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Via Penny Arcades' new Penny Arcade Report (http://penny-arcade.com/report/) site (which is a very well edited gaming news/editorial site you should really check out if you are in any way interested in meta-gaming comments), comes this wonderful article:
The Dangers of Gamer Entitlement (http://au.gamespot.com/features/the-dangers-of-gamer-entitlement-6350732/)
It's about a Bioware writer who went on record as saying that, just as there are buttons and things for gamers wishing to skip past dialogue scenes, there should be analogous ways to skip past combat for those who are interested in the story rather than the combat (God knows I wish something like that would exist for Mass Effect 1). This earned her an enormous amount of internet rage, one filled with all sorts of personal attacks, including the obligatory "This is the cancer that is killing bioware" line.
IMHO, this sort of entitlement and lack of proper reflection on the part of those making these comments is the cancer that is killing gaming discussions.
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The age of internets.
Idiots, idiots everywhere.
YouTube commenters is all you need.
From rabbid, dellusional fans who are over-possesive (and obsessive) to haters of everything that isn't 100000% exactly as they envisioned it.
I'm not surprised. Sadly.
(http://www.timcourtney.net/wp-content/greater-internet-fwad-theory1.jpg)
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i get that it's optional and shouldn't affect anything by being there, but...
doesn't it seem pretty dumb to anyone else to make a game, and throw in a button to skip the game part?
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i get that it's optional and shouldn't affect anything by being there, but...
doesn't it seem pretty dumb to anyone else to make a game, and throw in a button to skip the game part?
Conversely, doesn't it seem dumb to write a story and fluff it up with some random game things?
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I never managed to replay neither ME1 and ME2 because the gameplay is boring. If I could skip the combat, I'd probably have finished each of em half a dozen times now.
Long story short, skipping combat would increase replayability tenfold.
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i get that it's optional and shouldn't affect anything by being there, but...
doesn't it seem pretty dumb to anyone else to make a game, and throw in a button to skip the game part?
Using some feature or another to skip certain parts of a game for some reason... sounds like cheating. Which has been in games for ages. If someone wants to "cheat" in order to progress more easily, be my guest.
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right so its ok to skip the story but not the action? this is something that makes me despair and lol at the same time.
For example I know a 11yr old kid up the road and because i know the family well i am up there fairly often and the number of time me and my wife have been sat talking to the kids mum while the kid plays on his xBox and he skips strait past the cutscenes and then wonders why something happens or *****es that he dont know how to do something the game needs him to do and having played the game full well that it was all explained in the cutscene and mention it to him and get the reply "oh well the cut scenes are boring.".
and these guys are raging about skipping combat?
Also bioware is an interesting case in that their games are generally about telling stories so what are you left with by skipping the story elements?
Lastly the current trend in achievement based rewards, well you cant get the reward if you dont play the game meaning doing the "combat" bits
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This is actually pathetic. I feel sorry for the kids who were parented by the less mature parts of the net and grow up into the interbogans that populate the dross of discussions like the one in question. God knows like everyone else here I would have LOVED a skip (awful) combat switch for ME1.
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I never managed to replay neither ME1 and ME2 because the gameplay is boring. If I could skip the combat, I'd probably have finished each of em half a dozen times now.
Long story short, skipping combat would increase replayability tenfold.
Wat. Really? Oh well, each to their own I guess. I found gameplay to be good enough to replay ME1 and ME2 several times, including all missions I could find.
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It's like a whole community of darthwangs!
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i for one found the combat in ME1 most enjoyable (other than the bouncing of the mako), and certainly a metric ****ton better than ME2.
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This is not a discussion about ME combat systems.
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On a slightly more/less related note, I've gotten into a discussion with a friend of mine on this. He's played the 'game shouldn't be for everyone' card RE: this and it's 'casualization' of gaming. Here we ****ing go. :rolleyes:
But yes. Ergh. Perhaps the sense of entitlement stems from the previous niche roots of PC gaming and the whole games for gamers by gamers thing? I don't know...just hazarding a guess or two to keep this thread on track after my potential derail. :D
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Why would you want to skip the parts that don't require you to think? Or need an attention span of more than three seconds?
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If there was ever a game that needed this feature, it was Prince of Persia: Sands of Time for PC. Hooooly **** was that a terrible combat system. And no ****ing quicksave. I finally just downloaded the checkpoints and whenever I got to the inevitable mass battle of awfulness before the next checkpoint, I just loaded the next save and carried on for the story.
