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Games Entertainment

Missing the 'Whole' Point in Game Development 63

Posted by Zonk from the game-design-as-a-zen-thing dept.
An Anonymous Reader wrote to tell us about Walter Kim of the Ludonauts. He has an interesting argument about game design: "many videogame developers, particularly the Western ones, approach their craft with far too much of a hard-headed pragmatism, a nuts and bolts mentality about development that has, consciously or unconsciously, extended itself to design. What you end up with are a bunch of games that, while they may exhibit a great deal of cleverness on the level of individual level design, are stitched together with about as much finesse as duct tape."
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Missing the 'Whole' Point in Game Development More

Missing the 'Whole' Point in Game Development

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  • "Spielberg is wrong, of course, in the sense that some videogames have indeed broken the mold."

    Well, then you may remember how a movie came out called AI (Artificial Intelliegence). This was Spielbergs movie. He had a promo for the movie that was called "The Beast". This was the birth of a new kind of gaming. One called Alternate Reality Gaming http://www.argeuro.net/ [argeuro.net] where the game could call, email and even fax you. How many games break those rules. It didn't even have a graphics engine.

    The Be

  • Tesco's Economy Monal Lisa (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Different Tan ( 784289 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:11PM (#10480468)
    Games are seen as 'product' rather than art. When a car designer (as the man himself says) sits down and designs a Porsche, he isn't thinking 'product', he's thinking art. Art isn't about one bit being perfect, but about the overall impression being spot on.
    • What you said only applies for art as in "skill." Car design is, after all, engineering. A designer can never do anything he pleases, for he is restriced by the laws of physics, etc. It should also be taken into account that something of high aesthetic value might not always be the most functional, at least not in the pragmatic sense (see, for instance, "high fashion" clothes, or the Colani Laiglon [oldtimerteam.de]).
      • Maybe attaining functionality is part of the art. Creating something within the constraints of physics. Does art have to be without constraint? And would you therefore say engineering is not an art? It's an art of functionality, yes, but there is a seeking, questing nature there, a desire to realise something (and solve it) which is much like the act of creation. Art is realising the thoughts in the artist's head, and solving the problem of how to display them. And (to revive a terrible old saw) if art is a
        • Well, a piece of art can never be devoid of any functionality: even a piece of modern sculpture can be used for something (perhaps for cracking its creator's skull). It is true, however, that a work of art is quite often thought to have lost its original function. An ornate hammer is not a hammer anymore, in the sense that noone would use it for pounding nails. Note, however, that this loss of function is completely conventional: it's not a hammer anymore because some people have agreed to see it as a piece

  • already made me cry (Score:4, Funny)

    by jeif1k ( 809151 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:28PM (#10480602)
    "I think the real indicator will be when somebody confesses that they cried at level 17,"

    Daikatana made my cry at level 1.

    Still, the guys have a point: video games are not engaging enough.
    • My largest problem with the games-as-a-form-of-storytelling concept is that the strongest examples they can point to are the weakest examples of games. The gameplay in final fantasy is underwhelming.

      Deus Ex is easily the best game out there fusing game and story, but Warren would be quick to point out its shortcomings. Major plot points are outside your control. Your character exudes as much sentiment as the robot he essentially is. What it does well is give you narrative that doesn't interrupt the action,

    • OK so I didn't exactly cry in ICO [icothegame.com], but at one point I got worried [advogato.org] that maybe the NPC might be in serious trouble. I think that qualifies.

      Anyone interested in arts and games shoud definitely check out ICO: the gameplay is fun in itself (it's basically the precursor for the new Prince of Persia game, where the puzzle is in the 3D architecture itself), but its artistic qualities make it the "poem of computer games".

  • Duct Tape Finesse (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Grey Ninja ( 739021 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:29PM (#10480613) Homepage Journal
    I think it's about time to bring out one of the more famous John Carmack quotes. "Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie; it's expected to be there, but it's not that important."

    I have great respect for John Carmack as a programmer, but I absolutely despise his games. Honestly, I think that the western developers could really learn something from the Japanese. About the only western developers that I know of that make games that I personally feel the need to play are Ubisoft (Prince of Persia), and Silicon Knights (Eternal Darkness, Blood Omen, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes).
    • Those games are not bad (and Eternal Darkness was great in some respects), but there are certainly other western publisher worth their salt. Bioware and Blizzard are two favorite examples. Maxis games helmed by Will Wright are another, and don't forget about Sid Meier and Peter Molyneux.

