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Games Entertainment

When Videogames Know They're Videogames 150

Posted by simoniker from the all-very-clever dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In 'I Never Metagame I Didn't Like', AllRPG.com goes into a discussion of metagaming - what it is and some games which feature it. The piece explains: 'Metagames show awareness of their nature as games. These games ignore all pretense of being a representation of a reality--rather, they know that they're polygons on a screen', and goes on to reference titles such as Earthbound and Metal Gear Solid as examples." Are there other examples of titles which address the player in this awfully postmodern way?
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When Videogames Know They're Videogames More

When Videogames Know They're Videogames

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  • Metagaming? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by geminidomino ( 614729 )
    Does anyone else remember when it was called "Breaking/Breaching the 4th wall?"

    "Metagaming" sounds like playing a game of characters playing a game (Remember the special opening movie on Summoner?)

    • Re:Metagaming? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I guess WarioWare Inc fits in perfectly then.
    • I didn't, until the article mentioned it.

    • It's very similar to when a character in a movie will look at the camera and toss off a one-liner to the audience.

      Well I would have thought that means an 'Aside' but surely you'd get in trouble if you tossed-off to the audience. ;)
    • I must admit I also thought metagaming meant including whole games within your own ghame, akin to The Day Of The Tentacle including the whole game of Maniac Mansion, and to a certain extent when your character in Final Fantast 7 plays the submarine game, or chocobo racing.

    • Metagaming is a PnP-RPG term for using information that you know, but that your character doesn't.

      For instance, if the DM asks everyone to roll a d20, without telling them what it's for, and the party wizard then casts detect magic, that's metagaming.

  • Disagree. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bagels ( 676159 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:18AM (#8829647)
    I'd have to disgree at least partly with the two examples given. Though at times they might break the third wall (say, with Psycho Mantis in MGS) or simply not take themselves seriously (all of Earthbound) for the vast majority of the game the player character seems unaware - or at least unaffected by - the fact that they are in games.

    Little moments of that sort of third-wall breaking can be good to relieve the monotony, however. I particularly like the little voice that harangues you whenever you pause in Viewtiful Joe ("OK, is it number one, or number two?")

  • This author is a bit too late (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:27AM (#8829656)
    "and some games which feature it"

    Metagames exist in every game. This term has been coined long before this author thought it up, but really he's just talking about particular games' self awareness (to which the term Metagame does not apply).

    A Metagame is the game that goes on in the players mind, when *they* step past the suspension of disbelief to tackle the actual game mechanics, and not the fantasy scenarios involved.
    A good example of this would be a First Person Shooter. The "game" is where you, as John Doe Mercenary must blow your way past the Evil Terrorist Organization, using all available weaponry to eliminate your foes and survive.
    The "Metagame" in this example is really how quickly and acurrately you can move the mouse and click while using the arrow keys to avoid incoming hits. That is the *true* challenge of the game; hence: "metagame".

    I think this author should read up a bit on common game design theories and philosophy before tackling another subject like this. All he's really doing is trying to coin a term that has been in common use in the game design field for several years.

    • I find this comment intriguing, yet confusing. Do any current games use this?
    • All he's really doing is trying to coin a term that has been in common use in the game design field for several years.

      Does anyone have any cites for that?

      I don't think "metagame" is the appropriate term for what you said or for the main thrust of the article; only the article's example, of say, the characters in the game playing a game themselves meets the usual definition. The article is mostly talking about breaking the 4th wall (which seems about as good a term as any...dumbest example I konw of is yo
      • Does anyone have any cites for that?

        Sure. Do a Google search for "metagaming". The term has been used since at least the 80s by pen and paper RPGers. You can find it all over the web in FAQs on LARPs, video game walkthrough guide sites and essays on the nature of gaming.

        Dear lhord - not difficult to find cites; you're buried under them with a simple visit to Google.

        --
        Evan

        • Actually, not really; nothing in at least the first page of Google hits blatantly deals with the term in the usage you describe. Mostly it's a name for websites and comics and companies and projects.
          • OK, then,

            Salen, K. & Zimmerman, E. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Chap. 28

            Those authors also reference an essay called "Metagames," by one Richard Garfield, in Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Essays on roleplaying, London:Jolly Roger Games, 2000

    • Re:This author is a bit too late (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MilenCent ( 219397 ) * <johnwh@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Sunday April 11, 2004 @01:49PM (#8831296) Homepage
      Actually, neither you nor the article have the definition I'm aware of. I've always understood metagaming to be the "game around the game." Like in a tournament, the metagame is the tournament structure. A series of little games of chess, football, SoulCalibur, etc., determine the winner in the big game.

