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I like how the characters look like the actors, i recognized 5 or 6 of them. Is that the way of the future in games? And movies like Beowulf? Some older actors might love that.
The game looks a little boring just based of this trailer though.
The National Endowment for the Arts now considers video games to be art. Link.
look boring now beldar?
This entire debate is dumb. Every single person here is a bag of meat that is going to stop existing very, very soon, and nothing they do or say will matter even a tiny little bit in the cosmic sense once the sun blows up. And yet, people have gotten legitimately angry over defining art, which is basically anything that gives you, personally, as an individual, an artful experience.
Are you moved by the Lord of the Rings films? Well, Penn Gillette thinks they're escapist bullshit for morons, and while he's in my top ten favorite people of all time, I'm still very emotionally moved by those movies. At the same time, I think anyone who claims to enjoy 500 dollar wine more than 50 dollar wine is a liar, but there are people who have committed their lives to the craft of winemaking and it is very much art to them.
Some people play video games and enjoy them very much, and never get a sense of art out of them. Some people never play video games, but can look at Niko Bellic flying a helicoptor over Liberty City as the sun sets and say "yep, that's art." It comes down to whether you experience them as art or not. Arguing with someone that they need to play Shadow of the Colossus or Morrowind or Half Life 2 or whatever isn't going to help, if they aren't gamers then all three of those games are going to frustrate them. If you get an artful experience out of those games, play them, enjoy them, observe them, study them, write about them, do whatever that art compels you to do in response to it. But unless you'd appreciate someone dragging you to modern art exhibit and forcing you to stare at a dyed-red Q-Tip stuck inside a lump of soap, with several steel flies suspended from fishing wire all around it... don't try to make someone else get the same experience out of it you do.
It's personal. And it's kind of dumb. And it's not going to matter when the sun blows up- which is kind of the reason our species does art to begin with, because it gives us something else to think about.
+2
People have been talking about Mass Effect 3 a lot because the ending apparently sucks (lawl) and this is the closest thing to a thread there is about the subject of video games and I didn't want to throw it into the video thread and I didn't want to make a new thread, but this is a forum on the internet and gosh darn it all to heck, I have opinions that need to be voiced!
Mass Effect 3's ending and other stuff:
If it were 1995, no one would be complaining about the ending of ME3 at all, because back then gaming was about playing a game and not about being told a story. You didn't care at all about rescuing the princess or defeating the badguy. Gaming in the 80's and 90's was about you, as a player, accomplishing a goal and making it to the end screen of the game. There are precious few games today that do that. Most of them now are about telling a story, but games as a medium don't really support that. The medium has stagnated as a result because they're no longer looking for gameplay mechanics, they're looking for story-telling mechanics and actively removing gameplay.
Now most big-name games are a series of scripted sequences that are only marginally interactive, full-on cutscenes that are totally non-interactive and the games actively and constantly tell you where you should be going and what to do when you get there. They allow you as a player a certain small level of freedom, but they do not trust you to be able to get on with the business of playing the game, so they constantly remind you of things that shouldn't need reminding with big flashing arrows or explicitly stating "go here and do this".
The fact that the ending of this game is getting people so upset should be an indication of how far off the rails (or how utterly and completely on the rails, i guess...) gaming has gotten. However, I don't want to come off as one of those people who says "Things were better back in my day". I think there's a place for games that tell stories, and if people just want to play adventure games all the time, then that's fine. So long as they actually are games.
There was a gameplay video on Mass Effect 3 before it came out where you as the main character were running toward some giant alien ship thing and stuff's exploding all around you and you're being shot at and it looks fucking epic and amazing. It's not, tho. That's all scripted. The game will keep nearly hitting you with an explosion or a laser blast, and it might actually hit you if you stand still for long enough, and it might hit you and make it look like you're barely making it, but you are making it and you will make it. It's the same sort of crap you see in watered-down big budget action movies. There's no tension at all. There's no skill necessary. All you have to do is keep moving and watch the pretty lights. ME3 isn't nearly the first game to do this. This has become standard practice in a lot of games. There's a video of a guy playing through the first level of one of the CoD games on 'hard' difficulty and never firing a shot. The game literally played itself. All he had to do was follow the big flashing arrow.
Here it is:
This is what videogames are now. At this point, in my opinion, these are no longer games. Calling them games is wrong. You can call them "interactive entertainment" because they are that - barely - but they are no longer games.