      But the poor fact is, these are pinpricks of light admist a vast, black curtain. Most western games are horrible. But then again, most eastern games are also horrible, it's just the better ones we see over here. Also,
      • I also loved Origin before they met EA's axe, and I also have some respect for EA Canada. And yes, Blizzard is one that I forgot to mention. (And I can't wait for Pirates 2). Peter Molyneux thoroughly unimpresses me though, and Bioware doesn't make games that appeal to me. (But I appreciate the production value)

        Namco, Konami, Nintendo, Sega, Capcom and Enix I think are the big Japanese names. But I think what I was really getting at in my post is that the value of the average Japanese game is much m
        • Think for a moment:

          Capcom does makes original stuff once in a while, like Viewtiful Joe. But they're greatly outnumbered by the sequels they produce. Just HOW long have they beaten that Street Fighter horse? How many times did they use what was practically the same engine for each NES Mega Man game? Say what you will about Nintendo making sequels, but each of the 2D Marios is still a different game in many ways. When they get a big hit, like Resident Evil, you'll see game after practically unchanged g

    • Jak II (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 ) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Saturday October 09, 2004 @08:08PM (#10482491) Journal
      First of all, John Carmack is right about his own games. I enjoy them, and in an FPS, it's generally true that you can have a good experience with very little plot.

      Still, plot can work with the game. Here's my example: Jak II. There's some outstanding gameplay, the world is absolutely massive and very cohesive -- only three or four major areas, the rest of the levels are all seamlessly melded into the City. And I do mean seamless, and that is my impression of the entire game. Comments are made all the time, cinematic scenes are short and relatively infrequent. The plot is not incredibly complex, but it is very well tied to the gameplay.

      The way games are going to absolutely leave movies in the dust is when AI gets so good that the designers mostly do a rough outline of the game, and spend most of their time in character design and AI. MMOs are sort of moving in that direction, but the advantage of local AI is that they are more expressive, never lag, never talk out-of-character, and can be saved and restored.

      Think about how Half-Life 2 works (in the videos, anyway) -- the physics engine and wide-open level design allows you to be very creative and have a lot of freedom in how each battle goes. Half-Life was like that, only less so. Yet the experience was seamless and linear, so you got enough freedom to have fun with the game, but enough limitation and design that you can "lose yourself in the artist's world".

      What I think Speilberg wants is for the character and plot to go the same way -- not like a choose-your-own-adventure book, not like write-your-own-book, but like life with fate.
    • Umm, EA games? The Sims series?

  • Story and Game (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SansTinfoilHat ( 759207 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @03:39PM (#10480689)
    These are the kinds of threads I like to spend my mod points on, but I'll bite the bullet and respond.

    While there are a lot of good items to digest in the article, what we have here is a commentary on filmmakers who think about game design in terms of filmmaking. But game design is NOT filmmaking, no matter how much people these days like to equate the two.

    I can think of a hundred counterexamples to 'there's no reminder, nothing refreshes who these characters are' and I am sure you can too. Ico springs to mind.

    The problem is that STORY and GAME tend to be very discrete elements, where in a movie STORY and MOVIE are one and the same and this is where that expectation comes from. Level designs that ignore story (as discussed in the article) or story that obfuscates (or simply makes unimportant) the game elements (see Xenosaga and many other RPGs), is simply bad design and while it may be a State-of-the-Medium issue, I believe as games get more and more into the cultural forefront, we will see better and better designs where STORY and GAME are one in a way that filmmakers simply don't comprehend right now.

    That's just my optimistic opinion though.

    • Re:Story and Game (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Apreche ( 239272 )
      You're close to being right. In a movie the movie and story are actually seperate things. Look at something like Citizen Kane. The film making is absolute perfection, but the story is not. Not to say the story is bad, but its been bested. My film-making I mean cinematography, camera work, editing all those thing you can do really well while still having a terrible story.

      In video games you add one more component which movies do not have, and that is user interaction. The problem is that often one thing, sto

      • Re:Story and Game (Score:3, Interesting)

        by cgenman ( 325138 )
        Viewing user interaction in gaming as a portion of a story is succombing to linear design. Not only do you have "interaction," you have player choice, a world rich enough that every corner the player peeks around contains something, you have the systems of the world interacting with themselves and the player in interesting and frequently unpredictable ways.

        I'm not convinced that emphasizing all areas is the way to go, with current budgets. As you point out most games which are successful are so ignoring
    • Movies are part story, part effects, part acting. No matter what you read on IMDB or in the NYT, movies exist beyond the script.

      Games that have extensive stories generally have limited replay value. EX: Max Payne, Beyond Good & Evil. A really good game that brings together story, engine, maps, and all the other things great, takes ten times the effort to make it repayable. A game with limited play-time either has to make up for it or is severely marked down in ratings - see Fable. Despite all its

    • The problem is that STORY and GAME tend to be very discrete elements, where in a movie STORY and MOVIE are one and the same and this is where that expectation comes from.

