As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/

i have an infection in my butt, a game design infection

13468934

Posts

  • OrikaeshigitaeOrikaeshigitae Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited January 2011
    we're talking about teaching computers how to create things with artistic merit

    i don't know how you can know anything about procedural storytelling or ai development and think this is a sentence that makes sense

    Orikaeshigitae on
  • EdcrabEdcrab Actually a hack Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    takyris wrote: »
    (I am assuming that once the player can see how the system works, they aren't engaged on an emotional level. I could be entirely full of crap. Opinions!)

    It got brought up a few times in the Fallout: NV thread, but the repeated use of the exact same lines by different voice actors really stood out like a sore thumb to me and struck me as lazy resource management

    If you have to go to the trouble of having multiple actors record a line, at least make each a variation of that line

    Edcrab on
    cBY55.gifbmJsl.png
  • DrIanMalcolmDrIanMalcolm Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    how interesting would it be to have a short, semi-weekly game dev podcast from some of the folks here at arenanet as we develop guild wars 2?

    assuming it's interesting to anyone but me, how do you continue to make it interesting week after week without asking the same questions? and how do you make it accessible to both technical and non-technical audiences? (full disclosure: I don't listen to any dev podcasts so this paradigm is probably well-established)

    You could bring in guys from different departments to talk about their work each week, talk about big successes/failures, things that aren't doable yet but that they'd like to do, etc. Irrational Games, Bungie, and Insomniac games all have good dev podcasts so you could also listen and see how they do it

    DrIanMalcolm on
  • CrashmoCrashmo Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    I am currently trying to make a game by myself in my spare time

    It's an srpg, and I already have the setting/rules/classes/skills set up, but man there is a lot of sprite work to be done

    I am debating making a companion webcomic to go along with it, but first I'm going to have to stop being a useless pile of butts

    Crashmo on
    polar-bearsig.jpg
  • RankenphileRankenphile Passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited January 2011
    how interesting would it be to have a short, semi-weekly game dev podcast from some of the folks here at arenanet as we develop guild wars 2?

    assuming it's interesting to anyone but me, how do you continue to make it interesting week after week without asking the same questions? and how do you make it accessible to both technical and non-technical audiences? (full disclosure: I don't listen to any dev podcasts so this paradigm is probably well-established)

    It would be insanely interesting to me and a number of folks I know

    having one week be talking t a level designer about what he did this week and troubles he ran into, things we did well, whatever, and then next week talking to a concept artists or an animator or a technical artist or a programmer or anything would be awesome. Talking about how they got there, what skills they use in their job, how they relate to their job, things they enjoy outside of work and how they may or may not relate to game creation, etc

    not even GW specific stuff, but I always think hearing from the folks actually making games is WAY more interesting then hearing from the hype machine about how exciting a game is going to be

    Rankenphile on
    8406wWN.png
  • CrashmoCrashmo Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Edcrab wrote: »
    takyris wrote: »
    (I am assuming that once the player can see how the system works, they aren't engaged on an emotional level. I could be entirely full of crap. Opinions!)

    It got brought up a few times in the Fallout: NV thread, but the repeated use of the exact same lines by different voice actors really stood out like a sore thumb to me and struck me as lazy resource management

    If you have to go to the trouble of having multiple actors record a line, at least make each a variation of that line

    Man this is a severe pet peeve of mine

    Walking around a town and you hear

    Greetings, stranger! Greetings, stranger. Greetings, stranger! Greetings...stranger.

    It makes me feel like I'm on The Truman Show

    Crashmo on
    polar-bearsig.jpg
  • takyristakyris Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Edcrab wrote: »
    takyris wrote: »
    (I am assuming that once the player can see how the system works, they aren't engaged on an emotional level. I could be entirely full of crap. Opinions!)

