Screwtape
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: Sydney, Australia
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 Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 10:40 am Post subject: Re: "Messiah" games or -- the whole industry is br |
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First: I like your post, it was well-written and contained some interesting and juicy ideas. I don't think I can contribute usefully to the discussion as a whole, but I just wanted to comment on this bit:
| Broco wrote: |
| I say I want sophisticated games, but I'm not even really sure what I mean by that. I don't have a implementable, detailed game concept that would qualify, nor have I ever seen one. It's clear that games are not-so-great, but it's not so clear how we can do better. |
When you feel you're stuck in a rut, and feel that Things Should Be Different, I've always found that getting up and trying stuff is a pretty good place to start. Even if most of the things you try wind up being crap, or disappointingly derivative, at least they broaden the experience base and even slight differences might inspire somebody else to come up with something great.
Actually, now that i think about it, it would be interesting to look at this problem from the other end: not 'how can we make a game that's different from existing games', but 'how different can something be from existing games, and still be a game?'.
For example, one of the defining attributes of "gameness" is interactivity - the game makes different things happen according to the player's actions. What does this mean for the expressiveness of gaming as a medium? If everything that happens is ultimately caused by the player then gaming is a far more personal experience than any other medium. Ideas that sophisticated works in other media can tackle easily (say, 'it's tragic when people become slaves to nostalgia') become unworkably offensive in a game when the player's implicit responsibilty is attached ('you're a tragic slave to nostalgia'). Thus, I would expect that even the most sophisticated games are doomed to reasonably simple ideas, because either the player's actions produce reasonably positive consequences, or the game is doomed to sell exactly as many copies as there are avant-garde video-game exhibitions running at any given time.
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私はガラスを食べられます。それは私を傷つけません。 |
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