One of the problems with trying to tell stories with video games is that games are not really meant for telling stories...
This isn't to say, howver that games shouldn't, or can't have stories in them, just that they aren't supposed to tell stories... they're supposed to provide opportunity for players to develop a story of their own using the "tool" provided to them through the structure of the game and their ability to develop a dialogue with it.
Telling stories is implicit, something limited to film, radio, most drama and literature, in which the audience must sit and absorb the material - not passively by any definition - one cannot suggest that a person may sit like an empty sponge just absorbing the material they're presented with - intellectual agency is always in effect.
Games are different, however.
A game should ideally make an effort to provide the frameowrk for experience - for exploration and emotional engagement forged by a dialogue between player and digital universe. When a design team forgets that they have chosen a medium in which there is more than just the creator and the consumer - one in which the player is also an author of the experience, and may, through the course of their play, generate a story of their own that stands apart from anything that the designers had originally intended.
A "good game" is one that incorporates the ideas of narrative, choice/agency and entertainment to execute a state of immersion for the player.
Telling the player a story is the wrong thing to do.
Games like Heavy Rain are a prime example where the idea of telling a story to the player overwhelmed the aspect of play and agency that defines and separates video games from other mediums. The game is laborious in its lengthy cut-scenes, some of which run for 20 or more minutes runtime, based almost entirely on Quick Time Events... a poor gameplay choice if ever there was one.
The agency of the player is reduced rather plainly to that of a classical factory worker whose only job is to press one of 8 possible buttons appropriate to the motion they're told they want to perform.
Despite the game's ablity to perform in a graphical sense, it is much more closely akin to an interactive film or choose your own adventure book than a video game in the classical sense.
This isn't necessarily a "bad thing", but it does certainly define itself as something that is not what most gamers commonly attribute to a gaming experience, nor is it a perfect transferal of traditional narrative text.
Ideally, video games will continue to evolve and will become aware that they don't have to emulate film, literature or any other medium before them - they are a medium of their own... and the sooner the developers realize that, the better the games will be.
This isn't to say, howver that games shouldn't, or can't have stories in them, just that they aren't supposed to tell stories... they're supposed to provide opportunity for players to develop a story of their own using the "tool" provided to them through the structure of the game and their ability to develop a dialogue with it.
Telling stories is implicit, something limited to film, radio, most drama and literature, in which the audience must sit and absorb the material - not passively by any definition - one cannot suggest that a person may sit like an empty sponge just absorbing the material they're presented with - intellectual agency is always in effect.
Games are different, however.
A game should ideally make an effort to provide the frameowrk for experience - for exploration and emotional engagement forged by a dialogue between player and digital universe. When a design team forgets that they have chosen a medium in which there is more than just the creator and the consumer - one in which the player is also an author of the experience, and may, through the course of their play, generate a story of their own that stands apart from anything that the designers had originally intended.
A "good game" is one that incorporates the ideas of narrative, choice/agency and entertainment to execute a state of immersion for the player.
Telling the player a story is the wrong thing to do.
Games like Heavy Rain are a prime example where the idea of telling a story to the player overwhelmed the aspect of play and agency that defines and separates video games from other mediums. The game is laborious in its lengthy cut-scenes, some of which run for 20 or more minutes runtime, based almost entirely on Quick Time Events... a poor gameplay choice if ever there was one.
The agency of the player is reduced rather plainly to that of a classical factory worker whose only job is to press one of 8 possible buttons appropriate to the motion they're told they want to perform.
Despite the game's ablity to perform in a graphical sense, it is much more closely akin to an interactive film or choose your own adventure book than a video game in the classical sense.
This isn't necessarily a "bad thing", but it does certainly define itself as something that is not what most gamers commonly attribute to a gaming experience, nor is it a perfect transferal of traditional narrative text.
Ideally, video games will continue to evolve and will become aware that they don't have to emulate film, literature or any other medium before them - they are a medium of their own... and the sooner the developers realize that, the better the games will be.
No comments:
Post a Comment