I don't see anything wrong with this... other than if a significant number of players are skipping EITHER dialogue OR combat, then you haven't built your game very well. Both should be equally compelling, and in many games the combat is equally as tedious and frustrating as the writing is in others.
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I do understand the logic of being able to skip one side or the other, but It kinda rubs me the wrong way to see the skipping option. I don't separate a game into components like that. I like both parts of it and a game would feel incomplete to me (I think) without both parts. I sorta see it as, if you don't want or don't appreciate both parts then maybe this game isnt really what you are looking for and others might be more to your interest. call of duty for people who just want the action for example, or to pick a less well known one, tribes ascend. not snubbing it, because both are well polished fun games, but they in someways appeal to a different group of people and have a different experience that it offers the player than a game that is more story driven (KotOR for example).
I wont condemn people who do want to skip sections of a game tho. to each his own. And I will point out that I appreciate story driven games most of all.
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I suppose it's kind of like re-reading a book but in game format, if it's a good game/story it may well be worth it, and you don't always want to have to go through the combat scenes.
Personally, I'm not sure I could think of a game that I would choose to do this with, but that doesn't automatically make it a bad idea.
I used to love the Diablo 2 cutscenes for example, much of my reason for playing that game was to watch the next bit of awesome rendered animation :D
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You might as well just watch a 'lets play' on youtube if you don't actually want to play the game.
Or go read a visual novel instead.
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At least they're not making you pay (http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-10-most-insulting-things-video-games-charged-money-for_p2/) to skip combat.
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What about the Freespace 2 system? Fail a mission 5 times in a row and you get the option to skip it. I wouldn't mind a skip combat button, a lot of times I do play the game just for the story. It's totally optional, too, so I mean I don't get the fuss.
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If Final Fantasy VII had the option of skipping past the repetitive random encounters, I'd play that a lot more. I've lost interest in games because the stories are usually such a drag, and that's what I mainly play them for (with exceptions).
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If Final Fantasy VII had the option of skipping past the repetitive random encounters, I'd play that a lot more. I've lost interest in games because the stories are usually such a drag, and that's what I mainly play them for (with exceptions).
Played the Witcher II or Alpha Protocol yet?
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You can zone out during a conversation but if you zone out duing a fire fight you tend to die. If people want to skip portions of the game where they have absolutely zero impact on what's going on, I don't see the problem.
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You can zone out during a conversation
not in games that handle conversations well (like the aforementioned and sublime alpha protocol)
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You can zone out during a conversation
not in games that handle conversations well (like the aforementioned and sublime alpha protocol)
I haven't played those games so I wouldn't know how they handle conversations, but it does make a whole lot less sense if you actually have to say things. Still, if your character is mute or only has superficial conversation options I don't see the harm. But on the other hand I guess it all boils down to what kind of game you're interested in; don't play games that require talking if you don't want to do talking.
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You can zone out during a conversation
not in games that handle conversations well (like the aforementioned and sublime alpha protocol)
I'm going to assume that you're kidding about Alpha Protocol's conversations being handled well.
Don't get me wrong, they were well presented. But they were handled poorly.
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i'm going to assume (an assumption) because it's a less polite way to say 'i disagree with you' and we can't afford to be polite here
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You can zone out during a conversation
not in games that handle conversations well (like the aforementioned and sublime alpha protocol)
I'm going to assume that you're kidding about Alpha Protocol's conversations being handled well.
Don't get me wrong, they were well presented. But they were handled poorly.
There were only three things wrong in Alpha Protocol, and those were the three moments when I had to break my thou-shalt-not-kill-streak. Razzum Frazzum grumble grumble...
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i may be wrong, but are you sure you had to break the streak? i'm pretty (though not completely) sure it's possible to do 100% no-kill
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i may be wrong, but are you sure you had to break the streak? i'm pretty (though not completely) sure it's possible to do 100% no-kill
It is. I've done it twice. Rack up over 2 million in medical bills, create no orphans.
Though I still haven't worked out how to kill Mr. Deus Vult, who I actually want to.
I think this is silly from another direction. Without the combat or whatever other mechanics are in there, most games haven't got enough going for them to stand on their own. Not even most modern games, most games in general. They become 35-minute TV episodes, except without the fight scenes it robs them of a lot of the context a 35-minute TV episode would have. (Picture CSI without the lab bits.) Some of them, including some very successful ones, have nothing beyond the gameplay. (TF/TF2, 4X as a genre.)
Nobody's building games that would survive the button to skip gameplay. If we went back to the pixel*****y glory of Sierra adventure games, perhaps...but I ain't going back to King's Quest and I don't think many people really want to.
