshackle at least a portion of AAA game development from the constraints of trying to tell a story. I actually think we're really close to being able to make a sizeable, maybe small city-sized game world with autonomous agents and a story that evolves naturally based on NPC preferences and molded at intervals by events that take place roughly based on what you've chosen to do, but people don't really seem interested in it.

Glad somebody else thinks Bioshock is a hack job, too.