      I'll agree that this tends to be true, but ... We've all posted a few exceptions to this general rule (as there are quite a few), and I'm kinda disappointed that everyone's glossed over my favorite: Shenmue. There's a game where STORY and GAME are almost completely one and the same. While I know it has a boatload of flaws, I absolutely

  • Aeris' Death (Score:4, Informative)

    by MilenCent ( 219397 ) <johnwh@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Saturday October 09, 2004 @04:47PM (#10481151) Homepage
    The first footnote from the article:

    I recently stumbled across a review (http://xenon.stanford.edu/~geksiong/papers/sts145 /Final%20Fantasy%20VII.htm) of Final Fantasy VII for a Stanford History of Computer Game Design class. This review claims that Aeris' death is the first time in RPG history that the death of a main playable character is an "essential and critical element of the plot." Completely untrue. It was done at least once before, in Sega's 1994 RPG, Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millenium.

    Oy. It was done much earlier than that, in Phantasy Star II. Oh who will morn for poor, forgotten Nei? Or Tellah (FF II/IV), for that matter? Or the Flying Men from Mother?

    • Good to know. And yeah, I figured it had to be done elsewhere, and earlier than even PS4 (which is why I included the "at least"), but I have limited experience and had to settle for a minimal claim.
      • No prob, and I caught the "at least."

        The origins of the console-style RPG genre reside in Dragon Quest/Warrior, but RPGs are a fair bit older than that. Wizardry, Bard's Tale and Ultima all predate what the typical "modern" gamer would call an RPG, and although I haven't played them all, I'm pretty sure there are moments like that in at least one of them.

    • ...or Dupré in Ultima VII pt2: Serpent Isle...

      In FF7 Aeris' case is slightly different because she was just simply slaughtered for no reason whatsoever in the middle of the game, and I heard the designer's intention was to make a counterpoint, because most of the preceding games had some sort of heroic, meaningful sacrifice of a character. So, the designer was perfectly aware that major characters die all the time in games, and probably even that that was actually turning into one of the defining cli

      • Interesting, because now I've heard two opposite reactions to Aeris' death in this forum: she became the hero at the end in spirit form, and her death meant squat.

        Random character death is not a good thing in a story, because stories are not random. Things that happen in them should appear unplanned, but should not be arbitrary. Everything should happen for a reason, even if it's not an obvious one. Killing off a character for no reason at all is bad writing.

        Of course, I'm something of an outspoken cri
      • Aye.. Dupré in Serpernt Isle.. I never liked that part.
        You also needed to sacrifice a companion to Blackthorne in U5. You could chose who would go.

        By the way, I never thanked you enough for directing me to NWNC a few years ago.. I've been playing each sunday the "Avatarship" campaign, based on Zonker's Ultima 4 adaptation, with more or less the same players for around 2 years now.

        In the next few sessions, we'll be going to the abyss, meaning this journey is about to be over. I'll need to write a so
    • Actually, you'll never have a real answer to this one. "Essential and critical element of the plot" is a very subjective qualifier and we could argue it all day. Nevertheless, it's obvious that it was done before Final Fantasy VII, and that the first time really depends on how critical you think the character is. I've seen people get very very involved with text-based games, and even freak out when characters in those die.
      • "Essential and critical element of the plot" is one of those things that is more obvious in some cases than others. Does Moby Dick need Captain Ahab? By all means, yes. Other things aren't as certain; Peter Jackson apparently didn't think that Tom Bombadil or the Scouring of the Shire needed to be in his movie, but Tolkien thought enough of them to put them in the books.

        It is possible to argue this about many things, however. In practice, the determinor of whether something is "needed" for the story fa

  • Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Weirdofreak ( 769987 ) <weirdofreak@gmail.com> on Saturday October 09, 2004 @04:55PM (#10481203)
    Some developers want to tell you that games are just about fun. I like fun a lot, but they're wrong and prejudiced, no matter how kindly and innocent they sound saying it. We need to push forward with designing games from a strongly holistic standpoint if we're to get anywhere with emotional affect, story "telling", and thematics. Designing and developing videogames is not, and cannot be merely about the pragmatics of creating entertainment. Otherwise, our medium of choice will not be able to reach a wider audience, to become universal in its appeal.
    Excuse me? I play games because I find them fun. Games with no/little plot can still be plenty fun (Zelda I, Tetris, Goldeneye, Animal Crossing - don't tell me they suck). Why cut a game out just because it aims purely to be fun?

