I'm not sure I agree with the assumption of video games as an artform. I generally feel the same way about movies and TV (music is more artistic, but has a lot of gray areas with people only in it for the money). And while some movies and TV shows can be considered artistic, there's a quality to most (there are exceptions) art that sets it apart from other mediums - compromise. Art is generally uncompromising. It's up to the artist to make his or her artistic point any way they want - it could be political, personal or simply for the point of beauty.
There are parts to games that could be considered artistic, but the primary goal of video games is interactive entertainment, meaning any and everything artistic needs to be sacrificed in order to make the game entertaining. Video games are VERY compromising in order to make them fun to play. The only games I can think of which tries to make a point and is uncompromising is that terrible Desert Bus game (wiki: The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time at a maximum speed of 45mph, a feat that would take the player 8 hours of continuous play to complete, as the game cannot be paused.). I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but I can't think of any.
Sex can and should be used at the discretion of the game developers if it adds something to the game, if it doesn't, it's superfluous just like it is in most movies. But claiming video games need sex to be taken serious as a form of art just doesn't fly with me.
If you own a Wii, check out No More Heroes. It's very much an artistic game, and just happens to discuss the exact issue that you're complaining about.
Half-Life 2 handles sexuality and relationships better than most games and the best out of any FPS game I've ever played, and it's thanks to the great dialogue, character animation, and the careful blend of interactive/non-interactive not-cutscenes that the game uses.
The player, and therefore Gordon Freeman, forms a relationship with Alyx throughout the game because she responds intelligently to the situation, is smart, strong, independent, and doesn't suffer from the usual AI buddy pitfalls. She's believable as a person, again, because of what she says and how she says it.
At the beginning of Episode 1, when she finds out you're alive and well, she gives you a hug, and you can't help but smile because you can see the relief on her face. She's genuinely happy you survived.
Now, what's this got to do with sexuality though. Well, Gordon and Alyx's relationship inherently has sexual undercurrents to it because they are a man and a woman who are stuck together in this post-apocalyptic world. Human sexuality as a whole has been repressed by the Combine, both via mental and biological means. So when Dr. Vance jokes about you and Alyx hooking up, she (and hopefully, the player) get embarrassed because what he says is inappropriate, but the joking tone the good doctor uses is often how people acknowledge something that is real and serious. There's no doubt in my mind that Alyx has been developing feelings for Gordon, but the game simply never allows for moments where she can do anything but the tiniest things to show them.
Ultimately, the nature of the Half-Life games prevent sexually explicit things to occur involving the player without them appearing voyeuristic and unsettling. And the Episodes shouldn't end with Alyx throwing her clothes off and giving Gordon a quickie. But if she stood close to you, looked into your eyes, and gave you a kiss on the cheek, that would communicate how much she cares about you, in a mature fashion, and when the screen fades to black, you can imagine any sort of future for them you wish.
Regarding my last two example, games don't even have to show the actual act of sex at all (neither KareKano or PvP did this). Leave that to other media (*cough Porn/hentai/h-games cough*). But being able to use sex in various means (the lead-up, using it to show passion, or as the peak of a romantic relationship, etc.) can be very powerful when used correctly. I do think as games become more and more mature (and not in that way), I hope we will see more sex in games, but in a good way.
I'd like to take the opportunity here to suggest that appropriate - in the sense of art - representations of sex are entirely dependent on circumstance. There are opportunities in representations of sexuality to further a game's conceptual goals, but it's clearly very easy to get wrong, and if your representation is at odds with the rest of the game, it will seem entirely incongruous and, I suspect, gratuitous. Which is not really the direction I think designers should want to go with this.
The video does make some note of this - we do appear to have received particularly poor presentations of sexuality in the past, and perhaps there's been some movement towards better representations recently. Unfortunately, I'm not much of a gamer myself, and so can't apply first-hand experience to this. I find it interesting that Mass Effect is so often brought up - Bioware seems to do this sort of thing with some regularity, and demonstrates that, when done correctly, it is entirely possible to get by censors.
So, it appears that sex has, as a rule, best been portrayed in the context of a long-term development, which is generally unsurprising. I would argue that it's not sex that is the issue here, but emotional maturity in general, and the lack of it in video games. As the ability to incorporate emotion improves, I suspect that the incorporation of sexuality is inevitable.
What can we, as players, do to improve the presentation of emotion - and, I suppose, sex? Is support for games with well-developed character interactions the only possible route, or is there something else?
I think you might be confusing the issue there. Even if Gordon were able to speak, all those questions that you have would never actually get answered regardless.
I don't want this to be a HL2 thread as it is so far from the issue at hand, but allow me to wrap up my point as it is being so badly maligned by many.
The problem is not that we do not have answers, the problem is that nobody is asking questions. Nobody goes into any detail quizzing Gordon on where he has been or what he has done. Gordon does not drill the available NPCs for details as to the state of the current world. The problem is that there are conversations that are to my mind mandatory to have, or at the very least attempt, for the characters of HL2 to maintain any sort of credibility or integrity and they fail to do so. This is exacerbated by the extremely over the top plot points that move the series from HL1 to HL2. That those conversations do not take place while the NPC's blather on incessantly about a bunch of other stuff just ruins the idea of "Gordon Freeman" for me. I can't be him, I'm not oblivious.
There is a lot of digital acting that happens in the HL2 series that is exceptionally well done. The central conceit is what I take umbrage with and that rather undermines my enjoyment of their story unfortunately.
But really lets just move on if you don't agree with that as I'm not trying to curry agreement or change minds and its not what this thread is about at all.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Half-Life 2 handles sexuality and relationships better than most games and the best out of any FPS game I've ever played, and it's thanks to the great dialogue, character animation, and the careful blend of interactive/non-interactive not-cutscenes that the game uses.
The player, and therefore Gordon Freeman, forms a relationship with Alyx throughout the game because she responds intelligently to the situation, is smart, strong, independent, and doesn't suffer from the usual AI buddy pitfalls. She's believable as a person, again, because of what she says and how she says it.
At the beginning of Episode 1, when she finds out you're alive and well, she gives you a hug, and you can't help but smile because you can see the relief on her face. She's genuinely happy you survived.
Now, what's this got to do with sexuality though. Well, Gordon and Alyx's relationship inherently has sexual undercurrents to it because they are a man and a woman who are stuck together in this post-apocalyptic world. Human sexuality as a whole has been repressed by the Combine, both via mental and biological means. So when Dr. Vance jokes about you and Alyx hooking up, she (and hopefully, the player) get embarrassed because what he says is inappropriate, but the joking tone the good doctor uses is often how people acknowledge something that is real and serious. There's no doubt in my mind that Alyx has been developing feelings for Gordon, but the game simply never allows for moments where she can do anything but the tiniest things to show them.
Ultimately, the nature of the Half-Life games prevent sexually explicit things to occur involving the player without them appearing voyeuristic and unsettling. And the Episodes shouldn't end with Alyx throwing her clothes off and giving Gordon a quickie. But if she stood close to you, looked into your eyes, and gave you a kiss on the cheek, that would communicate how much she cares about you, in a mature fashion, and when the screen fades to black, you can imagine any sort of future for them you wish.