      Metagaming can also be used to refer to the interactions of the players around the game. Like playing a game as part of a bar bet. The bet is the metagame. While I don't have a source document handy, I'm fairly sure that this is common usage in the game design community -- I've read this in multiple places.

      The prefix meta- is often vague due to the sheer number of situations to which it can be applied. I'm willing to let the author make his point, which I think is insightful, without tearing him down over the use or misuse of a term.

  • Meta-reviews (Score:3, Funny)

    by richie2000 ( 159732 ) <rickard.olsson@gmail.com> on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:31AM (#8829663) Homepage Journal
    At least his footnotes know they are footnotes.

  • I never could get far in Metal Gear Solid... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ... because I have a copied version of the game, you insensitive clod!

  • Well there's LucasArts (Score:5, Informative)

    by arunarunarun ( 196635 ) <arunissatan.gmail@com> on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:46AM (#8829687)
    In The Curse of Monkey Island Guybrush Threepwood is buried alive and the credits start scrolling, when suddenly Guybrush starts yelling about how you can't die in these LucasArts games.

    Does that count?

  • Author is on crack! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:46AM (#8829688)
    His description is not a metagame. A metagame is when the player engages the gameplay mechanics directly, taking a step back from the suspension of disbelief to play on a different level outside the boundaries of the games world, NOT when a game breaks the "fourth wall" and becomes self-aware.

  • .hack (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FrenZon ( 65408 ) * on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:47AM (#8829692) Homepage
    In one of the new the .Hack games, based on a relatively popular anime, you play a player who is playing an MMORPG that he's stuck in. The game is therefore a single player simulation of an MMORPG, complete with the game AI playing as players, and also as NPCs. The gameplay is also based on currenty-day MMORPG gameplay - the focus being entirely on levelling and getting new stuff.

    Sounds JUST ABSOLUTELY THRILLING to me.

    • Re:.hack (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Kalak ( 260968 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @09:22AM (#8829871) Homepage Journal
      You seem to have the twisting level of the storylines of .hack mixed up. Considering their intertwining, it's easy to do. You're confusing .hack//SIGN with the .hack games (saying one of the .hack games is also misleading, as they are all continuations of the same game, just serialized).

      In .hack//SIGN, one character, Tsukasa, is stuck in the MMORPG world, "The World". In the game(s), you play the character, Kite, who is *not stuck* in "The World", but his friend, Orca, who introduced him to the game, is in a coma in real life (IRL) as a result of the game, and really if also from an event that occurred in "The World". This is to say nothing of .hack//LIMINALITY, which is all based IRL, trying to discover why players go into comas when playing in "The WORLD". Also there is .hack//legend of the twilight (aka .hack//udeden or .hack//dusk) where the story is about two twins who are in different parts of a divorced family IRL, and meet up in "The World" under equally confusing circumstances.

      It is the best combination of storyline, multiple media (anime and gaming - there are magna I don't have), and so many other concepts such as game levels, philosophy (what is reality anyway?), identity on the net vs. IRL, escapism, creating a better life for yourself IRL via online, etc. I've ever experienced. (Plus the music is excellent, so the OSTs are definitey worth listening to). I have 2 more games to play, but I've taken a break at the request of my family so they know I'm still alive myself. My .sig has said it for a couple of months now, and I'm about to dive back into the games.

      The best site I've found to sort this all out (and it took me a while myself) is .hack//info center [dothackers.net]. A well dubbed version of the anime is on the Cartoon Network at the not great hour of mignight on Sunday.