    It got brought up a few times in the Fallout: NV thread, but the repeated use of the exact same lines by different voice actors really stood out like a sore thumb to me and struck me as lazy resource management

    If you have to go to the trouble of having multiple actors record a line, at least make each a variation of that line

    Oh, yeah, if you want something done procedurally, at least until we get text-to-speech software significantly better than is on the market now OR fantastic on-the-fly dialog-splicing of prerecorded words or syllables, you should really take VO out entirely.

    takyris on
  • RankenphileRankenphile Passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited January 2011
    Crashmo wrote: »
    Edcrab wrote: »
    takyris wrote: »
    (I am assuming that once the player can see how the system works, they aren't engaged on an emotional level. I could be entirely full of crap. Opinions!)

    It got brought up a few times in the Fallout: NV thread, but the repeated use of the exact same lines by different voice actors really stood out like a sore thumb to me and struck me as lazy resource management

    If you have to go to the trouble of having multiple actors record a line, at least make each a variation of that line

    Man this is a severe pet peeve of mine

    Walking around a town and you hear

    Greetings, stranger! Greetings, stranger. Greetings, stranger! Greetings...stranger.

    It makes me feel like I'm on The Truman Show
    it isn't lazy, it's efficient

    you guys underestimate how much time and money goes into recording and creating this stuff, and how much money and time any dev cycle has allocated to creating them

    Rankenphile on
    8406wWN.png
  • OrikaeshigitaeOrikaeshigitae Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited January 2011
    i'm probably using procedurally generated conversation for the detective thing, because it cuts down on my writing load and it makes sense to do from a 'limited viewpoint' perspective - repeating similar lines wouldn't really be a problem because you're asking questions about evidence all the time

    Orikaeshigitae on
  • OrikaeshigitaeOrikaeshigitae Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited January 2011
    also if you are angry about fallout voice acting you should read this as per rank's post: http://www.magicalwasteland.com/mw/2009/7/22/once-more-with-feeling.html

    Orikaeshigitae on
  • takyristakyris Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Crashmo wrote: »
    Edcrab wrote: »
    takyris wrote: »
    (I am assuming that once the player can see how the system works, they aren't engaged on an emotional level. I could be entirely full of crap. Opinions!)

    It got brought up a few times in the Fallout: NV thread, but the repeated use of the exact same lines by different voice actors really stood out like a sore thumb to me and struck me as lazy resource management

    If you have to go to the trouble of having multiple actors record a line, at least make each a variation of that line

    Man this is a severe pet peeve of mine

    Walking around a town and you hear

    Greetings, stranger! Greetings, stranger. Greetings, stranger! Greetings...stranger.

    It makes me feel like I'm on The Truman Show
    it isn't lazy, it's efficient

    you guys underestimate how much time and money goes into recording and creating this stuff, and how much money and time any dev cycle has allocated to creating them

    I'm... actually not really underestimating.

    takyris on
  • bsjezzbsjezz Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    NV was infinitely better than Fallout 3 in those stakes

    Yes Man for best performance since nate drake

    bsjezz on
    sC4Q4nq.jpg
  • DarricDarric Santa MonicaRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    we're talking about teaching computers how to create things with artistic merit

    i don't know how you can know anything about procedural storytelling or ai development and think this is a sentence that makes sense

    I resent this a little, assuming you're opposing B-zero's assertion that it's possible.

    Darric on
  • RankenphileRankenphile Passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited January 2011
    takyris wrote: »
    Crashmo wrote: »
    Edcrab wrote: »
    takyris wrote: »
    (I am assuming that once the player can see how the system works, they aren't engaged on an emotional level. I could be entirely full of crap. Opinions!)

    It got brought up a few times in the Fallout: NV thread, but the repeated use of the exact same lines by different voice actors really stood out like a sore thumb to me and struck me as lazy resource management

    If you have to go to the trouble of having multiple actors record a line, at least make each a variation of that line

    Man this is a severe pet peeve of mine

    Walking around a town and you hear

    Greetings, stranger! Greetings, stranger. Greetings, stranger! Greetings...stranger.