*slams head on keyboard*
I just want you to know, you haven't fooled me at all with your "you see" and your "player" because I know it's really your opinion and you are dressing it up like that to make it seem more....I don't know, justifiable? Wrong word.
In reality you felt for alyx, you were amazed at her happy.
I don't think I'm going to be able to get this through peoples heads am I.
Too much prebuilt concepts. Too much generalisation in analysis of every other text on the planet to get people to think differently about this one.
Fuck it, bed time.
edit: Apotheos used the right words! You should all obey him. I can go to sleep happy now.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Regarding the Witcher; I think sex was handles fairly well in all facets, but it relies on having an idea about the backstory to it. If you don't know the significance of Triss and Shani in the overall story their inclusion feels off. When I actually looked into the backstory and played the Witcher through again the scenes with Shani and Triss felt a lot less creepy since I knew why these characters felt this way about Geralt.
Most games don't do that. Most games provide canned cutscenes to establish what the players emotional response is - and thats fun, don't get me wrong. But constructing that emotional response is so much more effective and so much more powerful. But it takes bravery to try it, and is often found in accidental places that emerge over the course of the game. I think the Dark Jedi path for Mission in KOTOR is a good example of highly scripted plot intersecting with a players emotional reaction.
As a Dark Jedi, the player can orchestrate the murder of Mission by her wookie companion, her best friend. It is a totally wrenching experience.
Whoa, I missed that. I thought I did every evil thing I could in that game, how the hell do you get this to happen?
Most games don't do that. Most games provide canned cutscenes to establish what the players emotional response is - and thats fun, don't get me wrong. But constructing that emotional response is so much more effective and so much more powerful. But it takes bravery to try it, and is often found in accidental places that emerge over the course of the game. I think the Dark Jedi path for Mission in KOTOR is a good example of highly scripted plot intersecting with a players emotional reaction.
As a Dark Jedi, the player can orchestrate the murder of Mission by her wookie companion, her best friend. It is a totally wrenching experience.
Whoa, I missed that. I thought I did every evil thing I could in that game, how the hell do you get this to happen?
You'll have to hit GameFAQs. I've never completed KOTOR, but this moment is discussed frequently at work.
More and more I have come to the realization that plot isn't necessary for a good game. Hell, most of my favorite games have middling (or no!) plots, and there are a few that rise to the level of mediocre genre fiction (Half-Life 2). These aren't brilliant plots in any case--and for that reason, sex isn't necessary in a game. It seems contrived and, frankly, dull. A game is about playing the game: winning and losing, manipulating the mechanics.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being deals with sex in an interesting way. Mulholland Drive deals with sex in an interesting way. Why should a video game necessarily try to reinvent the wheel when, by its very nature, the video game is going to have a worse chance of pulling it off? Hell, Ninja Gaiden was terrible enough. Can't we just admit that games can't deal with relationships in a reasonable way and get over it?
Can't we just admit that games can't deal with relationships in a reasonable way and get over it?
No, because they can and have.
Perhaps we have a different threshold for "reasonable." Let me put it another way.
If novelized, video game stories are pretty much "mediocre genre fiction," at the highest level. Therefore at best they can expect to handle sex about as well as mediocre genre fiction, which is "pretty shittily."
Think about it like this: would a sex scene between HH and Jade in Beyond Good & Evil have made their relationship better? What about a minigame? "Press triangle to thrust your hips upward!"
How about if Marle and Crono got it on in Chrono Trigger?
Or Rinoa and Squall in FF8?
The stories themselves just don't work with it. In order to deal with sex and relationships with real and convincing maturity, you need real and convincing maturity to go around the sex and relationships. Games don't have it, generally... even the best ones.
I can't respond in detail since I am in IR class, but I'm surprised Xenogears hasn't been mentioned as a tasteful example of two characters having sex. You see a kiss, some clothes being taken off, and two characters in bed the next morning talking about it. I also feel the successor series- Xenosaga, had a good moment in its third installment, showing a woman in her underwear wearing her boyfriend's button down shirt in the night and he is sans shirt. It is clearly implied they had sex and are having sex pretty consistently, but the most physical contact we see is a hand on a shoulder. Granted, most people here probably didn't play Xenosaga III because one would have to slog through at least the first installment, a game many (not including me) hate for its long cutscenes and attempts to be overly cerebral.
I think the point, syrion, is that they don't have it because developers have been avoiding it.
It's not like you can't do a game with real and convincing maturity, you can, there just isn't that much reason to if you aren't going to even try to tackle things like sex.
I think the point, syrion, is that they don't have it because developers have been avoiding it.
It's not like you can't do a game with real and convincing maturity, you can, there just isn't that much reason to if you aren't going to even try to tackle things like sex.
I think it's difficult. In order to do something with real narrative depth you have to wrest control from the player to a good degree... and throwing in a puzzle or a fight just makes it seem awkward.
Edit: a friend notes that it's difficult to convey within the standard amount of story within any genre--and if developers try to put that much narrative in, they get bitched at about the interminable story and terrible pacing of the game.
Syrion, I think all your points are good ones, but in my mind they are the result of an immature medium, not the outcome of the limitations of the medium itself. The games industry still has a lot of growing up to do, both in terms of general maturity and formal storytelling technique, but I think the possibilities are pretty huge once they start to actually figure it out.
I just want you to know, you haven't fooled me at all with your "you see" and your "player" because I know it's really your opinion and you are dressing it up like that to make it seem more....I don't know, justifiable? Wrong word.
In reality you felt for alyx, you were amazed at her happy.
I have interpreted the game as those who made it intended it to be interpreted. My interpretation is that of most who play it. That you disagree with it does not make my interpretation less valid.
Can't we just admit that games can't deal with relationships in a reasonable way and get over it?
No, because they can and have.
Perhaps we have a different threshold for "reasonable." Let me put it another way.
If novelized, video game stories are pretty much "mediocre genre fiction," at the highest level. Therefore at best they can expect to handle sex about as well as mediocre genre fiction, which is "pretty shittily."
I'm not convinced that this necessarily follows. In shifting from a video game to novel, you're going to lose things. Silent protagonists in a novel would not, I think, generally work well. We hear so often about films being "worse than the book", and part of this is the genre shift. In essence, the quality of a derivative work is not necessarily indicative of the quality of the original.
Think about it like this: would a sex scene between HH and Jade in Beyond Good & Evil have made their relationship better? What about a minigame? "Press triangle to thrust your hips upward!"
As noted, explicit presentation is unnecessary and potentially harmful, and I think that this probably falls into this category. Sex isn't the goal, I feel. Storytelling is, and for some games, maybe that's beneficial.
Further, incorporating such things into a previously produced product (whee!) is probably not the best indication of what can be done with a game.
How about if Marle and Crono got it on in Chrono Trigger?
Or Rinoa and Squall in FF8?