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Though I still haven't worked out how to kill Mr. Deus Vult, who I actually want to.
That is ****ing difficult. I think you (spoilered in case you want to discover it on your own) have to have the Suave perk by being really suave all game long, have Marburg's reputation pretty low, have all the dossier info on him, and really piss him off in Rome by using suave options to be a total jerkbag. There are probably some additional requirements too but **** if I know
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I'm going to drop this here
Metal Gear Solid
This is the perfect example for people who want to skip the combat sequences and head straight to the cinematics. This is however, not a great game to skip the cutscenes...
I laughed all the way through the article. It brought me back to the Saints Row community and it's thousands upon thousands of complaints over what Volition did with erhm... their (the players) game?
This is why I can't stand gaming communities
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I think there should be an option to skip all of it, combat and cutscene. No, actually we should all just say to the publishers...
(http://static.fjcdn.com/comments/all+_f34aac1c71908d337a654b06102f38bd.jpg)
Initial rage aside, I suppose if it was done in a way that compliments the game (eg: diplomacy or completely avoiding conflict by using the door that leads straight to the inner sanctum that is right next to the start) it might not be too bad. Though to be honest, if you just want the story there are books.
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In a way, Metroid Other M had a option to skip either cutscenes or gameplay. Sure you had to actually beat a section normally to unlock the gameplay skip feature, but when you did, it allowed you to watch everything as a playback. It didn't just show you the cutscene itself, but also a little bit of the running through doors part to get to the cutscene. And I think it also included abbreviated boss battles.
You could pretty much just re-watch the whole story section and still get the context of everything. The story section was pretty terrible, but it was still there.
EDIT: Oh yeah, I suppose I'll need an opinion on this... I have no problem with the option to skip sections of gameplay, just so long as it's hidden a little. Perhaps a well-publicized cheat code, or a option in the main menu, "yes, I would like to be able to skip sections of the game". If some people would prefer to ignore parts of the game they paid for, why should it matter to the rest of us. Yes, the people who complain about the very notion are being silly.
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Yeah, I may not completely understand the concept of wanting to skip the gameplay elements of a game (i.e. something to be played), but why the hell would I care if it was an optional feature? This behavior is beyond pathetic.
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i'm going to assume (an assumption) because it's a less polite way to say 'i disagree with you' and we can't afford to be polite here
I'm going to assume that you're kind of overreacting to my speech mannerisms. If my assumption is incorrect, I assume you will be able to handle that, and not go all passive-aggressivey on me. ;)
In an effort to embellish my point, I feel it to be a rather strange perspective that timed choice is a good way to handle a dialogue tree. Esp. when the timer is so ludicrously short. I routinely ran out of time just after I finished reading the choices, and was given no time (IIRC, a couple of conversations give you exactly three seconds to decide) to consider them based upon the context.
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real life conversations aren't forum posts! just fractions of a second to be suave like mike thorton gotta be or say **** it and pop a cap in omen deng, life and death decisions balanced on the twitch of yo index finger like you got the trigger in your hand
i could see an argument for a pause button in the dialogue akin to pause during combat but honestly i thought the narrow timing windows combined with the regular, predictable stance options were the best conversation system i'd ever seen (also: deus ex hr conversation battles)
the time pressure was my favorite part
how often does a man pause to consider his options during a tense confrontation irl he don't he just go ahead and say what he say and if he ****s up he ****s up so it oughta be
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Yeah, I may not completely understand the concept of wanting to skip the gameplay elements of a game (i.e. something to be played), but why the hell would I care if it was an optional feature? This behavior is beyond pathetic.
This. I could not have possibly said it better myself.
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in the proverbial well made game so much of the story and atmosphere should be conveyed not just during gameplay but through the gameplay and mechanics that skipping gameplay should be impossible
games are not usually well made
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I can't understand why people have a problem with this. I loved the first Dragon Age game but while the combat was fun I enjoyed the wandering around and chatting a lot more. I can't see why anyone should have a problem with someone who wants that to be the main part of the game. Being able to skip the combat would certainly have resulted in me playing the game more. Especially with an evil character. :D
Basically this comes down to a bunch of dickwads whose only achievement in life is having finished a few computer games having a problem with the fact that more people might finish those games if they didn't have to plough through all the combat.