      It is the best gaming experience I've had, and I've given (some might say lost) about 1/4 of my waking hours to video games, and the best video experience I've watched. It is also a great example of going way beyone the barriers of traditional game "walls", as you are forced to think on more that just the level of one player, one controller, one identity. The concept of playing a simulated MMORPG alone breaks that barrier well. You interact with other characters that have not only in-game personas, but converse with you about their IRL issues and talk to you as if you were conversing with them IRL. You play Kite, who is an 8th grader IRL, and has his own interests, and friends (he knows Orca IRL). The twins in .hack//udeden who want to be together IRL, meeting in "The World". I can type and analyze this for hours. Give in to it, as it will change the way you look at games, especially online games. Not to mention, it's a damn good RPG game by itself.
      • Yeah, but here's the problem:

        I might have considered buying and playing the games if the cartoon show on Cartoon Network wasn't so GOD DAMNED BORING!

        The show consists of about 13 confusingly named and non-distinct characters TALKING to each other in front of various wacky-looking backgrounds. Sure it looks at first glance like it has high production values until you realize there's hardly any animation... usually the camera pulls far enough away, or is at a handy angle, where they don't have to lipsynch
        • Yea verily, ye speak truth.

          God I couldn't get into that thing, and I'm more willing than most people to give an anime with a weird premise a chance. (Hey, I've stuck with Big-O through two seasons, and still think it's great, even though they bury the needle on the strange meter towards the end.) hack-random-punctuation-sign is just *dull*. Dull and angsty, in that special way that people only accept if it's anime. Anything like that that keeps me from glorious, shining Bebop is beyond forgiveness.
        • Then you obviously missed the point of the series... you think DBZ is godly, don't you? Your description of the series really shows you didn't watch much more than maybe 6 or 7 random episodes, not a good bit to judge a series as a whole on.
          Its not an action series, it never claimed to be. Its made to be a sort of mystery/suspense series, which is does exceedingly well.
          • I am not at all a fan of DBZ and its like, and I have to agree with the above complaints about the show. I found it immensely dull, and I really tried to give it a chance. I can handle talky, pretentious animes, but only when they at least try and make the animation and visual direction interesting, which hack didn't even approach AFAIK.

            (Part of the problem is probably that it reminded me too much of its predecessor, Noir, which I was stupid enough to stick it out the whole way, because someone lied that "
      • I cried when Tsukasa choosed real life in the end of .hack//Sign...

  • It's pretty common... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Haeleth ( 414428 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:47AM (#8829694) Journal
    Remember Monkey Island? Hermann Toothrot frequently turns to the screen and comments on things, and when asked who he's talking to he replies, "the people watching, of course." Then there's the famous "rubber tree" scene poking fun at Sierra adventures. And I'm pretty sure the "that's the second largest monkey head I've ever seen" bit is a reference to the player, too.

    The fake "game over" is a pretty common gag in adventure games, actually... I can think of several other (more obscure) titles that feature it.
    • Like that one scene in Willy Beamish where you're rescuing the frogs from the kitchen. That was annoying. I only ever got past it because I got sick of trying to figure things out and just wanted to watch Willy die.
    • This is done throughout all the Monkey Island games. They are great. There are too many to reference, but the humor used is awesome.

      I hope they continue to make new games for the series...
  • Jedi Academy comes close with a line that, to anyone who played Jedi Knight 2, pretty obviously makes fun of JK2's nonsensical puzzles.

    • The Kyle Katarn games were good for making self-referential cracks like that. My favorite was from Jedi Knight, where, upon seeing a large cargo canister rotating in microgravity that you obviously have to jump to, Kyle says, "Great. Another place where I can fall to my death."

  • Max Payne (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rufo ( 126104 ) <`rufo' `at' `rufosanchez.com'> on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:58AM (#8829715)
    I had a great laugh in Max Payne when in one of the dream sequences, a phone rings and (I believe it's Mona) says: "It's a video game, Max.". He then proceeds to rattle off all the features of Max Payne, complete with various screenshots, mentions being under complete control by some nerd, and finishes off with something along the lines of "It was the most horrifying thought I've ever had".

    I really got a big kick out of that.

    • Re:Max Payne (Score:3, Interesting)

      by News for nerds ( 448130 )
      Isn't it Max Payne 2?
      BTW it's not metagame, because Max only mentions about general videogaming world. "Some nerd" may not be you.

      If you are familiar with scifi novels by P. K. Dick, such kind of obsession is very common, and in the movie Matrix, its world is made by the Architect and he appears in Reloaded.