The stories themselves just don't work with it. In order to deal with sex and relationships with real and convincing maturity, you need real and convincing maturity to go around the sex and relationships. Games don't have it, generally... even the best ones.
This, then, is what should change. Infantile attitudes towards sex seem to be a symptom of a much broader problem, and though I am in complete agreement that plot is not necessary for a game to be good, some do require it - Chrono Trigger, for instance, would not work without a reason to be travelling through time - and in those, I think real maturity is beneficial.
Will/would it be difficult? Absolutely. But I don't think that it is impossible. An incremental process, but I like to think we can have more narrative than we do, and submit Planescape: Torment as evidence.
Disclaimer: I'm a BioWare employee, as noted by the fact that I'm one of the few people who correctly capitalizes the dubya, and I'm a writer. I wrote for Mass Effect, but I didn't write any of the romances.
The big problem with Liara is that she had to wear two different hats -- she had to be a viable romance option, and she had to be the Other. The former means that you have to establish player interest and intent, while the latter means that a whole lot of her conversation has to be an explanation of what her people and culture are like. This is an area in which Ashley had Kaiden (who had to explain biotic life) and Liara beat: Ashley was just a human woman. You didn't have to ask her questions about how her ovaries worked, and you didn't have to ask her questions about what it was like growing up with a shotgun and an assault rifle. All of her information hubs could be devoted to character. (Many people ended up not liking that character. I personally thought that she actually got interestingly nuanced once you hit the Investigates, and you saw some of the reasons that she was such a hard-liner.)
Doing Liara more effectively than she was done would have required either adding another character to answer all the "tell me about the asari" questions or making Liara frickin' huge from a dialog standpoint. The resources for either of those solutions did not exist. Hence, blue girl who will explain asari culture and has a crush on you.
The romances generally worked for me, and I make no apologies for any of them, especially since I didn't write them, and that would be insulting to the people who did. Hell, this was the first BioWare game with a female editor who personally hit the romances hard with a "women don't want to hear Kaiden say that" stick, plus a few "no woman, no matter how blue, would ever say that line" additions.
The other issue that BioWare writers run into as far as criticism, either fairly or unfairly, is that BioWare games offer interactivity. Players are given the choice to be a jerk, to turn the romance down, to make an obvious and ham-handed hit-on move, and so on. There's a strange player group who get very metagamey on our games, and then complain that they feel unrealistic. "I chose all the nice options to make sure that I slept with her, and then this weird thing happened." "I took every single Investigate in case that was necessary to sleep with her, and then I asked these dumb questions." One player on another messageboard completed Jade Empire's gay romance just in case there was a bonus or achievement, and then complained bitterly about having all that gay stuff inflicted on him.
If you act in an unrealistic manner in a game that's trying to react to you, then the reaction is going to feel unrealistic and gamey. (If you get all lovey-dovey with Liara and then, ten seconds later, ask about her culture and get grossed out by her practices, you can then go right back to romancing her, for example.) We don't have the resources to make every reaction completely contextually realistic, so we have to go with contextual realism on the most likely and most logical path, and if someone tries to game the system, they get something that feels like, well, someone gaming the system.
(All stream of conscious while taking care of kids. Wife is at dance class. Sorry if this comes out as weird or defensive. I completely get that no romance will work for everyone, and that "Wow, that's not my wish-fulfillment fantasy at all" is a valid reaction. I think that the romances generally felt true to the tone of the rest of the game -- retrospective space opear.)
Can't we just admit that games can't deal with relationships in a reasonable way and get over it?
No, because they can and have.
Perhaps we have a different threshold for "reasonable." Let me put it another way.
If novelized, video game stories are pretty much "mediocre genre fiction," at the highest level. Therefore at best they can expect to handle sex about as well as mediocre genre fiction, which is "pretty shittily."
I'm not convinced that this necessarily follows. In shifting from a video game to novel, you're going to lose things. Silent protagonists in a novel would not, I think, generally work well. We hear so often about films being "worse than the book", and part of this is the genre shift. In essence, the quality of a derivative work is not necessarily indicative of the quality of the original.
Sure, but because of the way a game is built, you're dealing with two very different issues: the plot and the game. The plot is not necessarily any different than a movie, and some "games" aren't. (Play Photopia for an example.) The issue is that the game has to justify itself as a game and, to some degree, this is detrimental to the need to tell a mature and involved relationship story. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the protagonist never stops halfway between his wife and his paramour to fight some zombies or solve a puzzle.
This, then, is what should change. Infantile attitudes towards sex seem to be a symptom of a much broader problem, and though I am in complete agreement that plot is not necessary for a game to be good, some do require it - Chrono Trigger, for instance, would not work without a reason to be travelling through time - and in those, I think real maturity is beneficial.
Ahh, but how many mature plots heavy enough to handle a sex scene could also provide justification for encounters or puzzles? That's the issue, I think. The pacing is a problem.
Will/would it be difficult? Absolutely. But I don't think that it is impossible. An incremental process, but I like to think we can have more narrative than we do, and submit Planescape: Torment as evidence.
Syrion, I think all your points are good ones, but in my mind they are the result of an immature medium, not the outcome of the limitations of the medium itself. The games industry still has a lot of growing up to do, both in terms of general maturity and formal storytelling technique, but I think the possibilities are pretty huge once they start to actually figure it out.
I agree, to some degree... but I also think that there are fundamental limitations on the medium due to the interactive dimension. Perhaps that's overly pessimistic. I suppose if one completely abandoned player identification with the protagonist, it might work out. From Nippon Ichi's games, Marona's friendship with Castile was rather nice, as was Laharl's growing appreciation of Flonne. Neither were high literature, but they were reasonable interpersonal relationships which occurred within good games.
I just can't see that carrying over to a heavier plot with much success.
First off, lemme just say that I don't think that sex is necessarily what needs to be added into games, but rather meaningful and believable relationships, romantic or no.
Sure, but because of the way a game is built, you're dealing with two very different issues: the plot and the game. The plot is not necessarily any different than a movie, and some "games" aren't. (Play Photopia for an example.) The issue is that the game has to justify itself as a game and, to some degree, this is detrimental to the need to tell a mature and involved relationship story. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the protagonist never stops halfway between his wife and his paramour to fight some zombies or solve a puzzle.
No sex involved, but love is one of the core themes of Shadow of the Colossus, a game with extremely few cutscenes.
I think this issue has more to do with video games being a mainstream, acceptable form of mature entertainment. Let the dev/writer put it in where they want, whenever they want. A good product will still be a good product and a bad product will still be bad.
I'm just thinking of this in terms of movies and TV, where sex pretty much just goes wherever. It fits badly in a crappy movie/show and it goes well and makes sense in a good one.
Basically I think sex in games is more about the maturing of the video game culture as an acceptable medium for storytelling.
I just want you to know, you haven't fooled me at all with your "you see" and your "player" because I know it's really your opinion and you are dressing it up like that to make it seem more....I don't know, justifiable? Wrong word.
In reality you felt for alyx, you were amazed at her happy.
I have interpreted the game as those who made it intended it to be interpreted. My interpretation is that of most who play it. That you disagree with it does not make my interpretation less valid.