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I think the problem here is that people perceive that they have no impact on a game during cutscenes and dialog, among other storyline elements, and thus only see them as fluff or unneccesary information. As such, I think it has to do with the linearity of most games, that causes such people to just skip to the 'good stuff'. A well made game, as Battuta points out, would generally cause people to be so interested in the storyline and to feel they have an important impact on the story and the presentation and outcome of cutscenes that they wouldn't complain.
Having played Final Fantasy 13 and 13-2 recently I must say that, in my opinion, those games handle the story and gameplay elements really well together, yet there's still much more that could be done to blend the two in, such as unique dialog during a battle based on what or who you're fighting, as well as contain a lot more dialog where your dialog choices actually matter and change the outcomes of events, the opinions of the characters about you and the amount of help they'll render to you.
When people complain about wanting to skip either combat or cutscenes is when the synergy between the two is (perceived to be) unbalanced. Notwithstanding the important adage of 'you cannot make everyone happy' that's something that should always be investigated and improved upon.
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Having played Final Fantasy 13 and 13-2 recently I must say that, in my opinion, those games handle the story and gameplay elements really well together,
Final Fantasy 13 and 13-2
:wtf: :wtf: :wtf:
You have some kind of self-torture fetish?
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Don't worry, not right after eachother, and I take it slow. The grind in RPGs has always been annoying but I survived games with worse grinds before so I've got some natural toleration for it. I'm talking about it's story elements, especially moments where game and cutscene meets in the middle, as well as the fluid transitions between. Those are great elements in my opinion, alongside the rest of the things I've mentioned earlier.
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frankly i dont see what the problem is. if people want to spent $60 to watch what equates to a b grade movie, and skip interactive elements, its ok with me, but rest assured its no game il get caught playing. im sure the game companies wont mind the hordes of dumbass gamers who actually want this feature handing over their money. most of the stuff major game studios are putting out these days is garbage. independent studios are the only ones coming out with stuff thats even remotely playable. i have a hard time blaming the gamers though. recent years i have seen a lot of anti-consumerism policies come out of game studios, and a lot of things forced on gamers that would have been unthinkable in the 90s, and ive seen a lot of gamers just bend over and take it. any personal attacks against certain employees of certain game studios are purely the result of misdirected rage. but i do agree that the typical gamer has devolved. the immaturity of online gamers is one thing that has gotten much worse in the last decade.
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Don't worry, not right after eachother, and I take it slow. The grind in RPGs has always been annoying but I survived games with worse grinds before so I've got some natural toleration for it. I'm talking about it's story elements, especially moments where game and cutscene meets in the middle, as well as the fluid transitions between. Those are great elements in my opinion, alongside the rest of the things I've mentioned earlier.
Lolwut?
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frankly i dont see what the problem is. if people want to spent $60 to watch what equates to a b grade movie, and skip interactive elements, its ok with me, but rest assured its no game il get caught playing.
How are dialgue choices and interrupts "non-interactive"?
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That, plus the real problem is RE-playability here. So we're hardly talking about "just" a movie here.
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Lack of sufficient amounts of Fang's breasts makes FFXIII a no-go for me.
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frankly i dont see what the problem is. if people want to spent $60 to watch what equates to a b grade movie, and skip interactive elements, its ok with me, but rest assured its no game il get caught playing. im sure the game companies wont mind the hordes of dumbass gamers who actually want this feature handing over their money. most of the stuff major game studios are putting out these days is garbage. independent studios are the only ones coming out with stuff thats even remotely playable. i have a hard time blaming the gamers though. recent years i have seen a lot of anti-consumerism policies come out of game studios, and a lot of things forced on gamers that would have been unthinkable in the 90s, and ive seen a lot of gamers just bend over and take it. any personal attacks against certain employees of certain game studios are purely the result of misdirected rage. but i do agree that the typical gamer has devolved. the immaturity of online gamers is one thing that has gotten much worse in the last decade.
At risk of sounding incredibly elitist, I do believe it was the market penetration of consoles that completely ruined the face of gaming. It started the vicious cycle of gaming companies making nothing but crap and idiots paying for said crap without too much complaint. At least when it comes to gaming, greed is NOT good, so *&^% you, Gordon Gekko. The indie studios are our only hope for any kind of innovation. Fortunately for us, thanks to increasing computing power and automation, and the sort of graphics "ceiling" (where effort to improve the visuals has diminishing returns), I think we'll start to see more indie titles that can give these AAA blowhards a run for their money visually while still being awesome. And, of course, we'll always have the types of games where the visuals don't matter as much as the content. Minecraft, anyone?