And it doesn't even really matter to me, except that these games are the ones that sell 10 million copies and win 'game of the year' awards and shit. And this is the part where you might think "well, indie games are better, you should play indie games", but no. Indie games are usually just as bad. One gimmick exploited through a dozen levels. Overly simplified mechanics - there's a 'one button' game movement - ironic use of pixel art by people who shouldn't be making pixel art and most of the time the games themselves are just deconstructions or parodies of established videogame 'tropes'. And that's the just the guys that the indie fanboys all drool over. Most of the indie game devs are copycat sellouts trying to exploit the casual market by rehashing old games or talking some popular game, changing the graphics and renaming it. Even the better indie devs have started shurning out garbage for the most part. They'll take a good idea and dumb it down to 'play it for five minutes on your iPhone' levels of stupid.
Gaming as a whole has utterly failed, and yet it's THE creative industry in the US. Games make more money every year than movies do. At least hollywood releases a lot of decent movies every year to balance out with all the Transformers and Battleships. Games are 49% Transformers, 49% The Zookeeper and 2% actual games made by people who want to use their brain when they play a game or be challenged in some way.
This rant is coming from a guy who has effectively quit playing games, tho. I had a 360, but it did nothing but piss me off so I got rid of it. I have a PS2, but I only ever play a half dozen or so games on it. I get more use out of my NES and PSX than I do any of my other consoles, but most of my game playing is either late 80's PC games or stuff like Dwarf Fortress.
Frankly, I find the idea of people being upset about the plot of a videogame kinda laughable. There have been a few videogames that I will readily admit have had amazing stories that were very well told - for a videogame - and I have watched playthroughs of people playing the first ME and various other modern games and no.
No!
The double standard is amazing. If they made a movie out of most any modern game that had the same sort of story and dialogue people would roast it as a campy, poorly written, poorly acted, cliche pile of crap. And yet the story is often the big selling point of a game. At least, I assume the story is the selling point. The gameplay obviously isn't, cause there's nothing there to play half the time. I absolutely do not understand this at all. Why is this shit selling millions of copies?
I don't know why I'm having a rant like this except that I love games and I would love to make them, and maybe I'll get back into coding so I can take another shot at them, but games could be so much better. You can do amazing things with a video game that you can't do with any other medium, and those aspects of gaming are not only being ignored, they're being actively removed from games by the developers in an effort to make the experience of playing a game as sterile and generic as possible. Big games have become so long and expensive to make that they need to be positive that every player will have the best possible 'experience', so they script every little thing.
Even something like Skyrim or GTA4. You have a massive open world to explore, but as soon as you step into that big flashing mission circle the game plants you one some rails and gives you a scripted experience that will be largely the same for anyone who plays the game. You could skip some missions if you wanted to. You could play all of them. You could take a different route from point A to point B, but your experience with that game will be the same as most other players' experience.
Which means those games are basically Super Mario 3 on the NES. Only Skyrim has fewer enemy types and isn't challenging in the slightest.
I really had to get that out. The videogame industry pisses me off so much, and I can't go ten minutes without stumbling over someone bitching about ME3 or calling Skyrim the best game ever. I want to slap people sometimes.
You've played mass effect 1, 2, and 3? If not lets try this. That film is crap because although i've not seen it, I've seen crap films therefore that's also a crap film.
This reply isn't designed to be antagonistic, I just believe you're potentially coming to the argument with limited frame of reference. Games are designed to be experienced, not simply observed. Watching a play through on YouTube does not equate to an emotional investment in a character, story, or experience.
There are lots of awful shallow games with large budgets, but by the same token if we use Transformers as an example, film isn't art either.
Last edited by Dave (2012-04-16 08:29:24)
The game literally played itself. All he had to do was follow the big flashing arrow.
Except it didn't play itself. He moved the character through every section of one level (playing it like a complete doucebag in the process). Note, an experience you're unlikely to replicate with the rest of the game. It's the equivalent of moving Mario through a level and jumping over all the enemies, getting to the end and calling it crap. True, it worked but you didn't really play the game.
How about you watch someone play the game properly? You'll then see how different it is.
I won't even go into how the Call of Duty games are primarily multiplayer games, which is about as pure gameplay as you can possibly get.