You have presented zero evidence for your statement of most, so I'm ignoring it until you produce that evidence. Automatically, your validity is dropped down to "this is my opinion" territory, only you are presenting it as generalised across the population without having the right to do so.
This is a limitation of your language, not your ideas. There is zero reason why you can't present your opinion and have it be just as strong as the general language you seem to think is necessary.
Present the "most" evidence now, otherwise you've just invalidated most of what you said simply because of the way you said it. Logic is fun.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
If you act in an unrealistic manner in a game that's trying to react to you, then the reaction is going to feel unrealistic and gamey.
I think at least with large strokes options need to be shut down based on behavior, even though I know this means quite a big implication for content. I don't know what was tried and tossed out for Mass Effect, and I look forward to seeing what creative things the writers came up with for Dragon Age, but I'd like to see future BioWare projects push in that direction, expanding what the "BW" take on storytelling is more into consequences rather than a lot of choices with similar outcomes.
While Liara was a weak character, I think Ashley and Kaiden both were very strongly-written and performed characters, and the fact that there are folks who like and hate each of them is evidence of that. The folks who don't like them probably never talked to them to find out more about them, while the folks who were curious talked to them and found out more about what made them tick and thus they could sympathize better with them.
If you act in an unrealistic manner in a game that's trying to react to you, then the reaction is going to feel unrealistic and gamey.
I think at least with large strokes options need to be shut down based on behavior, even though I know this means quite a big implication for content. I don't know what was tried and tossed out for Mass Effect, and I look forward to seeing what creative things the writers came up with for Dragon Age, but I'd like to see future BioWare projects push in that direction, expanding what the "BW" take on storytelling is more into consequences rather than a lot of choices with similar outcomes.
Exactly. On Mass, the big change was moving to the dialog wheel. That was such a huge change that the writers made a conscious decision to keep things close to the standard BioWare formula in all other ways -- just to minimize the chances of falling flat by trying too many new things at once. Mass Effect blazed the player-VO trail for future projects, and hopefully we'll see changes in the directions your suggesting on them.
On my project (uh, the one on the third floor that isn't the handheld), we've moved in a direction like that. If you've been acting in a protect-the-dryad-from-the-warlock manner for the whole plot, you lose the options to say, "Even though I've been good up until now, now I shall be evil!" for no reason. It cuts back on character choice, yes, but the choice it's removing is a choice that nobody would reasonably take anyway, unless they were gaming the system to see what happened.
I've plotted out a romance arc for one of the unannounced project's followers. We'll see how it goes. The love scene cutscene got the stamp of approval from both my wife (a romance-novel reader) and the Mass Effect editor (a woman), as well as all the guy writers on my team, so if we can pull it off, it has a chance.
I think you might be confusing the issue there. Even if Gordon were able to speak, all those questions that you have would never actually get answered regardless.
I don't want this to be a HL2 thread as it is so far from the issue at hand, but allow me to wrap up my point as it is being so badly maligned by many.
The problem is not that we do not have answers, the problem is that nobody is asking questions. Nobody goes into any detail quizzing Gordon on where he has been or what he has done. Gordon does not drill the available NPCs for details as to the state of the current world. The problem is that there are conversations that are to my mind mandatory to have, or at the very least attempt, for the characters of HL2 to maintain any sort of credibility or integrity and they fail to do so. This is exacerbated by the extremely over the top plot points that move the series from HL1 to HL2. That those conversations do not take place while the NPC's blather on incessantly about a bunch of other stuff just ruins the idea of "Gordon Freeman" for me. I can't be him, I'm not oblivious.
There is a lot of digital acting that happens in the HL2 series that is exceptionally well done. The central conceit is what I take umbrage with and that rather undermines my enjoyment of their story unfortunately.
But really lets just move on if you don't agree with that as I'm not trying to curry agreement or change minds and its not what this thread is about at all.
To be fair, it's not as though there's ever a lot of time for that kind of exposition to happen. Problems follow in Freeman's wake pretty constantly. There's never enough time to explain everything that would be required for Gordon to completely understand what's going on. He's missed so much, it would probably take hours for anyone to fully explain everything to him. Alternately, everyone's too busy making him their errand boy to ask him where he's been. That doesn't make your point any less valid, of course, but that's what lets me suspend my disbelief enough to play the game.
Concerning sex in video games, the video in the OP does make a few good points. I like the idea of video games becoming an art form, though I think it'll be a long time before we really see it happen. If you're going to include sexuality in games, I think it needs to be done similar to how it was first done in other forms of art. It needs to be a smooth transition, and it's probably going to take as long with video games as it did with movies and TV. For now, games that merely imply a sexual relationship will be tasteful enough to avoid mass media attacks while still delivering a similar message. In terms of acceptability, I see video games today where movies were in the 60's or 70's.
As with good storytelling, the platitude "less is more" applies to video games just as it does with any other media. Fortunately, with the rise of HD gaming, animators can make the twinkle of a single tear visible on the lover's cheek as they embrace one last time before leaving for battle. A simple touch can imply just as much about a relationship as a gratuitous sex scene, and as games develop and progress as an art I think we'll see more of that, which is good. As long as writers and animators take slow, steady steps, I think that sex in video games can be done, and perhaps ought to be done.
If you act in an unrealistic manner in a game that's trying to react to you, then the reaction is going to feel unrealistic and gamey. (If you get all lovey-dovey with Liara and then, ten seconds later, ask about her culture and get grossed out by her practices, you can then go right back to romancing her, for example.) We don't have the resources to make every reaction completely contextually realistic, so we have to go with contextual realism on the most likely and most logical path, and if someone tries to game the system, they get something that feels like, well, someone gaming the system.
First of all, thanks for giving us a great insight into the workings at Bioware. I love hearing stories from fellow games industry folks about how things function in their little part of the gaming world.
Anyway, the lack of resources to cover all paths/branches should be no surprise. Unfortunately, I do think that there are some people that will never be satisfied with games like Mass Effect that try to tell a structured story but can't cover every possible combination. I think that's fine, it's their perogative, but just realize that these games probably just aren't for them. It's like someone saying they don't like soccer becaues it requires too much running. Well, that's just the way it is. It shouldn't diminish the game at all, assuming there are plenty of people that do like those type of games.
Surprisingly, Will Wright falls into this category. I saw a talk that he did a few months ago, and he admitted that he's never been fond of games like Half-Life or RPGs, because while they attempted to give the player the appearance of options/choice, ultimately there's only so many branches that the game designers could develop. You can see that his games are all about having a sandbox environment where the player is responsible for everything, and is allowed to "fill in the blanks" with his/her own imagination.
I think that's another potentially interesting direction where sex could show up. Having sex was actually a pretty big goal in games like The Sims. Certainly for many, it was merely a gameplay option that allowed you to create babies. But for creative, imaginative players (maybe those into role-playing), perhaps seeing their characters have sex was a big deal.
If you act in an unrealistic manner in a game that's trying to react to you, then the reaction is going to feel unrealistic and gamey.