      • Re:Max Payne (Score:5, Informative)

        by Chemical Serenity ( 1324 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @11:18AM (#8830333) Homepage Journal
        There was something disturbingly familiar about the letter before me. The handwriting was all pretty curves.

        "You're in a computer game, Max..."

        The truth was a burning green crack through my brain. Weapon statistics hanging in the air, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. The endless repetition of the act of shooting, time slowing down to show off my moves, the paranoid feeling of someone controlling my every step...

        I was in a computer game.

        Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could I think of.

        Hmmm... I think I've played a little too much Max.

      • Nope, I'm positive it's the first game - I haven't played the second one. Not sure what you mean by your second line - I misremembered the dialog and as the other reply showed, the reference wasn't to a nerd but just to someone controlling his every step. He's also quite specifically mentioning Max Payne, as the reference to "time slowing to show off my moves" shows (sure, now every other game has bullet-time effects but Max Payne was the first, so it was definitely referring to itself).

        Granted, it's only
  • ... did it a few times. A few times too many I thought.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2 was scary, when you got into the the big ship...cant remember what its called, you get the millitary fella going "put down the controller, you cant face this game" and generally doing the whole psyche out. Of course i played this part at 3am which didnt help.
  • Hitch-hiker's Guide was sort of self-aware, in parts. Mainly in the hints section, where it says things like 'the game's probably annoyed with you because it lost that argument'. I'm not really sure if this would qualify, though.
    • Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was *full* of it. Try typing through all the footnotes sometime and see what messages the game has in store for you. The tea/no tea puzzle also smacks of convention flaunting.

      And let us never forget the wonderful, abrupt, arbitrary ending, in which the player is told that the most wonderful adventure is about to happen, but unfortunately you'll have to buy the next game to find out what it is.

      Unfortunately, they never made a next game. Infocom is basically a wadded up p
      • Duely cursed.

        It's all coming back to me now though... I ought to get around to replaying it. Perhaps even completing it, this time.

        Did anybody let the write know? 'Cause I can't be bothered to. Come to think of it, there are probably earlier games anyway.
    • Remember the "microscopic space fleet" incident? It's triggered not by something Arthur says but by something his player types. Even the rather sad and serious (and beautiful, and beautifully packaged) Trinity [elsewhere.org] has something like that in the form of a book (IIRC) recording player input. Oddly enough I didn't find that jarring in the least.
  • I really wish the artistic community could invent a better name than post-modern for the current period. The real problem is the usage of the word modern to mean a period which ended more than a hundred years ago. No one else uses the word modern this way and to change it to conform with the artistic world would be more complicated than the reverse. Is Linux a powerful, modern, operating system? Oh excuse me. It's a powerful post-modern operating system. And it's not "this modern world". It'd be "Thi
    • I really wish the artistic community could invent a better name than post-modern for the current period.

      I hear what you're saying, and you should understand that while the term postmodernism is now mainly used by the fine art community, it originated in the art/architecture criticism community. They came up with "Modernism", they came up with "Postmodernism", and it just stuck.

      Just to flip it for a second, I've experienced similar frustration when using the words "object", "class", and "function" arou
    • The thing is, not every bit of art made today is postmodern. For something to be postmodern, it has to not take itself seriously. Pretty sure Linux doesn't fit that bill.

      Rob
  • If you set down the controller and do nothing for a certain amount of time, your character will 'yell' at you to continue. For instance, Fry says, "Earth to player, you're not playing!"

    Also, when Fry walks into the room that is the final battle of the game (which is often called the "boss level"), he says something to the effect of: "Uh oh, this looks like a boss level."

    There are other examples in that game.

    • And also Banjo-Tooie (and I think, to a lesser extent, Kazooie): they (Banjo and Kazooie) talk about how it can't be the end of the game, because the credits haven't rolled yet, and how the music's changed, indicating a boss fight. Oh, and Grunty's skull makes a reference to Banjo-Threeie.

      Prof. Mariati (or was it Moriati?) in Mad Professor M[ao]riati taps the screen if you leave him long enough.
  • At the beginning of the introductory clip, Bart is playing a video game in the living room. From the music you can hear coming out of the TV, he's playing Road Rage itself.

    At the end of the introductory clip, as Homer has decorated his car as a taxi and asks the family what they think, Bart says: "Just get to the game already!"

