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parkbench
Joined: 12 Dec 2006
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 Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 4:43 pm |
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| Quote: |
| As evidence of this very thing, I would say that The Sims is in fact far less interesting than Morrowind - it purports to be value-neutral (a "toy" in Wright's own words) while smuggling in substantive values by the very choices it makes in what to abstract, and how to abstract it. Morrowind is at least more honest with the player. |
Perhaps so--perhaps The Sims in this case is a bad example, though I would argue that mechanically speaking it does right by operating almost entirely on abstractions, which explains its popularity and user-friendliness. Because it's not unified by as clear an artistic vision as Rohrer's games, it may lack the same kind of weight, sure. But I think I'm also kind of missing what you're saying fundamentally here. Can you elaborate?
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| This brings me back to my original point. I would never want to preclude the kinds of things that thoroughly abstract games can tell the player. I don't think, however, that a) those are the only things worth saying or b) all things worth saying can be said best at a high level of abstraction. COD4 presents an experience that Tetris could never replicate. COD4 presents an important experience, beyond "entertainment." I would not want to preclude it, either. |
Well, no, I mean, obviously they're not "the only things worth saying," but isn't it true that interest "leans?" I can appreciate games like CoD4 on a certain level, but can I help preferring another kind of game? Is it indefensible to say that I prefer Tarkovsky over Sam Raimi? Sure, the avant-garde always exists "fungally" on top of extant forms, so you can't eliminate them. But I mean I also don't read Harry Potter fan-fiction 24/7, even if I recognise and acknowledge its legitimate existence. I don't think it's that tough to argue that other things might be more worthwhile or interesting in the grand scheme of things.
I also don't think it's ridiculous to propose that most of the things worth being said can only be done so at some level of abstraction. Let's take a look at the classical model: Bioshock? CoD4? The Call of Duty dialog on war is kind of a ridiculous one. Bioshock is...what can we say? Partially well-meaning, partially disingenuous, but totally didactic and a failed experiment if anything, along the lines of KotOR (again not that I don't enjoy these experiments, but I just mean in the greater framework of things). Why aren't gamers walking away feeling anything but a new thrill (which is all developers seem to want to offer)? Something isn't working.
Rohrer's model reminds me of what the developer for Braid said in that one GDC presentation, where he compared Bioshock to Portal. I haven't played Portal, but I got the gist of what he was saying: Bioshock's model for morality boils it down to door #1 and door #2 and does not create any kind of interesting emotional struggle. Portal does not even attempt to do this, yet in its ending, it contains an emotionally crushing decision: destroying the weighted companion cube. It accompanies you throughout the game, and you grow attached to it, and then suddenly--you have to destroy it. This model is laconic and communicates through presence, like any real life situation. This, he argues, is the right step for games (or at least a step that will lead them "anywhere but here"). Too many games are still in the 'literary' or 'filmic' model of trying to describe utterly and explain everything to the player. And for this reason, while I love them to death, I can't believe that Planescape or Baldur's Gate or even Monkey Island hits at the 'essence of games.' Not to illegitimise their existence, just to say that they are interesting permutations and evolutionary tracks that have not gone far for a reason.
A game like Gravitation trusts the player and doesn't subscribe to the triple-A industry model of holding the player's hand. It's a terrifying thought for most people and it's one that's met with not a little trepidation and anxiety. But I think it's something that needs to be done, and if we look at games that have done this in the past, like say, Ico (perhaps not the best example? somebody help me out here), we can come to realise how this irregular evolutionary path has been hobbling along for the past few years.