I think at least with large strokes options need to be shut down based on behavior, even though I know this means quite a big implication for content. I don't know what was tried and tossed out for Mass Effect, and I look forward to seeing what creative things the writers came up with for Dragon Age, but I'd like to see future BioWare projects push in that direction, expanding what the "BW" take on storytelling is more into consequences rather than a lot of choices with similar outcomes.
Exactly. On Mass, the big change was moving to the dialog wheel. That was such a huge change that the writers made a conscious decision to keep things close to the standard BioWare formula in all other ways -- just to minimize the chances of falling flat by trying too many new things at once. Mass Effect blazed the player-VO trail for future projects, and hopefully we'll see changes in the directions your suggesting on them.
On my project (uh, the one on the third floor that isn't the handheld), we've moved in a direction like that. If you've been acting in a protect-the-dryad-from-the-warlock manner for the whole plot, you lose the options to say, "Even though I've been good up until now, now I shall be evil!" for no reason. It cuts back on character choice, yes, but the choice it's removing is a choice that nobody would reasonably take anyway, unless they were gaming the system to see what happened.
I've plotted out a romance arc for one of the unannounced project's followers. We'll see how it goes. The love scene cutscene got the stamp of approval from both my wife (a romance-novel reader) and the Mass Effect editor (a woman), as well as all the guy writers on my team, so if we can pull it off, it has a chance.
That all depends. I'm not very good at good or evil, I'm much better at what is a good idea at a time, for a short time to come.
No rpg has ever really captured this neutral, somewhat short sighted ideal. Bioware's dialogue does have interesting neutral paths, but I'd hate to see taking a neutral path cut off extremes in any direction. There are times when I'll take a good path the whole game, and then pick the evil choice for one situation, not to game the system, but because fuck it, that treasure is too neat to resist.
I basically choose depending on the situation, not according to some prebuilt alignment, and to me good or evil is relative. Sometimes evil is necessary, sometimes good is.
I know I'm a minority, but I'm one of those nightmare gamers who jumps all over the place at any which way who. So I don't really like the idea of removing extremes like that. But hey, at least I recognise my inconsistency.
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It cuts back on character choice, yes, but the choice it's removing is a choice that nobody would reasonably take anyway, unless they were gaming the system to see what happened.
I would instead spin this as your explicit choices create implicit choices: it makes no sense to provide the option based on your behavior to date.
I'd talk about my projects approach on it but I'd just go and get myself fired, but I hope that even though I'm not a writer my work at BioWare can help move the genre forward. I'm going to track you down over the next few days though if you don't mind talking about stuff like this in your spare time (which evidence suggests you don't).
I have to say that while it'd be great to see some more games handle sex in a mature and deeper way, i don't want to see blatant sex appeal and cheesecake/fanservice vanish either.
I love Lara Croft as the adventurous sex symbol, and a big part of DOA's charm is the quirky T&A. I don't get why in this video, the guy acts like that one picture of Lara is such a horrible thing, quite frankly. Sometimes I like it when things are just simply sexy. Soemtimes I want to read a well-written epic novel, sometimes I want to flip through Maxim.
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edited May 2008
Can I ask why bioware never try to do full interaction, but always rely on a cutscene-dialogue mechanic. The dialogue wheel is a wonderful step in the right direction, and I understand that their games are few, and thus significant changes are many game "steps" away, but I'd love to see a bioware take on a half life or gta style environment or game world, but with their classic storytelling flair. See how they'd meld the two very different and interesting situations, and try to acheive a middle ground.
Rockstar storytelling, for example, is extremely rigid and old school, but the freeform gameworld is not. How would you even begin to tell a story in there?
Maybe you could put a whole bunch of different potential story paths with branching paths using a dialogue wheel for protagonist interactions with a significant character. Shutting down and opening up potential missions in a more dynamic way, similar to the dialogue wheel mechanic itself. It would require a lot of content is all, but for such a freeform game like gta, this isn't that bad of a thing.
Of course, the more potential paths you want to design, the greater the complexities of the potential choices and consequences you have to work out....but I think around three general paths would lead to a significant enough illusion of choice while still leaving the complexities at a manageable level for a design team.
Back before I knew how software development worked, I used to daydream about a game that plopped you down in a full rpg style fantasy world, and then just like fable, your choices in each situation could affect the world, in this case leading to a general funneling into three different pathways. A good pathway, an evil pathway, and a neutral pathway. Most games that try this just have the exact same story and situations with a few minor changes to illustrate you are evil. If you are fighting a war for example, it's usually against an enemy so implacable that not even an evil character could join forces with them. Whereas in my daydream the evil character would join this side, work up their ranks, eventually topple their leader, and crush the good guys, with completely different situations, politics, characters and storyline to the good side right from the start.
The neutral side would end up working for both sides, probably as a mercenary as sorts, and have a choice to not affect the outcome in any significant way if they so choose, or choose to side with the good or evil in a minor way near the end. They would end up very rich from all this mercenary work at the end of the game but never really did anything truly good or evil. Just walk away from the situation with a big ol bag of cash and on the good side of whoever won, without ever actually siding with them.
The side concept is much more similar to how rts do their campaigns, where the side you are playing wins significant victories that lead to very different missions and situations from the other side.
Such a game is stupidly complicated to develop, but damn it would be fun if it was ever done. Relationships could be built up similarly as well...you meet people, you interact with them, you choose an action or non action or neutral path, and your actions combined with dialogue and their beliefs and personality determine if a relationship develops. But they don't necessarily get shoehorned into a party with you.
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Games are not a young medium or a small medium and sex is regularly, albeit superficially, addressed in games. The reasons why this is are pretty straightforward.
The reasons behind superficial portraits of sex in the video gaming medium go far beyond puritanical legislators, the cowardly or crooked publishers and even the dull, underpaid and unimaginative developers. None of these things are the main cause as all artforms have the same problems and have succeeded in surviving and indeed thriving.
The main question is this.
Does a game about shooting gigantic space centipedes really need a complicated love interest?
Or
Do I have to sit and watch an un-skip-able cinematic again?
Or
Why the fuck can't I kill this bitch? Shes stupid and says stupid things and shes slowing me down jesus christ oh god now I have to restart why the fuck did I even bother all I want to do is shoot things.
Full interaction has been done a few times. I remember recently playing a game where you interacted by typing questions answers etc where you went to an apartment and there was a married couple, Trip and whats her face. You could to save their marriage or just see how fast they would kick you out by saying niggerballs or cock sandwitch.
I'm trying to find that game...
I think it was called "The (something or other I forget)
Facade is awesome stuff. Must go and download it now.
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...and I thought of how all those people died, and what a good death that is. That nobody can blame you for it, because everyone else died along with you, and it is the fault of none, save those who did the killing.
Sorry, but they are compared to film, comics or television. Very young.
I'm not even mentioning any others.
Also: Facade is pretty interesting, but be prepared for bugs.
