Study: First-person shooter cutscenes aren't engaging enough

GEARS OF WAR ISN'T A FIRST PERSON SHOOTER!!!

IT'S A THIRD PERSON SHOOTER!!!

Blah blah blah, I don't want my spoiler to appear in the bottom of the main page article. Filler text. Cocks.

[Also spoiler]

I was also really creeped out by the cutscene in COD4 where you're the dignitary being driven through the streets, about to be executed. Pangloss' comment about cutscenes using first-person perspective reminded me of this.

Seeing all the cheering dudes shooting off their AK-47s as I was being led to my death was kinda frightening. That entire scene was handled brilliantly, down to the last moments.

Although I hated dying every 5 seconds in the multiplayer, hell of a game.

Mirror's Edge did it great.

I've read the article, and it makes salient points, but there's also the question of how much we can trust biometric data. Does engaging = fun? What should developers be willing to give up for the sake of physiological "engagement"? Should we start to sacrifice forms of storytelling because they're less "engaging" than in-your-face action sequences? Let's take Resistance against Resistance 2 for example. Going by the critical reception, Resistance 2 got a pretty hard panning for abandoning its previous method of narration, from the voice of that lieutenant to more cinematic cutscenes of Hale himself. The latter should have been more "engaging" shouldn't it?

CoD4 does an excellent job of containing all of the potential "highs" and "lows" of what the researchers seemed to be looking for, but some of its most "engaging" scenes for me were ones that, according to the study, would not have worked. The oft-mentioned gunship sequence, some of the sniper stages, etc.

Char keeps talking about the "cutscenes" in CoD4, but they weren't really cutscenes. You could move or at least look around, keeping the player in the mindset that "I am in control" and keeping them in the game. The fact that you're completely helpless adds to the immersion and engagement.

But when all else fails, developers, just copy Valve.

Watching a game isn't as involving as playing a game. Plain and simple.

@Slick Icarus II: Exactly if only everyone else had the sense to figure that out this wouldn't even be a story.

Serious half of what it says can be (should be) common sense. I can tell you that if someone got in my face with a knife its going to be a lot more intense then some dude I can't see shooting and missing me.

Dddduuuurrrrr....

Sure, much of this is common sense for you and me, but why then do game developers continue to make the same mistakes time and time again?

is this as retarded as i think?

yes, your brain is not as active while watching a cutscene b/c they are not interactive. i mean... someone got paid to study this? jeesus.

@pangloss

Great games can combine both great writing and still engage, but resources are inarguably finite. Not everything can be spread equally. Gears is incredibly engaging, but on the flip side, we have "more like ten sh*tloads, Dom". Not very "engaging" writing.

Simply keeping everyone "engaged" in a physiological sense is fine, but I'd also like for that level of engagement to come without compromising other aspects of the design.

I'd also caution against applying this logic to genres of gameplay that don't necessarily need to be more "engaging". Games like, say, Final Fantasy Tactics or Baldur's Gate would fail a test like this on every level, so the context is extremely important to remember.

its common now for rts games to have cutscenes stories. and imo its more engaging than fps story cutscenes. playing fps games gives me a headache all the time and the story and even the nice cutscenes dont even help.

Why isn't this a Captain Obvious article?

"WHERE'S MY WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIFE?" (Gears of Awesome) is the first thing I saw when I saw the bit about Gears of War in this article. Gears is definitely entertaining, but emotionally and intellectually stimulating it is not.

I've never had a problem is cutscenes in games. It generally helps to tell the story better (excluding pretty much all Valve games), and gives the player a brief restbite from play. There are also a lot of things that can only be done via traditional cutscenes that simply wouldn't work the same if the player maintained control.

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