    It makes me feel like I'm on The Truman Show
    it isn't lazy, it's efficient

    you guys underestimate how much time and money goes into recording and creating this stuff, and how much money and time any dev cycle has allocated to creating them

    I'm... actually not really underestimating.

    No, you're just making assumptions based on anecdotal evidence

    Rankenphile on
    8406wWN.png
  • OrikaeshigitaeOrikaeshigitae Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited January 2011
    Darric wrote: »
    we're talking about teaching computers how to create things with artistic merit

    i don't know how you can know anything about procedural storytelling or ai development and think this is a sentence that makes sense

    I resent this a little, assuming you're opposing B-zero's assertion that it's possible.

    that's cool, i really don't mind if that offends you

    Orikaeshigitae on
  • RankenphileRankenphile Passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited January 2011
    I actually kind of enjoy offending people

    Karl come down and help me design rooms for this haunted mansion, I already have three room concepts basically figured out and an idea how to make them work

    Rankenphile on
    8406wWN.png
  • bsjezzbsjezz Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    takyris wrote: »
    text-to-speech software significantly better than is on the market now

    same issue. performance is an art and for art you need a human. sure, a lot of the performances in videogame VO are far from art, but saying 'ah hell, we'll just make a kick-arse speech reader, more content more quickly and we don't need to pay those pesky actors!' is to me resigning to failure

    edit: that's not to say it won't happen, because it probably will. but it'll be a sad day.

    bsjezz on
    sC4Q4nq.jpg
  • takyristakyris Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    No, you're just making assumptions based on anecdotal evidence

    I was in a meeting two hours ago with the Mass Effect 3 VO director, in which we talked about the costs of getting specific actors for a given number of sessions.

    I can't guarantee that it holds true for every company out there, but I'm willing to put some confidence in what I'm saying.

    takyris on
  • RankenphileRankenphile Passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood.Registered User, Moderator mod
    edited January 2011
    takyris wrote: »
    takyris wrote: »
    I'm... actually not really underestimating.

    No, you're just making assumptions based on anecdotal evidence

    I was in a meeting two hours ago with the Mass Effect 3 VO director, in which we talked about the costs of getting specific actors for a given number of sessions.

    I can't guarantee that it holds true for every company out there, but I'm willing to put some confidence in what I'm saying.

    fair enough

    Rankenphile on
    8406wWN.png
  • vsovevsove ....also yes. Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    The quote tagging there confused the crap out of me.

    Also, Karl, Edmonton winters put hair on your chest.

    (It is going to get even colder than it is today. I walk five minutes to work and it is already a walk I am dreading.)

    vsove on
    WATCH THIS SPACE.
  • UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIRE BUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    bsjezz wrote: »
    Darric wrote: »
    bsjezz wrote: »
    I fully expect we will be able to create excellent procedural narratives within the next century, actually.

    good luck with that!

    edit: i suppose you may be right, if you've got very low expectations for an 'excellent narrative'

    Eh, a century in the age of computing is a pretty goddamn long time.

    we aren't talking about computers

    we're talking about art

    And this is where we need to look at games differently. The ongoing need to compare games to other art forms, and judge them by the standards of those art forms is simply wrong and helps nobody. Can games tell stories in the way that movies and books tell stories, and as well? Nope, and I'd argue that the harder you try to do so, the more you abandon the defining quality that sets games apart - interactivity with the person consuming the art.

    "You know what you and I get to live through? The birth of a new art form. The percentage of human beings that get to experience that has got to be so un-fucking-believably small"
    - Quintin Smith, The Journey of Saga, pt. 6

    That particular quote blew my mind when I read it, as I hadn't thought of things in that way before that point, and once I had I couldn't get that idea out of my head. To respond to bsjezz's statement, the question shouldn't be whether the story that is procedurally generated is art, as that is just a part of the game as a whole. The game itself, and the means by which it generates and tells it's stories, and how it interacts with the player, that is the art.