Fuck, film is still a relatively young medium in a lot of ways, when observed as a derivative offshoot of theater. I disagree with calling gaming "small" but calling it young is, if anything, generous. Compared to how long other forms of gaming have been around (whether pnp roleplaying, strategy board games, or sports like European football), computer gaming is in its infancy.
Some people seem to feel insulted by the notion that they're participating in something that's new and growing. It's like if you're a participant (either as a developer or a player) of something in its infancy, then you yourself must be infantile. Why are these people so easily offended? Was Charlie Chaplin infantile for being one of film's first comedians?
Some people seem to feel insulted by the notion that they're participating in something that's new and growing. It's like if you're a participant (either as a developer or a player) of something in its infancy, then you yourself must be infantile. Why are these people so easily offended?
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If you own a Wii, check out No More Heroes. It's very much an artistic game, and just happens to discuss the exact issue that you're complaining about.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
The player, and therefore Gordon Freeman, forms a relationship with Alyx throughout the game because she responds intelligently to the situation, is smart, strong, independent, and doesn't suffer from the usual AI buddy pitfalls. She's believable as a person, again, because of what she says and how she says it.
At the beginning of Episode 1, when she finds out you're alive and well, she gives you a hug, and you can't help but smile because you can see the relief on her face. She's genuinely happy you survived.
Now, what's this got to do with sexuality though. Well, Gordon and Alyx's relationship inherently has sexual undercurrents to it because they are a man and a woman who are stuck together in this post-apocalyptic world. Human sexuality as a whole has been repressed by the Combine, both via mental and biological means. So when Dr. Vance jokes about you and Alyx hooking up, she (and hopefully, the player) get embarrassed because what he says is inappropriate, but the joking tone the good doctor uses is often how people acknowledge something that is real and serious. There's no doubt in my mind that Alyx has been developing feelings for Gordon, but the game simply never allows for moments where she can do anything but the tiniest things to show them.
Ultimately, the nature of the Half-Life games prevent sexually explicit things to occur involving the player without them appearing voyeuristic and unsettling. And the Episodes shouldn't end with Alyx throwing her clothes off and giving Gordon a quickie. But if she stood close to you, looked into your eyes, and gave you a kiss on the cheek, that would communicate how much she cares about you, in a mature fashion, and when the screen fades to black, you can imagine any sort of future for them you wish.
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I'd like to take the opportunity here to suggest that appropriate - in the sense of art - representations of sex are entirely dependent on circumstance. There are opportunities in representations of sexuality to further a game's conceptual goals, but it's clearly very easy to get wrong, and if your representation is at odds with the rest of the game, it will seem entirely incongruous and, I suspect, gratuitous. Which is not really the direction I think designers should want to go with this.
The video does make some note of this - we do appear to have received particularly poor presentations of sexuality in the past, and perhaps there's been some movement towards better representations recently. Unfortunately, I'm not much of a gamer myself, and so can't apply first-hand experience to this. I find it interesting that Mass Effect is so often brought up - Bioware seems to do this sort of thing with some regularity, and demonstrates that, when done correctly, it is entirely possible to get by censors.
So, it appears that sex has, as a rule, best been portrayed in the context of a long-term development, which is generally unsurprising. I would argue that it's not sex that is the issue here, but emotional maturity in general, and the lack of it in video games. As the ability to incorporate emotion improves, I suspect that the incorporation of sexuality is inevitable.
What can we, as players, do to improve the presentation of emotion - and, I suppose, sex? Is support for games with well-developed character interactions the only possible route, or is there something else?
I don't want this to be a HL2 thread as it is so far from the issue at hand, but allow me to wrap up my point as it is being so badly maligned by many.
The problem is not that we do not have answers, the problem is that nobody is asking questions. Nobody goes into any detail quizzing Gordon on where he has been or what he has done. Gordon does not drill the available NPCs for details as to the state of the current world. The problem is that there are conversations that are to my mind mandatory to have, or at the very least attempt, for the characters of HL2 to maintain any sort of credibility or integrity and they fail to do so. This is exacerbated by the extremely over the top plot points that move the series from HL1 to HL2. That those conversations do not take place while the NPC's blather on incessantly about a bunch of other stuff just ruins the idea of "Gordon Freeman" for me. I can't be him, I'm not oblivious.
There is a lot of digital acting that happens in the HL2 series that is exceptionally well done. The central conceit is what I take umbrage with and that rather undermines my enjoyment of their story unfortunately.
But really lets just move on if you don't agree with that as I'm not trying to curry agreement or change minds and its not what this thread is about at all.
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*slams head on keyboard*
I just want you to know, you haven't fooled me at all with your "you see" and your "player" because I know it's really your opinion and you are dressing it up like that to make it seem more....I don't know, justifiable? Wrong word.
In reality you felt for alyx, you were amazed at her happy.
I don't think I'm going to be able to get this through peoples heads am I.
Too much prebuilt concepts. Too much generalisation in analysis of every other text on the planet to get people to think differently about this one.
Fuck it, bed time.
edit: Apotheos used the right words! You should all obey him. I can go to sleep happy now.
Whoa, I missed that. I thought I did every evil thing I could in that game, how the hell do you get this to happen?
You'll have to hit GameFAQs. I've never completed KOTOR, but this moment is discussed frequently at work.
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being deals with sex in an interesting way. Mulholland Drive deals with sex in an interesting way. Why should a video game necessarily try to reinvent the wheel when, by its very nature, the video game is going to have a worse chance of pulling it off? Hell, Ninja Gaiden was terrible enough. Can't we just admit that games can't deal with relationships in a reasonable way and get over it?
No, because they can and have.
Perhaps we have a different threshold for "reasonable." Let me put it another way.
If novelized, video game stories are pretty much "mediocre genre fiction," at the highest level. Therefore at best they can expect to handle sex about as well as mediocre genre fiction, which is "pretty shittily."
Think about it like this: would a sex scene between HH and Jade in Beyond Good & Evil have made their relationship better? What about a minigame? "Press triangle to thrust your hips upward!"
How about if Marle and Crono got it on in Chrono Trigger?
Or Rinoa and Squall in FF8?
The stories themselves just don't work with it. In order to deal with sex and relationships with real and convincing maturity, you need real and convincing maturity to go around the sex and relationships. Games don't have it, generally... even the best ones.
It's not like you can't do a game with real and convincing maturity, you can, there just isn't that much reason to if you aren't going to even try to tackle things like sex.
I think it's difficult. In order to do something with real narrative depth you have to wrest control from the player to a good degree... and throwing in a puzzle or a fight just makes it seem awkward.
Edit: a friend notes that it's difficult to convey within the standard amount of story within any genre--and if developers try to put that much narrative in, they get bitched at about the interminable story and terrible pacing of the game.
I have interpreted the game as those who made it intended it to be interpreted. My interpretation is that of most who play it. That you disagree with it does not make my interpretation less valid.
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As noted, explicit presentation is unnecessary and potentially harmful, and I think that this probably falls into this category. Sex isn't the goal, I feel. Storytelling is, and for some games, maybe that's beneficial.
Further, incorporating such things into a previously produced product (whee!) is probably not the best indication of what can be done with a game.