    If you run out of time while driving a "Road Rage" level, at the end each character has a unique funny comment. Several of them say things that seem to refer to the game, like "I thought I had more time left" and so on.

    When you finish the game, the camera zooms out of the "You Won The Game" screen to reveal that the game was being played by the aliens Kang and Kodos. One says, "This game grows tiresome!" The other responds, "Insert the alternate game disk." They then start playing an alien version of Pong and fly off.

  • Card games like MtG refer to metagaming as the act of tuning your deck (etc) between actual games. As in, you try to anticipate what your opponent has in his deck, so you alter yours to combat that. This has been a common term since Magic started.

    That sounds much cooler than defining it as "games that break the fourth wall," especially given some of the lame examples we've seen here.

  • Conker's Bad Fur Day has the most metagame ending there is. "Can you believe that? The game froze!"
    • Yeah, that was kind of cute.

      Some of the previous 4th wall breaking in that game was annoying, mostly because of the middle-school-level voice acting and/or writing. They could've been much more clever and sly about it if they didn't have the character just say something "and now X will happen, I know because X always happens in this game" but "and now X will happen, I know because...well, it always happens"

      • Just reminding you, you are talking in a thread about Conker's Bad Fur Day. I don't know what sort of intelectually stimulating event you were expecting to occur in this game. . .

        • Overall it was a pretty good game, some great minigames, and I really appreciated the chapter system allowing people to come back and get right to the cool stuff. I wasn't looking for intellectual so much as just decent in the acting and funnier in the writing. For a game that figured out how to pack SO much audio dialog into the game, it was kind of a waste...

    • Re:Conker's (Score:4, Informative)

      by SuiteSisterMary ( 123932 ) <slebrunNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday April 11, 2004 @03:30PM (#8831932) Journal

      For people unfamiliar, the ending goes something like, just as Conker is about to die by the end beastie, the game freezes. He looks around, realizes the game has frozen, and proceeds to blackmail the programmer.

      • I never have gotten to the end of Conker... I like the game, but I'm not gamer enough (read: too many RL responsibilities) to commit the time required.

        But I was going to point out Bad Fur Day as one of the games that knows it's a game. For one thing, the game is littered with "B" buttons -- I mean, they're actually green buttons with the letter "B" on them. When you stand on the "B" button, you do something special, like throw toilet paper at the Great Mighty Poo [tripod.com]. Conker occasionally quips "Hmm, this lo

  • Different Definition (Score:3, Informative)

    by acd294 ( 685183 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:17PM (#8830629) Homepage
    I have always heard a different definition for Metagaming.

    When I play pen and paper rpgs (Dungeons and Dragons, anything from whitewolf, etc), we refer to metagaming as acting in game on information that you shouldnt know in game.

    For example, the party is divided into two groups, one goes to investigate something, the other goes to find out more from the police. They roleplay the encounter with the police and the other group of course hears this in real life. Say that the police tells that group that the enemy is very well armed. Then it would be metagaming for the other group to suddenly be a lot more cautious than they would be had they not overheard (IRL) the conversation the other group had.

  • game in a game, or game knowing it's a game. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Roman_(ajvvs) ( 722885 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:48PM (#8830832) Journal
    Since it seems the definition of "metagaming" is as loose as a 4 year old's shoelaces, I thought I'd offer up a few examples from my gaming experience.

    The earliest memory I have of somethin metagamish, is probably Playing the mini-games in System Shock. They were really a game in a game, since you had to have a physical game pad to upload the games to. And in the games themselves, which showed up in one of the left or right screens, you battled against SHODAN and she had all the insanely high scores... When I first found them, I was wondering whether it was pre-cogniscient or cogniscient SHODAN I was playing against. A nice diversion from the game.

    A more recent example is something that was mentioned in another post: Character response to player (in-)activity. I've noticed in a couple of games. Prince of Persia has a really good one, which doesn't break the atmosphere or the premise of the story.. "shall I go on?"

    There's commander keen, of course (which I know is older than system shock....) who read a book and fell asleep and did stuff, if you left him in the middle of a level. Sonic, I think did it too. It's most common in scrollers, since the premise is frequently simple enough that you can get away with breaking the game world conventions like that.