    Even leaving the procedural generation argument aside, will a story told through a video game ever be as good as a novel written by a great author? The novel is almost pure storytelling, where a (good) game needs to relinquish some authorial control to the player, and make allowances for interaction and playability. It's that interaction, that involving the player in the story and allowing them to make it theirs that will let games do what novels cannot, and as the medium matures, that's where they will be comparable as art forms.

    UnbrokenEva on
  • EdcrabEdcrab Actually a hack Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    bsjezz wrote: »
    takyris wrote: »
    text-to-speech software significantly better than is on the market now

    same issue. performance is an art and for art you need a human. sure, a lot of the performances in videogame VO are far from art, but saying 'ah hell, we'll just make a kick-arse speech reader, more content more quickly and we don't need to pay those pesky actors!' is to me resigning to failure

    edit: that's not to say it won't happen, because it probably will. but it'll be a sad day.

    Although it occurs to me that it'd probably be viable, ish, for robotic or otherworldly characters; akin to recycling the same audio for the alien languages in KotoR, when you don't need a line specifically voice acted by an actual person

    Supercomputers or security robots wouldn't be so bad with robot voices!

    Edcrab on
    cBY55.gifbmJsl.png
  • DarricDarric Santa MonicaRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Darric wrote: »
    we're talking about teaching computers how to create things with artistic merit

    i don't know how you can know anything about procedural storytelling or ai development and think this is a sentence that makes sense

    I resent this a little, assuming you're opposing B-zero's assertion that it's possible.

    that's cool, i really don't mind if that offends you

    I didn't say offended. It just seems a little naïve unless you base your definition of art around precluding the possibility - but seriously, I fucking hate this whole argument, so I'm not expecting a response, and that's the last I'll say on it myself.

    Darric on
  • UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIRE BUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Edcrab wrote: »
    bsjezz wrote: »
    takyris wrote: »
    text-to-speech software significantly better than is on the market now

    same issue. performance is an art and for art you need a human. sure, a lot of the performances in videogame VO are far from art, but saying 'ah hell, we'll just make a kick-arse speech reader, more content more quickly and we don't need to pay those pesky actors!' is to me resigning to failure

    edit: that's not to say it won't happen, because it probably will. but it'll be a sad day.

    Although it occurs to me that it'd probably be viable, ish, for robotic or otherworldly characters; akin to recycling the same audio for the alien languages in KotoR, when you don't need a line specifically voice acted by an actual person

    Supercomputers or security robots wouldn't be so bad with robot voices!

    Luckily, the RPG idea I'm currently most fond of is almost entirely robots! Think Terminator 2 meets WALL-E

    UnbrokenEva on
  • OrikaeshigitaeOrikaeshigitae Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited January 2011
    I actually kind of enjoy offending people

    Karl come down and help me design rooms for this haunted mansion, I already have three room concepts basically figured out and an idea how to make them work

    if i don't do the global game jam i can be down next weekend. or i'm free on the 29th.

    Orikaeshigitae on
  • vsovevsove ....also yes. Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    I will say that I felt more emotional attachment to several of STALKER's 30-40 line NPCs than I did to entire characters in some other games I've played. I think it was because the world felt so immersive that the characters automatically felt far more real themselves, even if they only had a few things to say to me. And it also probably helped that nearly everything in that world wanted to kill me, except for several dozen Stalkers scattered about the world.

    vsove on
    WATCH THIS SPACE.
  • takyristakyris Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Edcrab wrote: »
    bsjezz wrote: »
    takyris wrote: »
    text-to-speech software significantly better than is on the market now

    same issue. performance is an art and for art you need a human. sure, a lot of the performances in videogame VO are far from art, but saying 'ah hell, we'll just make a kick-arse speech reader, more content more quickly and we don't need to pay those pesky actors!' is to me resigning to failure

    edit: that's not to say it won't happen, because it probably will. but it'll be a sad day.