A bit more OT: after learning about the day 1 DLC, and still with a bad taste in my mouth from the obvious beta stage release of TOR (don't get me wrong, I feel like I got my money's worth out of the original purchase because I really enjoyed the class stories, but I'm not paying a sub fee to test their broken game engine), BioWare gets nothing more from me.
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frankly i dont see what the problem is. if people want to spent $60 to watch what equates to a b grade movie, and skip interactive elements, its ok with me, but rest assured its no game il get caught playing.
How are dialgue choices and interrupts "non-interactive"?
picking the words your characters say != gameplay in my book. of course im an example of an old skool action gamer, rpgs and story oriented games have never really appealed to me. so any kind of thing in a game that results in me rapid pressing the escape key is "non interactive" as far as im concerned. this really falls under matters of preference.
the point i was trying to make was that you should buy games with features youre looking for. just because i find interactive stories dry and uninteresting, doesn't mean there arent those that will enjoy it. and im sure there are people out there who think the same of games where you just shoot things. game studios want to apply the barnum effect to get more sales, by all means. but if that causes the game to diverge far enough from the game play im looking for, im just not gonna buy it. genres exist for a reason.
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TBH, skipping combat seems illogical to me, because it's an interactive part of the game (thus setting it apart from a movie or a Visual Novel). Cutscenes are not, and it's understandable that one could want to skip them, especially if they're, say, replaying the game and already know the story. Interactive cutscenes (like in Wing Commander from III on) were not skippable in any game I played, though parts of them might be, especially if your choice has a big effect on the game (like getting you killed if you answer wrong), thus making it possible that you might want to reload a save from before the cutscene.
It's a good idea (and quite frequently used) to make it possible to replay cutscenes outside the game, and it should be easy (with a cheat code, for example) to make them all available from the start. Then, you essentially get a "skip combat" button. Of course, this approach fails when the game has interactive cutscenes.
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Interactive cutscenes (like in Wing Commander from III on) were not skippable in any game I played, though parts of them might be
"cept of course for the fact that you are wrong and you can skip the cutscenes in WC3&4.
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Stories in games are like lyrics in music. If some people just wanna read the words and think about what a genius that Oasis guy is, good for them, but I will still cringe inside because lyrics in isolation are just crappy poetry. Crappy terrible awful poetry that gets celebrated when there's a whole world of great stuff in both fields that goes unnoticed because maybeeeeeeeeeeeeee you're gonna be the one that saves meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, and after aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall you're my wonderwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllll
/ :(
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Stories in games are like lyrics in music. If some people just wanna read the words and think about what a genius that Oasis guy is, good for them, but I will still cringe inside because lyrics in isolation are just crappy poetry. Crappy terrible awful poetry that gets celebrated when there's a whole world of great stuff in both fields that goes unnoticed because maybeeeeeeeeeeeeee you're gonna be the one that saves meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, and after aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall you're my wonderwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllll
/ :(
Sorry, but the diehard Oasis fan in me simply has to reply to this.
Noel Gallagher (the Oasis guy you're probably referring to) was never that good with lyrics because he's dyslexic and, well, an ineducated chav. Also, Wonderwall definitely isn't their best song both lyrics-wise and melody-wise, and I personally hate it because most people only know of Wonderwall and base their opinion on solely that song, which is unfair to say the least.
/offtopic rant
OT: While I don't personally think that skipping gameplay on the first playthrough makes sense, it's definitely useful when replaying. Of course, there are games that have repetetive combat that becomes boring after a while even on the first playthrough, like Sands of Time as mentioned in this thread.
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Hmmm... I would say that I agree with the disjointed feel the few modern games I've played have. ME2 falls particularly hard on this. The universe is fantastic as f***, but really the only gameplay is 'shoot that stuff over there,' 'talk to <randomasshole>' and 'grind for awesome guns,' and all three elements are quite isolated from one another. If you're gonna talk to someone, it turns into a cutscene. If you're shooting someone, it's your standard FPS run-gun-cover malarky. If you're grinding, you're in the Normandy, dragging a magic swirly disk all over some poor hapless planet. It'd be awesome to have the Half Life no-cutscene ethos applied to ME2. That way the we might not notice the (human) characters populate the uncanny valley to varying degrees, and you'd get to feel like a total badass for figuring an alternative strategy instead of having it spoon-fed to you. I'm thinking about
stabbing the Blue Suns mechanic with an arc welder
and Blowing up the Clan Weyrloc door guard with a fuel pipe.
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Stories in games are like lyrics in music.
No, they are like stories...