Even something like Skyrim or GTA4. You have a massive open world to explore, but as soon as you step into that big flashing mission circle the game plants you one some rails and gives you a scripted experience that will be largely the same for anyone who plays the game. You could skip some missions if you wanted to. You could play all of them. You could take a different route from point A to point B, but your experience with that game will be the same as most other players' experience.
I'm not really sure what you're expecting with regards to gameplay, perhaps you have unrealistic expectations of putting on some VR goggles and living an untethered second life. Games which feature going from point A to point B have always been scripted. It's just that now the scripting is usually more elaborate (and you're noticing it more). You're kidding yourself if you think your NES and PSX games aren't scripted and have you on rails in some form (curious to hear what would be your ideal games from this era). Any game with AI requires scripting and is a controlled experience. It's just the degree of control that changes, widening or narrowing depending really on the genre. A strategy game like Total War or Civilisation is going to be less controlled than an FPS game for instance, as the former's scope allows more variables to be included. More variables means more combinations and outcomes. Walking down a corridor with bad guys at the end shooting at you only has so many variables and outcomes, so of course, it's going to look or feel generic. So it's then the experience that's going to make it less generic and more memorable, hence the need for storytelling to drive you emotionally forwards and for scripted and partially-scripted mini-events to make it as exciting as possible.
Another thing is that games now aren't necessarily designed to be replayed over and over. There are more games coming around the corner, so the argument goes 'why would you want to replay it again?' With that sort of reasoning, why not aim to control that first playthrough so it's a great experience showing you the best of everything. Why risk players going through your game and not discovering or experiencing the best elements that you designed?
I'd argue that Skyrim is a really poor example to use here as experiences are in fact so different person to person. Talking to my friends, it sometimes feels like we're playing different games entirely. Kinda shocked you'd call on this, which to me indicates that you've perhaps not played it either.
Personally, the introduction of storytelling into games has been the best thing that happened to it. Pong or Pac-man isn't an engaging experience in the slightest. There's a reason why Half Life is so reverently remembered and it has little to do with you shooting creatures. It was the first time a popular FPS game truly aimed at engaging you on a narrative level.
I own an Xbox. I also own a grand total of (I think) five games for that Xbox.
I own the first two Assassin's Creed games. The second one, at least, has more replay value than any other game I have ever played. Why? Because even after you beat the main story, you can spend hours and hours running around the various cities, climbing walls and doing flips off buildings, killing enemies in a variety of original ways. I love the main story, but I have more fun doing this than I do playing missions. The story and the characters are far from the most important part of the game to me. The aspect of the game that I like best is the aspect that I have the most control over, with the least interference from the game itself.
I also own Modern Warfare 2. Like a dutiful player, I beat the single-player campaign before moving on to the multiplayer. Here's an example of a game that doesn't even try to get me invested in a story. When you buy this game, you are buying the multiplayer experience. This is probably the worst game that I own, but I still have a lot of fun playing multiplayer. Yes, it's frustrating, and yes there are a lot of obnoxious douchebags to play against, but at the end of the day, I remember the moments where I succeeded, not where I failed. That's what Call of Duty is good at: making the player feel good about their ability. Unfortunately, this comes with a hefty price tag; the game is dumber than a bag of hammers.
And then there's my favorite game of all time: Portal 2. I can't count the number of times that I have played through this game. Dozens, likely. I know exactly where every portal goes for every single puzzle in the game. But I'm not playing through for the plot. I'm playing for the experience. I love being in that world, running through those hallways, interacting with those characters. I like thinking with portals.
My point is this: Story in games is a pointless exercise. Yes, it can be done with great success. But I believe that you should focus more on making your game fun to play than on telling a worthwhile story. A game with too much of the latter and not enough of the former is worthless as a game. "Yeah, i get that you put a lot of work into the complexities of this plot, but where's the part where I get to play the game?"
My point is this: Story in games is a pointless exercise. Yes, it can be done with great success. But I believe that you should focus more on making your game fun to play than on telling a worthwhile story. A game with too much of the latter and not enough of the former is worthless as a game. "Yeah, i get that you put a lot of work into the complexities of this plot, but where's the part where I get to play the game?"
This is how I feel. Of modern video games, which I don't really play ever, Portal and Guitar Hero are the ones I look at and go "yup, that looks fuckin' fun."
My point is this: Story in movies is a pointless exercise. Yes, it can be done with great success. But I believe that you should focus more on making your movie fun to watch than on telling a worthwhile story.