    Although it occurs to me that it'd probably be viable, ish, for robotic or otherworldly characters; akin to recycling the same audio for the alien languages in KotoR, when you don't need a line specifically voice acted by an actual person

    Supercomputers or security robots wouldn't be so bad with robot voices!

    As someone playing stuff with TTS (text-to-speech) currently in place... it's pretty bad.

    "I'll be there in a minute," with "minute" pronounced my-newt kind of breaks immersion.

    In a few years, maybe. Right now, it's pretty painful.

    I guess the reason I'm less stressed about robots coming to take my writing job is that ultimately, the idea of a computer making something is a red herring. Computers are already making the narrative to some extent, just by allowing logic branches to give players the illusion that the conversation is responding to them and not simply gating to fire one audio line and set of animations or another.

    Unless we get an actual AI, a procedurally generated narrative would still have to be drawing from a pool of plot tools and narrative elements that some game designer has filled.

    If in the murder mystery, the computer randomly determines that GIRL X is the murderer, and then randomly determines that GIRL X committed the murder out of fear and not sociopathic urges, and that GIRL X should therefore behave in a HESITANT SHY way toward the protagonist in most cases but be CLIPPED AND MATTER-OF-FACT when discussing the murder, and then in a conversation, the system pulls from the HESITANT SHY file to see which dialog quirks to give her (fire existing text line but with an ellipse after each transition word like "and" or "but", and add one of the SELF-DEPRECATION phrases to the end of lines 20% of the time, like "If you know what I mean," or "I guess that sounds silly,")... that's all stuff that I've added. I've designed that.

    It'd be kind of insane, designing something that can go through multiple permutations of dialog selection and always sound realistic, even just in flat text. But on some level, it would also be a fascinating challenge.

    takyris on
  • MeldingMelding Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    I get emotionally attached to things easily, it always strikes me as odd when i feel no connection to characters in games.

    I once felt bad that one of my plastic forks broke, but yet Alyx laid dying and i was hard pressed to care.

    Melding on
  • bsjezzbsjezz Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    fearghill i'm sure you're right, and it's an epiphany we've all come to at one stage or another, but it practically does nothing. yeah games are a bold new artform yadayada you can't tell a story in a game like you can in a book, but that doesn't change the nature of stories: that doesn't mean that stories aren't, at their hearts, still just ideas, distilled down to a concrete representative for the purpose of communicating it.*

    er okay maybe i'm starting to let my own wild notions get in the way. (really? me?) but i believe you have to at least try to have an understanding of your art as an artist, and that's my understanding of my art. i'm not going to give up on injecting that art - the art of the authorial narrative, the art of communication by story - into videogames.

    waffle waffle. i'm procrastinating on tidying my bedroom (still), you see

    * - this is why i think tools for sharing are so important in any game where the player might 'create their own story'. stories are about significance, damn it! they aren't about masturbation. if you've made a truly good story it's worth being consumed by an audience. FACT.

    bsjezz on
    sC4Q4nq.jpg
  • bsjezzbsjezz Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Melding wrote: »
    I get emotionally attached to things easily, it always strikes me as odd when i feel no connection to characters in games.

    I once felt bad that one of my plastic forks broke, but yet Alyx laid dying and i was hard pressed to care.

    don't feel bad. half-life 2 is a game without a protagonist. as drama it is intensely, immediately compromised by the bizzare black void of gordan freeman at its heart.

    bsjezz on
    sC4Q4nq.jpg
  • EdcrabEdcrab Actually a hack Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    takyris wrote: »
    Edcrab wrote: »
    bsjezz wrote: »
    takyris wrote: »
    text-to-speech software significantly better than is on the market now

    same issue. performance is an art and for art you need a human. sure, a lot of the performances in videogame VO are far from art, but saying 'ah hell, we'll just make a kick-arse speech reader, more content more quickly and we don't need to pay those pesky actors!' is to me resigning to failure

    edit: that's not to say it won't happen, because it probably will. but it'll be a sad day.

