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David Lean didn't put a glowing arrow over Omar Sharif's head to mark his character's entrance in Lawrence Of Arabia, he subtly constructed the image to draw the viewer's eye to a certain point on the horizon. Assassin's Creed, on the other hand, lays down glowing cones of light to guide/force the player along a certain path, rather than finding a more appropriate method of direction.
And yet, as we've seen with Half Life 2 (perfect example being the start of Red Letter Day), without pointers players are unrehersed actors who enter a scripted stage, improvising and breaking immersion if they stand on someone's pre-determined path.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game did a pretty good job of creating a character that let you bumble around, but left you a break in a group huddle or line-up, if you wished to look like you were part of the equation.
At the end of the day, sure, games have a tough time emulating cinema (God knows I toot that horn, often enough), but you have to remember that games are games first, movies second. There's no point comparing Lawrence of Arabia to Assassin's Creed because it's like apples to oranges.
Also, gamers are somewhat atuned to the screen differently to those of the passive gaze. They're constantly being engaged, need clear direction, need to interact. It's a different beast to the hand-off, continual, mental processing of scenes and mis-en-scene.
And yet, as we've seen with Half Life 2 (perfect example being the start of Red Letter Day), without pointers players are unrehersed actors who enter a scripted stage, improvising and breaking immersion if they stand on someone's pre-determined path.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game did a pretty good job of creating a character that let you bumble around, but left you a break in a group huddle or line-up, if you wished to look like you were part of the equation.
At the end of the day, sure, games have a tough time emulating cinema (God knows I toot that horn, often enough), but you have to remember that games are games first, movies second. There's no point comparing Lawrence of Arabia to Assassin's Creed because it's like apples to oranges.
Also, gamers are somewhat atuned to the screen differently to those of the passive gaze. They're constantly being engaged, need clear direction, need to interact. It's a different beast to the hand-off, continual, mental processing of scenes and mis-en-scene.
ohhhh... very nice! An excellent article! I think a lot of this is simply lazy design and it is taking awhile for some games to catch up with the tech that is now available to games. Games are now much, much bigger and have the ability now to create more comprhensive worlds. Often A.I. back chatter is able to provide information about the game's world and why some things are as they are... the books in Skyrim provided a similar function. Very tiny cutscenes (non intrusive) are also being used in some games that can provide this function. New ways of creating a more coherent world are certainly needed though!
As you point out, Lean's method would be almost impossible to pull off in a game due to the player's mobility. My argument was for games to develop their OWN unintrusive method of guidance for the player, rather than falling back on obnoxious red arrows and the like. The Lawrence Of Arabia example was to show how one visual medium has utilised its unique properties to develop such an elegant language of communication, and that games need to find its own distinctive way of doing so, without wrecking the integrity of the game world by taking shortcuts.
I absolutely agree that games should establish their own internal logic and run with it , that's what makes so that you can figure out and perform some of the more satisfying deductions on your own, without the dev taking shortcuts like using the huge arrow saying - HEY STUPID , HIT HERE! But it all depends on the game, if the challenge is to figure out where to hit the boss than this can feel cheep, just like the bossfight where after 10 seconds somebody calls you or screams to you on your radio- Hit his legs duude! If on the other hand the challenge is to traverse the enviroment to get to this point it can still feel legit to use these things.
Also a game like Cavestory , set in a nonsensical world I think always should be modeled after how fun it will be to traverse rather than after the logical requirement that all the villages citizens can fit in their own respective cottages. But if your goal is to immerse the player like say Skyrim , then logic plays a greater part because the moment you notice that the guards phases in and out trough walls you'll most probably laugh , and most probably be thrown out of the feeling immersion that the game wants you to feel.
Also a game like Cavestory , set in a nonsensical world I think always should be modeled after how fun it will be to traverse rather than after the logical requirement that all the villages citizens can fit in their own respective cottages. But if your goal is to immerse the player like say Skyrim , then logic plays a greater part because the moment you notice that the guards phases in and out trough walls you'll most probably laugh , and most probably be thrown out of the feeling immersion that the game wants you to feel.
I'm about 50/50 on this topic. Sometimes I hate invisible walls, illogical fetch quests, characters that repeat the same lines of dialogue repetedly etc. Other times these archaic design choices make a game more enjoyable, I love it when a game screams out that it's a game sometimes. For instance No More Heroes is a game where many of it's technical faults actually made the game better. I guess it depends on what kind of game you're trying to make, and how you implement a certain thing. When it's an immersion breaking thing that could have easily been worked around, then it's an irritant, but when it's done to make game play more fun/less frustrating than it's beneficial.
Also I've been reading some of your past blogs, your writing is fantastic.
