First, the TIGSource B-Game Competition is over. If you recall, I was involved with one of the games, donating 5 games to the The 100-in-1 Klik & Play Pirate Kart. We took 6th place (out of 29) so that’s pretty good! The winner was also one of the games I voted for because I have a soft spot for zombies. Unfortunately I don’t think that this actually resolves the issue that the competition set out to tackle: what is a B-Game. The winning game ended up being very polished, and sort-of straight forward. It was clichéd in many ways though, which is kind of always how I see B-Movies (clichéd and bombastic, which Cottage of Doom fits into). Also, of the two mentioned writeups on the games, my entries to the Pirate Cart were mention in each. Kick the Habit was mentioned in one, and Sad Old Man in the other (though just in image form).
~Over at High Dynamic Range Lying there was a new entry titled Telling stories and Realizing worlds. Since I’m replaying and still greatly enjoying Half-Life 2 again the image at the top made me read more carefully than usual to what Nayan was saying. He touched on some topics about HL2 which I think are both prominent and important not only to the game itself, but games in general. I recommend reading the article linked to above otherwise my comments may seem a bit disjointed (which, you know, they are):
HL2 is pretty much, the state of the medium as far as combining narrative and gameplay. The result is the emergent product. I honestly feel like this is what most reviews miss, or at least don’t realize is the point of the game. The product is not the disc sitting in the box. It’s not a list of bullet points and length. The product is the result of many months/years of hard work from the developers mixed with the player. Unlike most mediums, a game does not exist without a player. A game can not exist in a vacuum where graphics or writing alone actually mean something and can be graded. This is not to say that the graphics are irrelevant: flash-level graphics may get the job done as well as cell-processor level HDR bump-mapped graphics. The product is dependent on how well the creator gets their point across using an actor they’ve never met.
For the instance of a puzzle game, the actor is omniscient and molding the game around them. Without the developer to give them the items to mold there is no game, and graphics or story exist as spread sheets or movies. These items only exist as a result of the emergent narrative.
It’s interesting to think about, and the more that developers actually do think about it the better experiences we’re going to have. Valve goes through extensive play testing and QA stages (note that Bungie also did for Halo 3). In these play test sessions they make sure that the player is doing what they want them to do as an actor. As a result the player (generally) will follow a script they don’t even know exists for them, and experience something above and beyond what any other medium can offer. The best example of this is the very early chase sequence in Half-Life 2. As a result of so much play testing I ended up falling directly into the hands of the developer and was molded like putty into the actor I needed to be. It was brilliant, and probably one of my fondest game memories from the past 5 years.
Also, it’s pretty important to differentiate between Story and Narrative. Story is the easier side: it’s what’s told to the player, either in text or through video/cutscene. Narrative is a slightly different beast which is far more developed in earlier games than since the birth of the cutscene. For example: Strider. The narrative is the player killing wolves in the artic to break into a mechanical fort. As the player runs across the mine laden snow field the narrative of what’s happening unravels: you’re running down the side of a mountain and entering a base. When the sequence is over you, the player, know you have just done this but the game never states it, you don’t have your actions re-told or encompassed into a story. Many arcade games and early console games did this best, and as a result we have very fond memories of these games because we made their stories, they weren’t told to us. One of the most crushing days for me in gaming was finding out every little detail about Samus’ past via the anime storyboards in Zero Mission. Since the story of Metroid had previously been so much based on the narrative I created through playing, the illusion was shattered with “real” explanations. Narrative is very powerful, and often something that is lazily ignored in current game design.
Sorry, I’ve gotten way off topic and gone on long enough! I think the point I was getting to is that the games with the best stories are the ones incorporating it into the emergent narrative of the game rather than forcing it as an aside.
So basically I just wanted to capture that here and talk about Half-Life 2 a little more.
~ As a final note, I was linked to a really excellent blog recently titled The Criterion Contraption written by Matthew Dessem. As an aspiring script writer he’s currently going through ever Criterion film in order of release on DVD to get a better understanding of foreign film, and film in general. He does a lot of research into each film with a self established average of fifteen hours work put into each entry. After about three years of steady work on the blog even Criterion has officially recognized it and linked to it from their main site. He’s only up to #77 (Criterion is currently up to #401) but there are still some really amazing films up to that point. This also reminded me that I need to invest in some of those new Eclipse series box sets Criterion is releasing. Specifically the Ozu and Kurosawa box sets.