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Sorry, but the diehard Oasis fan in me simply has to reply to this.
Noel Gallagher (the Oasis guy you're probably referring to) was never that good with lyrics because he's dyslexic and, well, an ineducated chav. Also, Wonderwall definitely isn't their best song both lyrics-wise and melody-wise, and I personally hate it because most people only know of Wonderwall and base their opinion on solely that song, which is unfair to say the least.
Didn't mean any knock to his music or his band, it was just the first super successful song with really bad lyrics that came to mind. Most of the music I love has bad or no lyrics.
Stories in games are like lyrics in music.
No, they are like stories...
To clarify, I find that stories in games are like lyrics in music in that they are sometimes noteworthy but often superfluous or nonexistent components which, if taken in isolation, typically do not hold up well because they have to be built around some sort of structure which is much more important to the success of the thing as a whole.
I just think it's revealing to see how badly people reacted to the writer's suggestion of the gameplay skip for these games that are obviously built "backwards" (narrative/backstory first, then trying to make it fun). I mean yeah, the entitlement and rudeness are really pathetic, but its interesting to me how for them, in order for the experience to be authentic or whatever, they have to endure the trial of playing the game and persevering (never mind that the game has been designed to be beatable by anyone who might consider buying it). Given my feelings on how well I think the non-gameplay portions of games would fare on their own, I get that--without the sense of being rewarded, I don't think that many of them would make it. Anyway, people who get angry about things that don't actually effect them at all are bums, but the issue itself has made me think about how I assign value to products like these, so that's cool.
TL/DR- Don't take away my pain!
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i get that it's optional and shouldn't affect anything by being there, but...
doesn't it seem pretty dumb to anyone else to make a game, and throw in a button to skip the game part?
But I think the whole idea of what a video game is deserves re-examination. The vast majority of games inevitably boil down to you using often lethal force to overcome an enemy who intends to use similar force on you. There's nothing wrong with that per se, we're all on a forum devoted to a game that at its heart is about blowing spaceships to pieces. But somehow around 1992 it was decided that video games must be about killing or some sanitized version thereof. The whole concept of video gaming needs to be re-evaluated, but a large sector of the target audience ("gamers") are openly against any sort of re-evaluation because the entire medium is hopelessly rotten and incestuous (see video game "journalism") and controlled by insiders both among the producers and consumers who loathe and distrust any sort of outsider (including demographic outsiders like women).
And in the end these idiots will probably buy the next BioWare game anyway. They will go on their forums and complain about how BioWare has betrayed them (again), and bull-rush the stores on the release day of the next BioWare game (again).
So **** them.
The indie studios are our only hope for any kind of innovation. Fortunately for us, thanks to increasing computing power and automation, and the sort of graphics "ceiling" (where effort to improve the visuals has diminishing returns), I think we'll start to see more indie titles that can give these AAA blowhards a run for their money visually while still being awesome. And, of course, we'll always have the types of games where the visuals don't matter as much as the content. Minecraft, anyone?
Not going to happen. Even if the target of AAA graphics stops moving, to get better asset fidelity you need to pour more resources and man-hours into making those assets. A typical game in 1980 was developed by some nerd in his house. A typical game in 1990 was developed by a handful of people in a tiny development studio on a budget of thousands. A typical game now is made by hundreds of people working in a massive corporate enterprise on a budget of tens of millions. Think of the absolute best of the FSU assets, the stuff that really makes jaws drop. Imagine having to make an entire game with that (or higher) as the minimum standard, not just models and textures but music, interface art, level design (FS benefits immensely from not having to build physical levels at the same detail as all the other models, since everything is set in space) voice acting, writing, absolutely everything, on a two-year deadline. Hundreds of talented people, working full-time and you have to pay them (do you want to work 60 hours a week for free?). You have to write your own engine too, or license one for hundreds of thousands and then still need a small army of coders to customize it for your purposes. Then add publishing, marketing, production, overhead...
Without a huge development studio backed by a publisher that can throw $10 million or more into a project, you're not going to get that.
And then you have to QA the resulting product. Hundreds more people, hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars...
Trying to match AAA games' asset fidelity is not a realistic or desirable goal for indie developers.
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Stories in games are like lyrics in music. If some people just wanna read the words and think about what a genius that Oasis guy is, good for them, but I will still cringe inside because lyrics in isolation are just crappy poetry. Crappy terrible awful poetry that gets celebrated when there's a whole world of great stuff in both fields that goes unnoticed because maybeeeeeeeeeeeeee you're gonna be the one that saves meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, and after aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall you're my wonderwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllll
/ :(
So what s your argument? That games shouldn t even try? That there is no potential in the medium? That s rubbish and you know it! ;)
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Interactive cutscenes (like in Wing Commander from III on) were not skippable in any game I played, though parts of them might be
"cept of course for the fact that you are wrong and you can skip the cutscenes in WC3&4.