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| Insofar as the medium sort of blindly marches to the "realism" drum, you're right perhaps that COD4-esque games demand more scrutiny, to make sure developers aren't unthinkingly following a norm rather than making a decisive choice as to what level of abstraction best serves their purposes. (Here the discussion begins to echo my old e.megas HL2 thread.) But it doesn't follow that abstract games are a priori more interesting, or more worthwhile. |
Well, this gets at the heart of something I've been meaning to write up for awhile now. Genre, or more precisely, formula, is interesting because it allows for experimentation of an interesting sort. This is why I find sequels so fascinating. A game that becomes a series is interesting because it allows the developers to start with a basic framework and continue to refine their formula and play with it. Consequently, the danger of 'the formula' is just that--it's a formula. In the worst of cases, developers start getting lazy and instead of doing the artistic process--that is, constantly reinventing the wheel--they plug numbers into the formula and out comes a game. Here we have the 'textbook' game. Warcraft III was our (contentious) example earlier. The danger in 'formulaic' games is that they revel in the formula rather than play off of it. For this reason, too, I think there is an obvious difference in quality in games that 'unintentionally' become a series and games that are designed around it. Games like Assassin's Creed are planned as blockbusters with multiple incarnations and aren't subject to the same kind of spontaneous experimentations with formula as an 'unintentional' series.
So what's my point in saying all this? The 'realism' drum, as you have dubbed it, is the accepted formula for today's games. It feeds well into the endless game that is hardware penis envy. Bigger games, better graphics, better hardware, everybody wins (except players) in this zero-sum game. Not many games have gone far with this, because there's really nowhere for it to go, and for this reason I will stipulate that Crysis, to me, is completely uninteresting, regardless of some interesting mechanics. It's an example of games heading in a direction that is about bells and whistles; it isn't sustainable and isn't, ultimately, interesting in the least.
I realise a lot of what I'm saying is tendentious, especially since I'm occupying a particular niche here in the argument (since I undeniably lean towards the sardonic Pongism side of things), so I'd like to hear your response. What I mean to say is I am not trying to be meaninglessly inflammatory by saying "Crysis sux." I will elaborate more if need be.
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| I realize also that your post was originally intended as a defense of abstract games to the "art games yawn" crowd. And I'm with you as far as that goes. You might want to consider, however, that it's not that art games are a target, but that Gravitation isn't much of an art game. |
I think that's getting into semantics. Do we need to check off criteria to determine that it is? Maybe we can say it's 'on one edge of the spectrum' in terms of art games. But then, I actually am not too educated on the topic. Can you briefly give me some comparisons, or some references so that I can understand this more thoroughly? What, to you, is "more" of an art game?
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CubaLibre
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: The District
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| Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 5:09 pm |
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| parkbench wrote: |
| Perhaps so--perhaps The Sims in this case is a bad example, though I would argue that mechanically speaking it does right by operating almost entirely on abstractions, which explains its popularity and user-friendliness. Because it's not unified by as clear an artistic vision as Rohrer's games, it may lack the same kind of weight, sure. But I think I'm also kind of missing what you're saying fundamentally here. Can you elaborate? |
My main point is that abstraction is not necessarily a fundamentally useful way to convey information (let's not dwell too long on that simplistic description of the "function" of art, you get what I mean). The best manner to convey information is based entirely on what the information is.
This means that designers have to be very conscious not only of what they want to say, but how they want to say it. In a game context, this means choosing what to abstract, and how much. When Will Wright calls his games "toys," he's trying to make the claim that the gamer can "get what he wants" out of them - that since they don't include any explicit goals, the goals the player sets for himself are supposed to reveal something about the player. (Note that this is exactly what people say about Gravitation.) But I think that's pretty disingenuous. Because certain aspects of "normal life" are abstracted in certain ways, it's unavoidable that only a certain class of goals will be available to the player. He's stacking the deck but then saying that players can play any hand they want.
For all its flaws, Morrowind I feel is much more honest and therefore wide-open to new player interpretations. By being conscious in what it is allowing the player to do - and not to do - it can make sure the remaining, narrowed scope of the game is as robust and rewarding as possible.
To put it another way, it doesn't necessarily follow that the more abstraction there is, the more interpretations that are available. Abstractions can be at least as slanted as "realistic" depictions of events in games.