    There are of course games where the enjoyment comes from the progression of the story (Final Fantasies), and I enjoy them every bit as much as I enjoy the first sort, if not more. However, games with more integral stories lose some of the charm of the others. Ever tried playing an RPG, then coming back after ages? You have no idea what's going on. Tetris, Pong or Pac-man can be played anywhere, anytime, by anybody. Final Fantasy 3/6 or Chrono Trigger, despite being oft-hailed as the best masterpieces ever to be experience, require lots of time, just like a book - but you can't play on the bus (unless they get ported to a handheld) and you can't stop just anywhere. They have many of the failings of books, such as losing the thread if you go away for too long, as well as many others that you get from either interactivity or the almost purely grapical output - ever been annoyed because you can't go to x until you've been to y thanks to a big rockfall that mysteriously vanishes later? There are of course some games where your actions are what allow you to progress, but even they seem far too tacky sometimes, such as picking up an item in x which allows you to destroy the rockfall, and an item in y which lets you get to the next place. In a book you don't have those problems, because you get no control - if the main character is supposed to go to x, then dammit, he will go to x! And the graphical output is another downfall that movies and games (text-based games excluded) can have compred to books, because you don't know thoughts, or even emotions beyond what the actors can express. You can't -not- have the graphical output, which means that things like the weird guy on the poles from one of the Hitch-hiker books who steps from one to another, thirty feet apart without anything appearing to distort fail utterly.

    While I will always love any game whch makes me cry (none have succeeded - nor, for that matter have any books or movies, although The Crucible came damn close), to focus on just the fact that you get more engaged because of the interaction would be to lose half the charm of the medium - that you can pick it up, play, and put it down again for ages. I have nothing against games which try to be like a book or a movie, but f it weren't for the ones which do something completely different that can't be obtained from the others, the medium would have died a long time ago.

    And for the record, everybody died in Final Fantasy II/IV. Usually several times.
    • As the author of the article, I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not against fun games, or games that are merely about having fun in any way.

      What I AM against, are people who try to insist that fun is and must be the whole point of making any game in the first place. Some games can just be about having fun, but it's a prejudiced view to insist that ALL of them have to be.

      I want a diversity of reasons to make and play games, not just one.

    • Excuse me? I play games because I find them fun. Games with no/little plot can still be plenty fun (Zelda I, Tetris, Goldeneye, Animal Crossing - don't tell me they suck). Why cut a game out just because it aims purely to be fun?

      While I get your point, I'd like to point out that Animal Crossing does have a bit of plot and story, but it's more like an ongoing narrative that you create. IMHO, that's what makes it a lot of fun, that you have a say in how things turn out for your town full of characters.

  • Tomato, Tomoto... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I suppose it has alot to do with suspension of disbelief. While most, if not all western developers do tend to make games based more on fun rather than story, and content, rather than context, this isnt a fundamentally flawed concept.

    Something must still be said for the ability to engage the user/player upon those qualities alone, which a fair number of AAA titles have done in recent memory. Its a different market. Im a huge fan of RPG's, and engrossing story lines, from Final Fantasy, to homebrew D
  • I'm sure plenty of recluse geeks have cried when their elf girlfriends broke up with them. I think that's the fundamental misunderstanding that both sides of this debate are missing--video games are better thought of as a PLACE than a STORY. Developers define a set of rules, and players--both human and automaton--interact within that set of rules. Now, it might be an open question whether we can ever make a tear jerker game that involves only one human player, but that seems like more of a Turing Test qu
  • Spielburg can make the movie " Old Yeller" into FPS game, that should cause some TEARS! Hold on, WTF am I saying?
    • Spielburg can make the movie " Old Yeller" into FPS game, that should cause some TEARS!

      Or "My Dinner With Andre". Or "Fried Green Tomatoes". The possibilities are endless, really.

  • Spielberg? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by radimvice ( 762083 ) on Saturday October 09, 2004 @10:30PM (#10483243) Homepage
    Two words.... E.T. [wikipedia.org]

    A cogent argument could be made suggesting that Spielberg's 'game design intuition' was the single greatest cause of the great video game crash of 1983. The man may make some good movies, but I'll never listen to a DAMN thing he says regarding games, because he obviously has no clue what he's talking about. I'm surprised neither Walter nor Chris brought the great ET debacle up in their articles.

    On another note - increased realism is not going to be and never was the driving force for good games. it's been a driving force for the industry, the millions of fanboys who eat up a few extra mole marks on their polygonal models and the graphics cards companies who happily sell us upgraded machinery every six months, but we've been seeing the same old, tired, incredibly conservative games and forms of gameplay for years now.

    The first time I cried from playing a video game was playing WWF Wrestlemania (or something like that) for the SNES. I picked it out for my ninth or so birthday because I saw some screenshots in Nintendo Power, and they looked so photo-realistic that I wanted to play it. After taking it home and turning it on, I was appalled by the simplistic button mashing that grew tedious after only a few minutes. I cried all night for being so easily tricked by the lure of realism, and vowed never to give realism in games any thought again. I still have that cartridge today as a reminder.

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