This, then, is what should change. Infantile attitudes towards sex seem to be a symptom of a much broader problem, and though I am in complete agreement that plot is not necessary for a game to be good, some do require it - Chrono Trigger, for instance, would not work without a reason to be travelling through time - and in those, I think real maturity is beneficial.
Will/would it be difficult? Absolutely. But I don't think that it is impossible. An incremental process, but I like to think we can have more narrative than we do, and submit Planescape: Torment as evidence.
The big problem with Liara is that she had to wear two different hats -- she had to be a viable romance option, and she had to be the Other. The former means that you have to establish player interest and intent, while the latter means that a whole lot of her conversation has to be an explanation of what her people and culture are like. This is an area in which Ashley had Kaiden (who had to explain biotic life) and Liara beat: Ashley was just a human woman. You didn't have to ask her questions about how her ovaries worked, and you didn't have to ask her questions about what it was like growing up with a shotgun and an assault rifle. All of her information hubs could be devoted to character. (Many people ended up not liking that character. I personally thought that she actually got interestingly nuanced once you hit the Investigates, and you saw some of the reasons that she was such a hard-liner.)
Doing Liara more effectively than she was done would have required either adding another character to answer all the "tell me about the asari" questions or making Liara frickin' huge from a dialog standpoint. The resources for either of those solutions did not exist. Hence, blue girl who will explain asari culture and has a crush on you.
The romances generally worked for me, and I make no apologies for any of them, especially since I didn't write them, and that would be insulting to the people who did. Hell, this was the first BioWare game with a female editor who personally hit the romances hard with a "women don't want to hear Kaiden say that" stick, plus a few "no woman, no matter how blue, would ever say that line" additions.
The other issue that BioWare writers run into as far as criticism, either fairly or unfairly, is that BioWare games offer interactivity. Players are given the choice to be a jerk, to turn the romance down, to make an obvious and ham-handed hit-on move, and so on. There's a strange player group who get very metagamey on our games, and then complain that they feel unrealistic. "I chose all the nice options to make sure that I slept with her, and then this weird thing happened." "I took every single Investigate in case that was necessary to sleep with her, and then I asked these dumb questions." One player on another messageboard completed Jade Empire's gay romance just in case there was a bonus or achievement, and then complained bitterly about having all that gay stuff inflicted on him.
If you act in an unrealistic manner in a game that's trying to react to you, then the reaction is going to feel unrealistic and gamey. (If you get all lovey-dovey with Liara and then, ten seconds later, ask about her culture and get grossed out by her practices, you can then go right back to romancing her, for example.) We don't have the resources to make every reaction completely contextually realistic, so we have to go with contextual realism on the most likely and most logical path, and if someone tries to game the system, they get something that feels like, well, someone gaming the system.
(All stream of conscious while taking care of kids. Wife is at dance class. Sorry if this comes out as weird or defensive. I completely get that no romance will work for everyone, and that "Wow, that's not my wish-fulfillment fantasy at all" is a valid reaction. I think that the romances generally felt true to the tone of the rest of the game -- retrospective space opear.)
Sure, but because of the way a game is built, you're dealing with two very different issues: the plot and the game. The plot is not necessarily any different than a movie, and some "games" aren't. (Play Photopia for an example.) The issue is that the game has to justify itself as a game and, to some degree, this is detrimental to the need to tell a mature and involved relationship story. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the protagonist never stops halfway between his wife and his paramour to fight some zombies or solve a puzzle.
Ahh, but how many mature plots heavy enough to handle a sex scene could also provide justification for encounters or puzzles? That's the issue, I think. The pacing is a problem.
Blech. Torment. :S
I agree, to some degree... but I also think that there are fundamental limitations on the medium due to the interactive dimension. Perhaps that's overly pessimistic. I suppose if one completely abandoned player identification with the protagonist, it might work out. From Nippon Ichi's games, Marona's friendship with Castile was rather nice, as was Laharl's growing appreciation of Flonne. Neither were high literature, but they were reasonable interpersonal relationships which occurred within good games.
I just can't see that carrying over to a heavier plot with much success.
No sex involved, but love is one of the core themes of Shadow of the Colossus, a game with extremely few cutscenes.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
I'm just thinking of this in terms of movies and TV, where sex pretty much just goes wherever. It fits badly in a crappy movie/show and it goes well and makes sense in a good one.
Basically I think sex in games is more about the maturing of the video game culture as an acceptable medium for storytelling.
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You have presented zero evidence for your statement of most, so I'm ignoring it until you produce that evidence. Automatically, your validity is dropped down to "this is my opinion" territory, only you are presenting it as generalised across the population without having the right to do so.
This is a limitation of your language, not your ideas. There is zero reason why you can't present your opinion and have it be just as strong as the general language you seem to think is necessary.
Present the "most" evidence now, otherwise you've just invalidated most of what you said simply because of the way you said it. Logic is fun.
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I think at least with large strokes options need to be shut down based on behavior, even though I know this means quite a big implication for content. I don't know what was tried and tossed out for Mass Effect, and I look forward to seeing what creative things the writers came up with for Dragon Age, but I'd like to see future BioWare projects push in that direction, expanding what the "BW" take on storytelling is more into consequences rather than a lot of choices with similar outcomes.
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Exactly. On Mass, the big change was moving to the dialog wheel. That was such a huge change that the writers made a conscious decision to keep things close to the standard BioWare formula in all other ways -- just to minimize the chances of falling flat by trying too many new things at once. Mass Effect blazed the player-VO trail for future projects, and hopefully we'll see changes in the directions your suggesting on them.
On my project (uh, the one on the third floor that isn't the handheld), we've moved in a direction like that. If you've been acting in a protect-the-dryad-from-the-warlock manner for the whole plot, you lose the options to say, "Even though I've been good up until now, now I shall be evil!" for no reason. It cuts back on character choice, yes, but the choice it's removing is a choice that nobody would reasonably take anyway, unless they were gaming the system to see what happened.
I've plotted out a romance arc for one of the unannounced project's followers. We'll see how it goes. The love scene cutscene got the stamp of approval from both my wife (a romance-novel reader) and the Mass Effect editor (a woman), as well as all the guy writers on my team, so if we can pull it off, it has a chance.
To be fair, it's not as though there's ever a lot of time for that kind of exposition to happen. Problems follow in Freeman's wake pretty constantly. There's never enough time to explain everything that would be required for Gordon to completely understand what's going on. He's missed so much, it would probably take hours for anyone to fully explain everything to him. Alternately, everyone's too busy making him their errand boy to ask him where he's been. That doesn't make your point any less valid, of course, but that's what lets me suspend my disbelief enough to play the game.
Concerning sex in video games, the video in the OP does make a few good points. I like the idea of video games becoming an art form, though I think it'll be a long time before we really see it happen. If you're going to include sexuality in games, I think it needs to be done similar to how it was first done in other forms of art. It needs to be a smooth transition, and it's probably going to take as long with video games as it did with movies and TV. For now, games that merely imply a sexual relationship will be tasteful enough to avoid mass media attacks while still delivering a similar message. In terms of acceptability, I see video games today where movies were in the 60's or 70's.