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| I also don't think it's ridiculous to propose that most of the things worth being said can only be done so at some level of abstraction. |
Obviously, but games are by necessity at some level abstract. COD4 has a grenade indicator that shows you when grenades land near you. Obviously this is meant 1) to fill in for some bodily senses that don't translate in fullness to a computer screen and 2) just give the player a leg up, so he can survive things a real soldier in real life couldn't. But I don't think calling its dialogue on war "ridiculous" is very helpful. It's not any more ridiculous than, say, Blackhawk Down, and ten times more immersive. (I don't think its true brilliance shines through until you play on the hardest difficulty level, though.)
| Quote: |
| Bioshock's model for morality boils it down to door #1 and door #2 and does not create any kind of interesting emotional struggle. Portal does not even attempt to do this, yet in its ending, it contains an emotionally crushing decision: destroying the weighted companion cube. It accompanies you throughout the game, and you grow attached to it, and then suddenly--you have to destroy it. This model is laconic and communicates through presence, like any real life situation. This, he argues, is the right step for games (or at least a step that will lead them "anywhere but here"). |
I agree totally with this sentiment, but you've got to actually play Portal, because the WCC is blown way out of proportion to its merit. It's sort of a sick joke on emotional wrenching, rather than being emotionally wrenching. Amusing to be sure, interesting perhaps, but profound, I'm not willing to say.
But the general thesis, hey. Sure.
| Quote: |
| So what's my point in saying all this? The 'realism' drum, as you have dubbed it, is the accepted formula for today's games. It feeds well into the endless game that is hardware penis envy. Bigger games, better graphics, better hardware, everybody wins (except players) in this zero-sum game. Not many games have gone far with this, because there's really nowhere for it to go, and for this reason I will stipulate that Crysis, to me, is completely uninteresting, regardless of some interesting mechanics. It's an example of games heading in a direction that is about bells and whistles; it isn't sustainable and isn't, ultimately, interesting in the least. |
Maybe - I would note, though, that it is technological breakthrough games that set the stage for more intrepid artists to do things with the technology. Unfortunately, for whatever reason (I speculate the continued compartmentalization of learning in the modern world), the two typically don't go hand-in-hand. Half-Life (which wasn't an enormous revolution in its own right) couldn't have happened without the "formulaic" Quake 2 and its engine. If there are no incentives to develop better technology - if "art games" are the only games - then the artistic side of gaming will stagnate, too.
| Quote: |
| I think that's getting into semantics. Do we need to check off criteria to determine that it is? Maybe we can say it's 'on one edge of the spectrum' in terms of art games. But then, I actually am not too educated on the topic. Can you briefly give me some comparisons, or some references so that I can understand this more thoroughly? What, to you, is "more" of an art game? |
I didn't mean to say it doesn't successfully fit some idealized definition of an "art game." I just meant that it's not really as deep or interesting as many make it out to be. That is to say, if a game is going to sacrifice the typical features of formula games - intricate mechanics, thrills, chills, shills - for the sake of meaning, it better have enough meaning to make up for the lack. I'm not sure Gravitation does.
Or to put it another way, Ico does Gravitation better than Gravitation, and it did it years ago.
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Koji
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 6:29 pm |
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Um, I just want to say that the pongism manifesto is definitely tongue-in-cheek, so stop taking it seriously. I mean, I don't know ajutla at all, but I can't imagine anyone being serious when saying this:
| Pongism manifesto wrote: |
| And, so, of course: Pong is sex.. |
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Schwere Viper
Joined: 14 Feb 2007
Location: Western Australia
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 3:54 pm |
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A man is at home, playing with his daughter, looking up at the stars. He wants to touch them, and this builds up in him slowly, but when he plays with his daughter he wants to get them even more, so that his daughter can touch them too. He jumps up high and reaches for them, even gets a few, but eventually has to come back down. Not just because of gravity, but because he has a home and a daughter to take care of. So again and again, he works up the motivation to get more stars, each time having to go higher and higher.
But one time when he comes down, his daughter is gone. She's left home, off to chase the stars by herself. While the man still slowly gets enough motivation to chase after the stars again, it doesn't happen nearly as fast enough as when he could play with his darling daughter. Eventually, whether he has to or he just can't muster enough motivation anymore, he stops chasing.