Hello, the attitude behind why TRANSFORMERS movies keep getting made.
Obviously a game should be fun. But the idea that fun and story are mutually exclusive is nonsensical.
I'm still not the guy to talk, because I'm not really invested in the argument and don't play games, but I'm having trouble imagining a story-telling game that doesn't require non-player cut scenes to, you know, tell the story.
Unless it's a choose-your-own-adventure thing entirely, like a tabletop RPG with a GM, how can you "play" through a story? Play is inventive, story is didactic. They don't seem to gel. From what I understand (probably wrong), even war story games are basically "[thing happens in non-playing mode] shoot for a while [thing happens in non-playing mode] shoot for a while," etc.. That doesn't make this game a "story game" and Doom "not a story game," it just makes it Doom where they've cut in a movie between levels. Or more specifically, it makes Doom a game where they didn't do that. Right?
Even Portal, which again, also gets the "from what I understand" label, is basically a cool game mechanic that you fuck with on harder and harder levels as they drip a story on you in details peripherally. The details are really fun, and I love that song, but assuming I'm right about that (whether or not I am, but for the conversation to ensue), can you really call that a "story game?" Some large fraction of what people like about Portal, as Doc said, is just fucking with portals. GLADoS and all that makes for a cool backdrop, but it's a setting. Right? It's a setting that explains why you have a portal gun.
= story?
The question in the beginning of the thread boils down to how you define art. The question for me now is, how you define story.
It seems like you can have a story, and you can have a game, but you can't have both. If it's a game where the story is locked down and gonna happen the way it's gonna happen - you know, like a story - that means whatever pre-programmed activity you're doing to get to the next plot point isn't much of a game. It's just an activity. Meanwhile, if it's a game that you're playing, you should have significant - if not total - control of the outcome, and bring strategy and invention to the table to eventually win. Otherwise it's tic-tac-toe. The base requirements of a story, and the base requirements of a game, seem to sort of exclude each other.
I don't know what to do with that except to say that there are games which tell a story without any or with very few cutscenes. Portal is one, Bioshock another. So your argument would be valid if it were true, but it's not. So it's not. It's okay not to have an opinion if you don't have information.
It seems like you can have a story, and you can have a game, but you can't have both. If it's a game where the story is locked down and gonna happen the way it's gonna happen - you know, like a story - that means whatever pre-programmed activity you're doing to get to the next plot point isn't much of a game. It's just an activity.
According to this definition, nothing that can be considered a "game" has ever existed. Every game has a set outcome that you either achieve by winning or fail to achieve by losing. What's the difference if the outcome is "I didn't fall in any of the holes and defeated Bowser" (Mario) or "I ate all the pills" (Pac-Man) versus "I completed the plotline by accomplishing a similar set of tasks as I would have accomplished in a game with no plotline"?
How does the storytelling in Portal work?
EDIT: To clarify. I know how the story telling in a movie works. And I know Portal is awesome, so I'm the most curious about that one as an example. I just don't know literally how the story is conveyed to you.
I don't even understand the question. It works like storytelling. Things happen and they cause the next things to happen and the things eventually culminate in a final thing happening and then no more things happen.
EDIT: Well, it's like you said, it comes in drips and drabs through stuff you see in the environment and stuff you hear said to you by other characters, either directly or through recordings. It's cleverly written and much of it takes place in subtext, and at each stage once you've accomplished a goal it drives you toward another goal within the context of a plot.
What's the difference if the outcome is "I didn't fall in any of the holes and defeated Bowser" (Mario) or "I ate all the pills" (Pac-Man) versus "I completed the plotline by accomplishing a similar set of tasks as I would have accomplished in a game with no plotline"?
Because the story of Super Mario or Pac-Man isn't why you play the game. You're not exactly tied up in the Marioland politics of power between Bowser and Mario and how the Princess got involved and all that. You're just trying to not to die, for fun.
I guess what I'm feeling is, sure, you could add enough story to sort of explain the politics of power in Marioland and why Mario gives a shit and how the fireballs work, but... that's not why you play the game. It's just fun to do, like a sport.
*shrug*
I'm not anti-plotline or anything, it just seems like if a game (obviously this does not apply to Portal) has to add in scenes from another medium entirely just to be able to say it's a story, that doesn't seem... fair, I guess. Fair to say "this game has a great story." What would be fair is to say "the stuff you don't play in this game has a great story." Am I making sense at all?