    Although it occurs to me that it'd probably be viable, ish, for robotic or otherworldly characters; akin to recycling the same audio for the alien languages in KotoR, when you don't need a line specifically voice acted by an actual person

    Supercomputers or security robots wouldn't be so bad with robot voices!

    As someone playing stuff with TTS (text-to-speech) currently in place... it's pretty bad.

    "I'll be there in a minute," with "minute" pronounced my-newt kind of breaks immersion.

    In a few years, maybe. Right now, it's pretty painful.

    I was about to glibly suggest that designers have one script for the subtitles that the player will see, and another that's phonetic for the machine's benefit so that it doesn't screw things up, and then it occured to me how incredibly obnoxious that sort of added workload would prove

    I guess the day we actually have believable living characters is the day we get close to creating something we won't be allowed to switch off

    (...actually that life-support-implying analogy always struck me as strange because, well, a computer can survive being turned off for years and come back right as rain.)

    Edcrab on
    cBY55.gifbmJsl.png
  • OrikaeshigitaeOrikaeshigitae Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited January 2011
    Darric wrote: »

    I didn't say offended. It just seems a little naïve unless you base your definition of art around precluding the possibility - but seriously, I fucking hate this whole argument, so I'm not expecting a response, and that's the last I'll say on it myself.

    well, no. it's just really hard to make intelligent agents.

    Orikaeshigitae on
  • EdcrabEdcrab Actually a hack Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    bsjezz wrote: »
    Melding wrote: »
    I get emotionally attached to things easily, it always strikes me as odd when i feel no connection to characters in games.

    I once felt bad that one of my plastic forks broke, but yet Alyx laid dying and i was hard pressed to care.

    don't feel bad. half-life 2 is a game without a protagonist. as drama it is intensely, immediately compromised by the bizzare black void of gordan freeman at its heart.

    Gordon

    For fuck's sake, GORDON

    I don't care if you're being ironic, it's fucking Gordon

    Edcrab on
    cBY55.gifbmJsl.png
  • MeldingMelding Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    bsjezz wrote: »
    Melding wrote: »
    I get emotionally attached to things easily, it always strikes me as odd when i feel no connection to characters in games.

    I once felt bad that one of my plastic forks broke, but yet Alyx laid dying and i was hard pressed to care.

    don't feel bad. half-life 2 is a game without a protagonist. as drama it is intensely, immediately compromised by the bizzare black void of gordan freeman at its heart.

    It always weirded me out because my Dad's name is Gordon, and it's not really a common enough name to brush off instantly.

    Melding on
  • DarricDarric Santa MonicaRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Darric wrote: »

    I didn't say offended. It just seems a little naïve unless you base your definition of art around precluding the possibility - but seriously, I fucking hate this whole argument, so I'm not expecting a response, and that's the last I'll say on it myself.

    well, no. it's just really hard to make intelligent agents.

    Goddammit now I am responding, but yes, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

    But I mean, when we were vaguely alluding to all this, the timeframe we were talking about was a century. I'm not saying that's enough, or nearly enough, I have no real idea - all I was trying to imply was that it's incredibly hard to tell with these things.

    Similarly but separately, I also just don't like the occasional gross misunderstanding that machine intelligence needs be a "less sophisticated" form of intelligence than ours, incapable of art. But yeah, it's a pretty terrible discussion to have either way.

    Video games.

    Darric on
  • BahamutZEROBahamutZERO Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Edcrab wrote: »
    bsjezz wrote: »
    Melding wrote: »
    I get emotionally attached to things easily, it always strikes me as odd when i feel no connection to characters in games.

    I once felt bad that one of my plastic forks broke, but yet Alyx laid dying and i was hard pressed to care.

    don't feel bad. half-life 2 is a game without a protagonist. as drama it is intensely, immediately compromised by the bizzare black void of gordan freeman at its heart.

    Gordon

    For fuck's sake, GORDON

    I don't care if you're being ironic, it's fucking Gordon

    Groudon?