Also I've been reading some of your past blogs, your writing is fantastic.
Thanks for the comments and faps, everyone!
@Elsa: A.I. chatter is a terrific example of a way to communicate with the player without breaking the illusion of the experience.
@Loic Jacobs: You know it, brah.
@Beyamor: I wish I could frequent the CBlogs more often, and write stuff exclusively for you guys like I used to... unfortunately I set myself way too much work recently so am trying to work through it all. Hopefully soon I'll be able to become a more regular contributor to the CBlog community again! Thanks also for any visits you have paid to my other blog, hope you enjoyed it!
@Kaggen / Scissors: I agree with much of what you both said. More abstract or stylised game spaces need not worry so much about avoiding the design shortcuts that irritate in games aiming for a more 'realistic' vision. As Scissors said, NMH (one of my all-time fave games) is a space designed to be inherently 'gamey', informing the meta nature of the action, so having ridiculous markers becomes part of the game's logic, rather than breaking it. I haven't played much Cave Story, but as a retro-styled platformer, it can get away with almost anything so long as its basic rules are reasonably consistent (e.g. the physics don't randomly change, or something). My post was more specifically considering the lack of internal logic underpinning games which try to create big, three-dimensional worlds in a pseudo-realist visual style. Arguably rules are more important to a fantasy genre than any other, because buying into the fantasy involves believing in its world as a real place. Hope that makes some kind of sense...
@Elsa: A.I. chatter is a terrific example of a way to communicate with the player without breaking the illusion of the experience.
@Loic Jacobs: You know it, brah.
@Beyamor: I wish I could frequent the CBlogs more often, and write stuff exclusively for you guys like I used to... unfortunately I set myself way too much work recently so am trying to work through it all. Hopefully soon I'll be able to become a more regular contributor to the CBlog community again! Thanks also for any visits you have paid to my other blog, hope you enjoyed it!
@Kaggen / Scissors: I agree with much of what you both said. More abstract or stylised game spaces need not worry so much about avoiding the design shortcuts that irritate in games aiming for a more 'realistic' vision. As Scissors said, NMH (one of my all-time fave games) is a space designed to be inherently 'gamey', informing the meta nature of the action, so having ridiculous markers becomes part of the game's logic, rather than breaking it. I haven't played much Cave Story, but as a retro-styled platformer, it can get away with almost anything so long as its basic rules are reasonably consistent (e.g. the physics don't randomly change, or something). My post was more specifically considering the lack of internal logic underpinning games which try to create big, three-dimensional worlds in a pseudo-realist visual style. Arguably rules are more important to a fantasy genre than any other, because buying into the fantasy involves believing in its world as a real place. Hope that makes some kind of sense...
Oh man, Skyrim breaks all logic that is contained within the lore. The vampires are a great example. They almost identical to the ones in Oblivion yet the lore distinctly says that Oblivion's vampires are the ONLY ones capable of hiding in broad daylight among humans due to their disguise. The ones in Skyrim live under frozen bodies of water and can reach through solid ice to grab foes and are supposed to be monstrous. The disease is even called a different strain yet it produces similar results. Bethesda has been getting bad with this kind of thing.
Werebears are the most common type of Lycanthrope(Manbeasts or Were___s) in Skyrim but can apparently be warded off by rubbing Canis root on trees. So instead of putting in Werebears, Bethesda put in a bunch of Canis roots everywhere. Hmm, monster capable of ripping men in half or near useless alchemic ingredient? I guess they thought roots were cooler than bearmen.
I just wish they would pay attention to the lore that already has been clearly established as one way instead of modifying everything for ease of use. Hell, they could have still put in both types of vampires and the root with Werebears. Then there would be a real reason for everything. I could use the root to keep bears out of my hair and why would the vampires in Cyrodiil not move elsewhere like to Skyrim? My point is if you look at the Elder Scrolls series, you see with each passing game they remove yet a little more variety, until you come all the way to the bottom with Skyrim. I fear for TES VI: Whereverland because wherever they take it to, they will ignore almost all of the awesome minor details. Devs seem to enjoy removing some of the best features in their series and replacing them with half-assed remixes of the previous features. I might be a bit harsh when it comes to quality but I know I am not the only one who has complaints to make. I apologize if this is too ranty of a comment so I'll leave this.
TLDR: Skyrim is 1/2 of Oblivion, Oblivion is 1/2 of Morrowind, Morrowind is 1/2 of Daggerfall, Daggerfall is 1/2 of Arena.
Or rather, my favorite quote, " Morrowind was a better GAME to play, but Oblivion was a better game to PLAY."