Basically, the impression it left on me was a mix between "and the cat's in the cradle with the silver spoon" and "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."
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parkbench
Joined: 12 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 8:04 pm |
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| Because certain aspects of "normal life" are abstracted in certain ways, it's unavoidable that only a certain class of goals will be available to the player. He's stacking the deck but then saying that players can play any hand they want. |
But I think in this sense abstraction doesn't need to justify itself. Simply, by its nature of being an abstraction, it recognises that it is not fully and wholly representing x and in fact merely symbolically doing so--so any kinds of 'missing pieces' or inconsistencies merely come along with the nature of the process as an abstraction.
I mean, I can see where you can make a real critique of Wright in this regard but otherwise I think that's the whole strength of abstraction: perhaps Wright is a bit too sanguine in his promotion of the game, but I don't think what he's saying is really wrong. And I think the players recognise this as well.
See, with abstraction, there is an implicit contract between the player and the developer. When the developer makes Katamari or The Sims or what have you, they know the abstraction will give a certain kind of "fluid" freedom which is still, as you say, ultimately answerable to restrictions. When the player plays the game, they understand these limitations instinctively.
But the fallacy of "kitchen sink" games is that they hock their freedom in a way that's much more disingenuous and where the contract doesn't exist, so that when players play the game, the only feeling they can feel is estrangement and frustration when they realise that "everything" isn't possible, that only a certain matrix of things is possible. This was the fallacy too of Bioshock, in a different respect. So I'm kind of directly arguing against what you say here, I guess:
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| For all its flaws, Morrowind I feel is much more honest and therefore wide-open to new player interpretations. By being conscious in what it is allowing the player to do - and not to do - it can make sure the remaining, narrowed scope of the game is as robust and rewarding as possible. |
I guess you can say Wright is doing a similar thing by hocking the latitude of play with The Sims but I don't think it's the same thing; I think his claim is more justified because when people play The Sims they really don't look for or find holes the way they do when they play Morrowind, and any inconsistencies are glossed over because The Sims isn't about a mirror, it's about a fantasy.
(again, I'd be interested to hear you elaborate in this respect on Morrowind, as you seem to have a lot to say on it and I personally have very little experience with the game compared to The Sims)
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| But I don't think calling its dialogue on war "ridiculous" is very helpful. It's not any more ridiculous than, say, Blackhawk Down, and ten times more immersive. (I don't think its true brilliance shines through until you play on the hardest difficulty level, though.) |
Well, it's just that it has almost nothing to "say." It tries to counterbalance its insipid nature by shoving pensive quotes in between death--"yes, you're playing a war simulation but, war is bad, okay, so don't look at us!" It's kind of a cheap apology, and the whole situation of "zomg Middle East" is also kind of transparent. Then again, I didn't beat the game. Maybe this is my problem: I don't finish the games I talk about. :P
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I agree totally with this sentiment, but you've got to actually play Portal, because the WCC is blown way out of proportion to its merit. It's sort of a sick joke on emotional wrenching, rather than being emotionally wrenching. Amusing to be sure, interesting perhaps, but profound, I'm not willing to say. |
Well, perhaps, but if that sick joke taps into moral sensors moreso than sucking energy out of defenseless little girls, it's doing something right, isn't it?
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| If there are no incentives to develop better technology - if "art games" are the only games - then the artistic side of gaming will stagnate, too. |
But again I think I've established by this point that I'm not calling for this kind of utopia/dystopia. The incentives to build better technology are beyond absurd at this point, and the impetus is rarely creativity, it's business (obviously). Nvidia, Intel, etc. want you to buy bigger and better systems. At this point they're getting so desperate, I think, that the differences are no longer those astronomical leaps between HL1 and HL2, but really tiny steps that just feel...forced. Like this last gen of consoles, it feels like a bunch of execs got together and decided it was time for another 'quantum leap.' And because it's more artificial than natural (not that past gens were 'natural' but it's pretty obvious the leaps between older systems/hardware were more out of necessity than now), all we're getting is a series of games pawning their realism and their engines off on us in a neverending piss fight.