    More and more game NPC's comment on their own world, often reflecting on the absurdity or irrationality of game constructs. I recall a morrowind NPC worrying about the fact noone goes to sleep at night. That's interesting considering there was a sleep cycle in Daggerfall.
    More and more games have this habit, as the worlds they create become more complex, yet with obvious limitations. It's a measure of the sophistication of gamers and developers, that limitations are not only accepted, but deliberatly pointed out.

  • Ok guys, we've argued about the semantics of "meta-gaming" long enough. So the word was used incorrectly. big deal. We all know what was meant. Could we, maybe, start talking about the article, rather than the misuse of a word? Or am I being too picky?
  • I'm most familiar with the term "metagame" in relation to Magic: the Gathering. The metagame with MtG is essentially a step above actually playing the card game. It's knowing how the players, the current card sets and deck trends are working together. For example, at a given moment, decks featuring goblins may be very popular, so you need to fashion your deck to take that into account. You play the metagame before (and while) you actually play the game.
  • Both Paper Mario on the N64 and Mario and Luigi for the GBA have some great moments where a character interacts with the player... for instance there is a scene in one where a character flys into the camera and cracks the lense. Pretty funny. I know there are others, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment.
  • Actually, many games have NPCs that tell the player to use controller buttons to do things, where the buttons are not considered in any sort of game context (like on a control panel). Nintendo's games are full of this, and are probably where it started, where some of the little elf people in Kokiri Forest keep telling you how to perform moves, and the signs outside of Peach's castle refer to pushing control sticks around.

    Earthbound's been mentioned before, but really, it probably the most meta (in the wri

  • Secret of Evermore (Score:5, Funny)

    by Landaras ( 159892 ) <neil@@@wehneman...com> on Sunday April 11, 2004 @02:19PM (#8831490) Homepage
    I googled to try to find the exact text of this, but was unsuccessful. Thankfully, the joke was funny enough that I remember it pretty well.

    In Squaresoft's 1995 game The Secret of Evermore (which was produced entirely by Americans, coincidently), there was a section of the game that took place in a huge, open-air marketplace set in pseudo-Roman times.

    Within this marketplace, there was a character tossing out the ambient "The End Is Near!" warnings and the like. Eventually, though, if you get into a conversation with him, the exchange goes something like this (emphasis mine at the end)....

    The End Is Near Guy: The End Is Near!
    You: Uh huh.
    TEIN Guy: We have no control over our destiny!
    You: Whatever.
    TEIN Guy: In fact, we are being controlled by outside forces!
    You: Suuuure.
    TEIN Guy: It's true! We but answer to the directions of our huge, button-pushing overlords!
    You: Riiiiight.
    TEIN Guy: If I am lying, may the gods strike me down where I stand!

    At this point, a dialog box pops up, with the options "Goat, Chicken, Basket" of which you get to select one.

    After selecting, two lightning bolts flash down from the sky onto TEIN Guy, and whatever you selected is left standing in his place.

    - Neil

    • Re:Secret of Evermore (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      At this point, a dialog box pops up, with the options "Goat, Chicken, Basket" of which you get to select one.

      Actually, there's a fourth option: if you'd choose not to strike him down (by pressing the "cancel" button, IIRC), he would thank you for sparing him and would give you an item.

    • Another example from Square RPGs can be found from Final Fantasy VI (or III for the American players out there). There's a puzzle in a tomb where an airship is being stored (IIRC), and you need to form a phrase out of groups of letters.

      The phrase turns out to be: THE WORLD IS SQUARE. Makes sense when you look at the typical world map of an FF game, never mind the connotation of megalomania on the developers' part. :)

  • Examples of metagaming abound.
  • In Warcraft 3, one of the Night Elf units says "For the end of the world spell, press CTRL-ALT-DELETE". Does that count?
    • No, the author specifically addressed this sort of thing in the article as an exception.

      "This is not meant to represent a character's literal speech. A tutorial section is intended to be somewhere between an online version of the instruction manual and the shorthand for the character explaining the controls. Even though he's referring to buttons on the Dual Shock, you know in the game's reality he's talking about the buttons on the plane's console, or whatever."