    BahamutZERO on
    BahamutZERO.gif
  • UnbrokenEvaUnbrokenEva HIGH ON THE WIRE BUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    bsjezz wrote: »
    fearghill i'm sure you're right, and it's an epiphany we've all come to at one stage or another, but it practically does nothing. yeah games are a bold new artform yadayada you can't tell a story in a game like you can in a book, but that doesn't change the nature of stories: that doesn't mean that stories aren't, at their hearts, still just ideas, distilled down to a concrete representative for the purpose of communicating it.*

    er okay maybe i'm starting to let my own wild notions get in the way. (really? me?) but i believe you have to at least try to have an understanding of your art as an artist, and that's my understanding of my art. i'm not going to give up on injecting that art - the art of the authorial narrative, the art of communication by story - into videogames.

    waffle waffle. i'm procrastinating on tidying my bedroom (still), you see

    * - this is why i think tools for sharing are so important in any game where the player might 'create their own story'. stories are about significance, damn it! they aren't about masturbation. if you've made a truly good story it's worth being consumed by an audience. FACT.

    There's plenty I agree with here, particularly in terms of sharing stories, but we may not be taking that in the same direction. I want to make games that people do Let's Plays of, that they tell their friends about the awesome moments they experienced in. Games with linear, designer driven stories fall somewhat flat here, as if your friend has played the game you're telling them what they already know, and if they haven't you're spoiling it. I had to stop reading Kuribo's Shoe's Steam playthrough blog because he was a day or two ahead of me in Alpha Protocol for that reason.

    My favourite game discussions come when two people have played the same game but had very different experiences. This can happen with choices and branching storylines, and has been done well in the past, but there's a limit to how far we can go with that simply due to the sheer amount of extra content that must be created. I am in awe that Bioware has taken it as far as they have, and as far as they appear to be attempting with ME3. For player driven, nonlinear narrative to keep progressing, the best options I see are emergent storytelling through dynamic content (create the world and the characters, then run it as a simulation with the player effecting things), procedurally generated content (not ideal for all types of story, I acknowledge), and player generated content.

    #3 is my current favourite, and if Minecraft's success is any indication, one that is going places.

    UnbrokenEva on
  • bsjezzbsjezz Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    the best interactive story i've experienced is flower.

    it's not emergent or procedural. it doesn't branch with the player's choices or offer any depth of role-play. you're a god-damned flower petal. but what it does is issue an interactivity which perfectly presents the key emotional points in the story. there are soaring moments of joy, buffetting moments of sheer threat and peaceful moments of contemplation.

    it also uses factors other than interactivity - the fantastic level design and the menu, an essential framing context, for example.

    what is very apparent is that this is a traditional story - an artful communication not compromised by dilution from the audience - and yet it was only possible in videogames. its language is the game. there is not written or spoken english in the entire goddamned thing.

    in a perfect world i'd want to see games divide into into those like flower, and rich procedural worlds where the pretence of the developer's own story is ditched, and the player himself uses the massive opportunity for tying emergent scenarios together into stories which they can share.

    bsjezz on
    sC4Q4nq.jpg
  • DarricDarric Santa MonicaRegistered User regular
    edited January 2011
    Flower is incredible. I'm not sure I'd call it my best story, but it was definitely an amazing experience. Pretty psyched for Journey then, huh?

    Darric on
  • PiptheFairPiptheFair Frequently not in boats. Registered User regular
    edited January 2011
    bsjezz wrote: »
    Melding wrote: »
    I get emotionally attached to things easily, it always strikes me as odd when i feel no connection to characters in games.

    I once felt bad that one of my plastic forks broke, but yet Alyx laid dying and i was hard pressed to care.

    don't feel bad. half-life 2 is a game without a protagonist. as drama it is intensely, immediately compromised by the bizzare black void of gordan freeman at its heart.

    god what

    what is this

    PiptheFair on
Sign In or Register to comment.