How is that interesting? Yes, interesting things could be done tangentially with the Crytek engine, or the Unreal 3 engine, sure, but my point is what's being done now and what's being pushed for is "blockbuster" formula. And it's expensive! It's not easy to make or use these things. There's a reason a lot of indie gaming sticks to 2D, pixel art, etc. There's still a lot to be done, even with old technology, and we're only just figuring that out. I think it's kind of theoretical to say 'well, we need the breakthroughs still.' We do, but if we are still mining technologies from a decade or two ago and coming up with interesting results, do we--or do artists, rather--need to keep up with the Crytek engine? Again...history of the avant-garde is less is more, is it not? When the Crytek engine is dead and gone, maybe we'll start seeing programmers with enough time to do something fun with it.
My point is that there's so much you can do with a simplistic engine that hasn't even been done yet that even just moving into 3D is a big step.
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I just meant that it's not really as deep or interesting as many make it out to be. That is to say, if a game is going to sacrifice the typical features of formula games - intricate mechanics, thrills, chills, shills - for the sake of meaning, it better have enough meaning to make up for the lack. I'm not sure Gravitation does.
Or to put it another way, Ico does Gravitation better than Gravitation, and it did it years ago. |
Well, maybe. But while I think the message is profound in one sense, simultaneously I think it's incredibly simple. And like I said I think the mistake of a lot of art analysis is to assume that there's something complex going on, when it's really just conveying something simple and bittersweet. Maybe I like Ico better than Gravitation, but can I play Ico in 8 minutes? Different routes to the same thing, I guess.
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Chris B
Joined: 06 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Fri Mar 21, 2008 1:22 am |
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@parkbench
Regarding the Morrowind & Sims comparison, I guess that they're both aiming for different goals i.e. while the former strives for immersion, the main draw of The Sims seems to be to evoke empathy. Both the "kitchen sink" and the more abstract approach seem feasible and right to me for their respective intentions.
At the end I think that both are still relatively impartial and amoral playgrounds, but that may be cause I found myself more concerned with resource management than deep moral decisions in both titles, most of the time. Of course it all depends on what the player invests into those simulations.
| parkbench wrote: |
| A game like Gravitation trusts the player and doesn't subscribe to the triple-A industry model of holding the player's hand. It's a terrifying thought for most people and it's one that's met with not a little trepidation and anxiety. But I think it's something that needs to be done, and if we look at games that have done this in the past, like say, Ico (perhaps not the best example? somebody help me out here), we can come to realise how this irregular evolutionary path has been hobbling along for the past few years. |
I fully agree and I also see great untapped potential in this regard.
Up til now, handing over authorship and trusting the player is mostly done in toy- and sandbox-titles and almost always relies more on spatial than social reasoning.
I do like to bring up an example how social reasoning might arise out of interaction with such a toy, namely how "Magnavox Odyssey Tennis" hands over a layer of social responsibilty to players, which is usually taken care of for them in videogames.
The game isn't keeping track of any scores whatsoever and doesn't even tell you if a ball was in/out, therefore it has to be judged by players and consensual decisions have to be found. Of course all of this was born out of hardware limitations, but I think it's interesting to see how this absence can elevate and enrich the experience in this example.
I'd also like to drop the more recent name "Wii Sports", which does an imo pretty admirable job at reaching beyond the confinements of its mere onscreen representation, through encouraging experimentation and actively engaging and carrying away not only the player, but also bystanders with its highly kinesthetic form of play. The game's almost universal appeal is of course also maximized through its most abstract representation (not only giving players abstract avatars, but a toolset to create abstractions of themselves).
PS: I do have a question: how does Ico trust the player? (never played it, yea I know I'm missing out)
By leaving out stuff (silent protagonists) and letting the player fill in the blanks? |
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