IIRC, you could skip to the point where you have to chose a dialogue option (that's what I had in mind saying "though parts of them might be"). I played WC3 and 4 a long time ago, so my memory might be a bit hazy.
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So what s your argument? That games shouldn t even try? That there is no potential in the medium? That s rubbish and you know it! ;)
His argument as far as I can tell is that stories in games are like the lyrics in music. If you take the music away and write down the lyrics as poetry what do you have? Usually pretty terrible poetry. Now if you take the game away what do you have left? Usually a ****ing awful story.
But the question here is have you actually taken the game away just by removing combat? There are games that revolve around things other than combat.
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So what s your argument? That games shouldn t even try? That there is no potential in the medium? That s rubbish and you know it! ;)
His argument as far as I can tell is that stories in games are like the lyrics in music. If you take the music away and write down the lyrics as poetry what do you have? Usually pretty terrible poetry. Now if you take the game away what do you have left? Usually a ****ing awful story.
Yet, the medium has much more potential. Right now we have developers to a large extend focusing on the technical and graphical side of things... true enough, but it s not like we haven t seen similar trends in the movie industry or even in trash/popcorn novels that focus on action and battles or heck even romance trash novels that focus on graphic sex and little else.
No one in their right mind would say that artistic movies aren t possible because of the 3d movie madness or special effect heavy idiot blockbusters, no one in their right mind would say that books can t have engaging stories because there are so many trash novels... and no one in their right mind should really state that there can t be great video game stories just because so many games don t have them.
That was actually... my point. ;)
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Yet, the medium has much more potential. Right now we have developers to a large extend focusing on the technical and graphical side of things... true enough, but it s not like we haven t seen similar trends in the movie industry or even in trash/popcorn novels that focus on action and battles or heck even romance trash novels that focus on graphic sex and little else.
There are other kinds of books? :confused:
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and no one in their right mind should really state that there can t be great video game stories just because so many games don t have them.
The strength of a game, what makes it a game rather than a movie, is in its interactive nature. It demands action rather than passive observation; that action and the actor can change the course of the story it is telling.
Because of this essential trait, there is a great deal that is different from a grand story in a game and a grand story in a movie. You cannot interchange comics and movies or novels and movies that easily, and those mediums share much more in common with movies than games do. Any option that converts a game into a movie will make it more awkward and lessen its impact on the viewer. Fighting this will risk lessening it as a game if you actually play the game.
The point is not that games should not try to have great stories, but that game stories cannot be wholly separated from the act of playing the game without hurting one or the other.
tl;dr: Learn to think about what's being said before you reply to it.
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yeah I used to think that the complexity that player interaction gave video games allowed for some sort of story telling capability that transcends conventional literature but honestly just no. when you throw interactivity into the mix actual literature is impossible. either you have a great story or a game that you can play, you really can't combine the two into a single entity. some developers (read: mostly everyone) had the bright idea that you can narrate a story while the player plays an somewhat relevant but largely ineffectual game. so 9 times out of 10 you end up with a half assed story that tells itself when player completes action X followed by action Y and breaks upon action Z because the testers were lazy. what video game developers try to do is tack on a non interactive story to an interactive video game. you can tell me that your conversation options in, say, mass effect, give you an interactive story but that is total utter bull****, and anyone thats read a make your own adventure book will agree that its nothing more than a horribly convoluted way of telling several flavors of the same static story. anyway im not trying to say that video games necessarily have awful stories even when totally static im just saying that you cant judge them the same way you would a book or a movie because the medium is unrecognizably different. also other stuff.
i did not read a single post in this thread
also dwarf fortress has the best story of any game ever
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I'm definitely not trying to argue that games should eschew involved stories. I guess I've tried to hit on a couple of semi-related points:
1) If you've gotten to the point where "skip game" seems like a good idea to a significant portion of your audience, you're not really taking advantage of the medium. Of course, to be objective about it, if they sell a bajillion units, who the hell am I to say they're doing it wrong?