Maybe I need to broaden my definition of "story," to include what Portal does. I guess "story" applies to that. Just seems weird, to me.
I haven't even actually legitimately played mario, and I know the storyline of mario.
Bowser steals princess, Mario goes to rescue her. This is the story of Marios journey across the lands to save her. It's simple but it's there, and you still get pissed off when that little fickin toad jerks you around.
When it comes to Portal it's a bit different, Portal is much more about implying a story, then just out and out telling you one. Portal 2 however is much more of a traditional story, where x happens which causes you to do y, and a story unfolds (Unfortunatly Valve seemed to think that meant it also had to ramp up it's "our audience is an idiot" factor for it's gameplay, that so many games today do).
Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2012-04-16 19:26:33)
Teague, you're talking about two different things and acting like they're the same thing.
1) Is a story necessary in a game.
2) Can you tell a story in a game without stopping the gameplay to do so.
I can agree with you on point 1, that it isn't necessary to add a story to a game. If you take away the story of Portal then it becomes very much like Mario -- you're trying to accomplish a task and not die, for fun. That it is also telling you a story as it goes is a value-add.
Obviously to point 2, you can tell a story without using cutscenes. Portal does so. Bioshock does so (except for a handful of cases). It's also worth noting that often cutscenes are setting up a situation that you then play through. Cutscenes do not necessarily remove story from the gameplay, necessarily.
If you removed the gameplay from the Portal games and just watched them, you would be watching a story. I don't understand what it is about being able to interact and try to not-die-for-fun during the story that suddenly makes it not a story, or what it is about adding a throughline to gameplay that suddenly makes it not gameplay.
It certainly doesn't, but if I added moments of me flying a jet around the Grand Canyon to Independence Day, does it make it better in some way? It's superfluous. But then, if you completely remove gameplay from a game, it's not a game.
I think it boils down to I don't get gaming. Probably because I don't game much.
I'm feeling curmudgeonly. Sigh. Nothing to see here.
It certainly doesn't, but if I added moments of me flying a jet around the Grand Canyon to Independence Day, does it make it better in some way?
I dunno, is an apple better than an orange?
Like I said, like I've always said, I don't get oranges.
I don't trust them.
Squiggly_P wrote:The game literally played itself. All he had to do was follow the big flashing arrow.
It's the equivalent of moving Mario through a level and jumping over all the enemies, getting to the end and calling it crap. True, it worked but you didn't really play the game.
Mario is a platformer, you still need to jump around and evade and adventure to get to the end successfully, without dying. The point is that it's a shooter, but you literally don't have to shoot to succeed.
Last edited by paulou (2012-04-16 20:11:32)
I guess what I'm feeling is, sure, you could add enough story to sort of explain the politics of power in Marioland and why Mario gives a shit and how the fireballs work, but... that's not why you play the game. It's just fun to do, like a sport.
My point exactly.
I don't think that a game needs a story in the way that a film does. It's always wonderful when a game does have a story, but it isn't a requirement for me in the same way that it is for a movie.
Last edited by Doctor Submarine (2012-04-16 20:23:17)
Teague wrote:I guess what I'm feeling is, sure, you could add enough story to sort of explain the politics of power in Marioland and why Mario gives a shit and how the fireballs work, but... that's not why you play the game. It's just fun to do, like a sport.
My point exactly.
I don't think that a game needs a story in the way that a film does. It's always wonderful when a game does have a story, but it isn't a requirement for me in the same way that it is for a movie.
Well, as Dorkman pointed out, even movies don't need stories the way movies do. That's why we get transformers and it's ilk.
There's a very linear comparison to games in that aspect. If you play a game without a story, all it is is the jump, jump, fall die, restart, jump jump jump fall die. ad inifinitum. And if the gameplay is set up well you can get a momentary release of excitement from that success (Ahem, Angry Birds). However it's just a surface thing, it's directly akin to the chemical release of pretty lights and explosions.
If you add a good story, you have a REASON to finish that level. Because you are emotionally invested in whether or not you succeed. And that's what elevates a game to the next level.
I care about killing Glados, because this shit is messed up, it's sick and twisted and it has to end....even if it is in the name of science. Also, I don't know about you, but I was fucking CRUSHED when I had to kill my companion cube. 
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