Werebears are the most common type of Lycanthrope(Manbeasts or Were___s) in Skyrim but can apparently be warded off by rubbing Canis root on trees. So instead of putting in Werebears, Bethesda put in a bunch of Canis roots everywhere. Hmm, monster capable of ripping men in half or near useless alchemic ingredient? I guess they thought roots were cooler than bearmen.
I just wish they would pay attention to the lore that already has been clearly established as one way instead of modifying everything for ease of use. Hell, they could have still put in both types of vampires and the root with Werebears. Then there would be a real reason for everything. I could use the root to keep bears out of my hair and why would the vampires in Cyrodiil not move elsewhere like to Skyrim? My point is if you look at the Elder Scrolls series, you see with each passing game they remove yet a little more variety, until you come all the way to the bottom with Skyrim. I fear for TES VI: Whereverland because wherever they take it to, they will ignore almost all of the awesome minor details. Devs seem to enjoy removing some of the best features in their series and replacing them with half-assed remixes of the previous features. I might be a bit harsh when it comes to quality but I know I am not the only one who has complaints to make. I apologize if this is too ranty of a comment so I'll leave this.
TLDR: Skyrim is 1/2 of Oblivion, Oblivion is 1/2 of Morrowind, Morrowind is 1/2 of Daggerfall, Daggerfall is 1/2 of Arena.
Or rather, my favorite quote, " Morrowind was a better GAME to play, but Oblivion was a better game to PLAY."
To a point I agree, but in another sense I would argue that video games, in many cases, are all but required to toss logic out the window in order to remain both practical to produce and fun to play. To branch out a bit from your comments on castle architecture, one simple example I'd use is the frequent absence of bathrooms in game environments, especially in "fantasy" settings - in real life people need a place to take care of business, so you'll often hear jokes about how RPG characters in particular are constantly on a grand quest just to find a place to relieve themselves. So yes, putting bathrooms of some sort into a house/castle/whatever will, almost by definition, make it more "believable".
Two things I'd point out: one, those bathrooms (especially "believable" ones) don't create themselves, but require time and resources on the part of the developer to bring into being (especially if every location in town has to have several of them, as would likely be the case in reality). The same, of course, goes for any other aspect of a game - I think it's safe to say that, for the greatest odds of success, a developer must start, above all else, with a concept of how a game should play and then builds a world around it, rather than awkwardly shoehorning a game (or, tragically, a "game") into a preconceived world. Making both ends of the equation work is time-consuming and difficult even before you take into account the realities of publisher demands, time constraints, personal creative limitations and budget strings.
Second, how many games do you play (or, perhaps more to the point, would you even WANT to play) which make going to the bathroom a major part of the experience? Yes, in real life it's something you have to do pretty frequently, but when you boot up a game chances are it isn't something you want tagging along with you for the ride. Granted, it'd "make sense" from a practical point of view for characters to have to heed nature's call on a regular basis, but can you imagine how cumbersome that would be in almost any circumstances from a "solely game-focused" perspective? Basically, even if you discount the developer effort needed to create them, there's simply not enough NEED for them to justify their existence in the first place, unless you're absolutely obsessed with "realism" or the like.
As I said, I do concur with you up to a point (being able to figure things out "logically" without a tutorial or big flashing arrow is definitely something I'd like to see more of), but I would add that in its own way a more "believable" approach to game design can be just as alienating to the player as a more "traditional" one.
Two things I'd point out: one, those bathrooms (especially "believable" ones) don't create themselves, but require time and resources on the part of the developer to bring into being (especially if every location in town has to have several of them, as would likely be the case in reality). The same, of course, goes for any other aspect of a game - I think it's safe to say that, for the greatest odds of success, a developer must start, above all else, with a concept of how a game should play and then builds a world around it, rather than awkwardly shoehorning a game (or, tragically, a "game") into a preconceived world. Making both ends of the equation work is time-consuming and difficult even before you take into account the realities of publisher demands, time constraints, personal creative limitations and budget strings.
Second, how many games do you play (or, perhaps more to the point, would you even WANT to play) which make going to the bathroom a major part of the experience? Yes, in real life it's something you have to do pretty frequently, but when you boot up a game chances are it isn't something you want tagging along with you for the ride. Granted, it'd "make sense" from a practical point of view for characters to have to heed nature's call on a regular basis, but can you imagine how cumbersome that would be in almost any circumstances from a "solely game-focused" perspective? Basically, even if you discount the developer effort needed to create them, there's simply not enough NEED for them to justify their existence in the first place, unless you're absolutely obsessed with "realism" or the like.
As I said, I do concur with you up to a point (being able to figure things out "logically" without a tutorial or big flashing arrow is definitely something I'd like to see more of), but I would add that in its own way a more "believable" approach to game design can be just as alienating to the player as a more "traditional" one.