      One thing that I enjoyed along these lines w

  • Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (Score:4, Interesting)

    by StrongAxe ( 713301 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @04:15PM (#8832213)
    In Eternal Darkness, Sanity's Requiem, your character has a sanity meter. When your sanity gets low, certain in-game effects happen, such as hearing strange voices, having the camera angle tilt crazily, walking on the ceiling, or even hallucinating battles that don't really happen.

    However, certain effects break out of the game. In one, for example, the screen goes black, it looks like the game system reboots, and displays a "controller error" message screen. The first few times things like that happened, I thought my game had malfunctioned, but later I correlated these to losses of in-game sanity. I think this was very effective in making sanity loss seem real, by making the player (as well as the character) think he's losing his mind.
    • The best sanity effect, is the one that tells you that the game has ended (when you are in the middle of the story), and that in order to see the real ending, you must buy the sequel, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Redemption:.

      Very funny.
    • The VERY BEST insanity effect I ever experienced in Eternal Darkness:

      I was up late playing, and suddenly my TV MUTES!

      I even see a little green text screen overlay "MUTE" in the corner. Forget the fact that it wasn't -exactly- like my TV's MUTE overlay, it was close enough.

      I was scambling for the remote, thinking I had sat on it, when the sound came back on. Then my character screamed "This isn't happening!" Best mindtrick ever.

      Honorable mentions (spoilers):

      * A layer of bugs start crawling on top of
  • In one of the phantasy star 2 prelude games, there's a house where a slightly dazed kid is playing it as well.
  • ...since half of you didn't read it (yes, I'm looking at you) I'll mention it here. In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, you start the game in the "real" world. And I mean real - the main character's favorite game is Final Fantasy (he lives in a yellow house, too, which really freaked me out because I do, too - what are the odds? ;-)). Well, anyhoo, he finds a magic book with his friends and they're all transported into a very Final Fantasy-like world. (The character even mentions that the world is just li

  • Black and white... (Score:3, Funny)

    by ynnaD ( 700908 ) on Monday April 12, 2004 @03:04AM (#8835991)
    ...had numerous references to the player, the game itself, the developers (lionhead studios), and even south park. Ingame the player has a good and an evil conscience, and the two constantly bicker.

    Some of the more amusing conversations between the two occur when you don't touch the keyboard for a while. Here are some samples:

    Good conscience: "Jeez, our Boss is inactive. Let's rock from side to side."
    Evil conscience: "Maybe we can tip over the monitor!"
    Good: "No, you red fool. We're part of the conscience. We're inside our god's head!"
    Evil: "Okay. Let's rock and tip over the Boss's mind!"
    Good: "Hmm. You are the weirdest demon I've ever shared a skull with."

    ---

    Good: "I spy with my little eye, something beginning with B"
    Evil: "Brain."
    Good: "Yes."
    Evil: "OK. I spy with my evil eye, something beginning with S"
    Good: "Skull."
    Evil: "Yeah."
    Good: "I spy with my little..."
    Evil: "Shuddup! Sorry. I just can't take it any more. Skull, brain, brain skull.") Good: "You're right. We should get out more."
  • In Prince of Persia 2(the original side-view platforming series), you reach a point in the game where you must die to continue. ...yeah.

    You see, you're in this temple, and you want to steal the magic flame hidden inside it. But, as one message reads, "he who would steal the flame must die."

    The thing is, you might easily miss this and get stuck, because the player can "end" the Prince's death and restart the level at any time. Instead you have to wait for quite a while after he dies, perhaps 15 seconds, to

  • One game not mentioned in that heavily implements some of the concepts in the article is Namco/Monolith's forthcoming RPG, Baten Kaitos. (Released in December 2003 in Japan; NA/European release dates TBA.)

    In Kaitos, the player assumes the role of a guiding "spirit" that travels with the main character throughout the story. It's a pretty cool concept, actually: the main character "introduces" each new party member to you as you play, and asks you for input before making a decision. It doesn't really affe

  • "Metagames show awareness of their nature as games [snip] they know that they're polygons on a screen"

    "Are there other examples of titles which address the player in this awfully postmodern way?"

    Darkened Skye [simonsays.com] (Review [avault.com] at The Adrenaline Vault) Not the best game I've ever played, but I continue to play it for this very reason. It doesn't take itself seriously. The main character (Skye) and her helper deamon (Draak) know very well that they are in a game. That and the fact that it's an interactive Skit

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