As with good storytelling, the platitude "less is more" applies to video games just as it does with any other media. Fortunately, with the rise of HD gaming, animators can make the twinkle of a single tear visible on the lover's cheek as they embrace one last time before leaving for battle. A simple touch can imply just as much about a relationship as a gratuitous sex scene, and as games develop and progress as an art I think we'll see more of that, which is good. As long as writers and animators take slow, steady steps, I think that sex in video games can be done, and perhaps ought to be done.
First of all, thanks for giving us a great insight into the workings at Bioware. I love hearing stories from fellow games industry folks about how things function in their little part of the gaming world.
Anyway, the lack of resources to cover all paths/branches should be no surprise. Unfortunately, I do think that there are some people that will never be satisfied with games like Mass Effect that try to tell a structured story but can't cover every possible combination. I think that's fine, it's their perogative, but just realize that these games probably just aren't for them. It's like someone saying they don't like soccer becaues it requires too much running. Well, that's just the way it is. It shouldn't diminish the game at all, assuming there are plenty of people that do like those type of games.
Surprisingly, Will Wright falls into this category. I saw a talk that he did a few months ago, and he admitted that he's never been fond of games like Half-Life or RPGs, because while they attempted to give the player the appearance of options/choice, ultimately there's only so many branches that the game designers could develop. You can see that his games are all about having a sandbox environment where the player is responsible for everything, and is allowed to "fill in the blanks" with his/her own imagination.
I think that's another potentially interesting direction where sex could show up. Having sex was actually a pretty big goal in games like The Sims. Certainly for many, it was merely a gameplay option that allowed you to create babies. But for creative, imaginative players (maybe those into role-playing), perhaps seeing their characters have sex was a big deal.
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That all depends. I'm not very good at good or evil, I'm much better at what is a good idea at a time, for a short time to come.
No rpg has ever really captured this neutral, somewhat short sighted ideal. Bioware's dialogue does have interesting neutral paths, but I'd hate to see taking a neutral path cut off extremes in any direction. There are times when I'll take a good path the whole game, and then pick the evil choice for one situation, not to game the system, but because fuck it, that treasure is too neat to resist.
I basically choose depending on the situation, not according to some prebuilt alignment, and to me good or evil is relative. Sometimes evil is necessary, sometimes good is.
I know I'm a minority, but I'm one of those nightmare gamers who jumps all over the place at any which way who. So I don't really like the idea of removing extremes like that. But hey, at least I recognise my inconsistency.
I would instead spin this as your explicit choices create implicit choices: it makes no sense to provide the option based on your behavior to date.
I'd talk about my projects approach on it but I'd just go and get myself fired, but I hope that even though I'm not a writer my work at BioWare can help move the genre forward. I'm going to track you down over the next few days though if you don't mind talking about stuff like this in your spare time (which evidence suggests you don't).
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I love Lara Croft as the adventurous sex symbol, and a big part of DOA's charm is the quirky T&A. I don't get why in this video, the guy acts like that one picture of Lara is such a horrible thing, quite frankly. Sometimes I like it when things are just simply sexy. Soemtimes I want to read a well-written epic novel, sometimes I want to flip through Maxim.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
Rockstar storytelling, for example, is extremely rigid and old school, but the freeform gameworld is not. How would you even begin to tell a story in there?
Maybe you could put a whole bunch of different potential story paths with branching paths using a dialogue wheel for protagonist interactions with a significant character. Shutting down and opening up potential missions in a more dynamic way, similar to the dialogue wheel mechanic itself. It would require a lot of content is all, but for such a freeform game like gta, this isn't that bad of a thing.
Of course, the more potential paths you want to design, the greater the complexities of the potential choices and consequences you have to work out....but I think around three general paths would lead to a significant enough illusion of choice while still leaving the complexities at a manageable level for a design team.
Back before I knew how software development worked, I used to daydream about a game that plopped you down in a full rpg style fantasy world, and then just like fable, your choices in each situation could affect the world, in this case leading to a general funneling into three different pathways. A good pathway, an evil pathway, and a neutral pathway. Most games that try this just have the exact same story and situations with a few minor changes to illustrate you are evil. If you are fighting a war for example, it's usually against an enemy so implacable that not even an evil character could join forces with them. Whereas in my daydream the evil character would join this side, work up their ranks, eventually topple their leader, and crush the good guys, with completely different situations, politics, characters and storyline to the good side right from the start.
The neutral side would end up working for both sides, probably as a mercenary as sorts, and have a choice to not affect the outcome in any significant way if they so choose, or choose to side with the good or evil in a minor way near the end. They would end up very rich from all this mercenary work at the end of the game but never really did anything truly good or evil. Just walk away from the situation with a big ol bag of cash and on the good side of whoever won, without ever actually siding with them.
The side concept is much more similar to how rts do their campaigns, where the side you are playing wins significant victories that lead to very different missions and situations from the other side.
Such a game is stupidly complicated to develop, but damn it would be fun if it was ever done. Relationships could be built up similarly as well...you meet people, you interact with them, you choose an action or non action or neutral path, and your actions combined with dialogue and their beliefs and personality determine if a relationship develops. But they don't necessarily get shoehorned into a party with you.
The reasons behind superficial portraits of sex in the video gaming medium go far beyond puritanical legislators, the cowardly or crooked publishers and even the dull, underpaid and unimaginative developers. None of these things are the main cause as all artforms have the same problems and have succeeded in surviving and indeed thriving.
The main question is this.
Does a game about shooting gigantic space centipedes really need a complicated love interest?
Or
Do I have to sit and watch an un-skip-able cinematic again?
Or
Why the fuck can't I kill this bitch? Shes stupid and says stupid things and shes slowing me down jesus christ oh god now I have to restart why the fuck did I even bother all I want to do is shoot things.
Full interaction has been done a few times. I remember recently playing a game where you interacted by typing questions answers etc where you went to an apartment and there was a married couple, Trip and whats her face. You could to save their marriage or just see how fast they would kick you out by saying niggerballs or cock sandwitch.
I'm trying to find that game...
I think it was called "The (something or other I forget)
The game is called Façade and it is awesome.
Sorry about the double post but some moderators here are more anal than Trip.
Video
http://youtube.com/watch?v=GmuLV9eMTkg
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
I'm not even mentioning any others.
Also: Facade is pretty interesting, but be prepared for bugs.
Fuck, film is still a relatively young medium in a lot of ways, when observed as a derivative offshoot of theater. I disagree with calling gaming "small" but calling it young is, if anything, generous. Compared to how long other forms of gaming have been around (whether pnp roleplaying, strategy board games, or sports like European football), computer gaming is in its infancy.
Some people seem to feel insulted by the notion that they're participating in something that's new and growing. It's like if you're a participant (either as a developer or a player) of something in its infancy, then you yourself must be infantile. Why are these people so easily offended? Was Charlie Chaplin infantile for being one of film's first comedians?
I think it's a fear of being marginalized.
Steam: Drokmir