2) It's interesting how people reacted to the suggestion of the game skip. It seems to me like the value that some people assign to games, and possibly by extension some of those gamers' senses of identity and self worth (for having invested their time and energy) are tied up in the idea of achievement (for lack of a better word). "Anyone can watch a movie--what's the point of working for something when someone else will just get for free?" I think that might be what these gamers are afraid of--that if games will give it up for anyone, it will invalidate their experiences. I do wonder how many games would be actually played to completion if gameplay skip became a standard feature. Anyway, it's funny to think about how sometimes our motivations for doing the things we do "for fun" actually have little to do with our present enjoyment of them.
As a side note, this issue makes me feel kinda stupid for looking at games like Farmville and thinking "Pfffft, those aren't real games."
But I still do, hehe
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Because of this essential trait, there is a great deal that is different from a grand story in a game and a grand story in a movie. You cannot interchange comics and movies or novels and movies that easily, and those mediums share much more in common with movies than games do. Any option that converts a game into a movie will make it more awkward and lessen its impact on the viewer. Fighting this will risk lessening it as a game if you actually play the game.
The point is not that games should not try to have great stories, but that game stories cannot be wholly separated from the act of playing the game without hurting one or the other.
tl;dr: Learn to think about what's being said before you reply to it.
... and that s neither what I said nor meant, good job.
The power of the medium I would argue... lays in the potential for making stories themselves interactive.
Ever played the Witcher 2? That s just a glimpse of what the medium might aspire to in the next couple of decades.
That is where video game stories *could* go way beyond what a book or movie offers... by engaging the player in the story through meaningful choice and consequences.
In any case... the potential for telling truly great stories through the medium is there, stories that may ultimately surpass purely linear/nonadaptive storytelling in every possible way.
But even in the case of linear stories one might argue that the story itself doesn t get worse if it gets told by a game. The overall experience may not be optimal, but a great story remains a great story.
The poster I originally replied to... kind of tried to ridicule the very potential of the medium in general with his lyrics analogy, don t you think?
Might want to save the attitude for people who were actually replying to you and not someone elses post. ;)
P.S.: Played "Dear Esther" by chance? (http://www.honestgamers.com/reviews/7778.html) Linear, pretty much noninteractive, imperfect for sure... yet not without its merits and in some respects an experience unlike any other.
P.P.S.:Moreover... I would argue that some of Ransoms work on here is a perfect example of how gameplay can enrich a linear storyline. The gameplay in Transcend certainly isn t much to write home about... but I found it captures and communicates the mood of the story that is told perfectly and by doing so, enriches the experience. The gameplay alone really couldn t pull any wheight... , yet who would argue that Transcend was not a compelling experience?
Therefore I d argue that even with a linear storyline, gameplay and story do not necessarily have to be at odds. Just because the mainstream market didn t catch on to the fact doesn t mean its not possible. We have countless of bad examples, true enough, but does that make it impossible? I dare say not. ;)
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The poster I originally replied to... kind of tried to ridicule the very potential of the medium in general with his lyrics analogy, don t you think?
No, I was not belittling games or their narrative elements. The entire conversation is about the idea of being able to skip the participatory (or "game") parts of games. I think that trying to make a great computer game that turns into a great movie when the interactive portions are skipped is probably not a great idea. This suggestion does not ridicule either medium in any way as far as I can tell.
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this thread has genuinely good posts in it
post more swashmebuckle
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I'm definitely not trying to argue that games should eschew involved stories. I guess I've tried to hit on a couple of semi-related points:
1) If you've gotten to the point where "skip game" seems like a good idea to a significant portion of your audience, you're not really taking advantage of the medium.
Oh, I can fully agree with that. My bad for misjudging where you wanted to go with the lyrics analogy then.
2) It's interesting how people reacted to the suggestion of the game skip. It seems to me like the value that some people assign to games, and possibly by extension some of those gamers' senses of identity and self worth (for having invested their time and energy) are tied up in the idea of achievement (for lack of a better word). "Anyone can watch a movie--what's the point of working for something when someone else will just get for free?" I think that might be what these gamers are afraid of--that if games will give it up for anyone, it will invalidate their experiences. I do wonder how many games would be actually played to completion if gameplay skip became a standard feature. Anyway, it's funny to think about how sometimes our motivations for doing the things we do "for fun" actually have little to do with our present enjoyment of them.
As a side note, this issue makes me feel kinda stupid for looking at games like Farmville and thinking "Pfffft, those aren't real games."
But I still do, hehe
Are games that are mainly about repeating simple actions for rewards still "games" or are they not more akin to gambling?
In any case I would define a "good" game as a game featuring gameplay that has intrinsic value and does not depend on extrinsic rewards.