These are excerpts from a discussion from a while ago on another forum. I thought it might be interesting to post it here, especially considering that MxO is (hopefully, at least) sort of in the middle of being completely rebuilt as a video game. Everything that isn't in quotes is something that I wrote at some point, and this basically describes a lot of what I beleive about the potential of video games. The ultimate potential of video games is not virtual reality. Virtual reality is virtual reality, not a video game. Virtual reality will be a different medium all together. I think the ultimate potential of video games is something much deeper...
A lot of people say that we're looking at a massive crash within the next few years. A lot of people say, that games are reaching wall, and the only way to save the industry is to have "innovative" mechanics. A lot of people say there should be more games like Pikmin and Katamari Damacy. But while these aren't bad games, I just can't agree that those types of games should be the future of gaming.
Innovative has become too much of a staple-term in the industry. The way it's used, it makes it seem like introducing new types of mechanics is what's important in bringing across original ideas in video games. In my oppinion, that couldn't be further from the truth. Personally, I think that there's so much untapped psychological and storytelling potential in video games. Mechanics shouldn't be the focus. They really should be like the control scheme, if they're doing their job, you don't even notice that they're there. Mechanics should develop around whatever idea the video game is supposed to portray. There's no point in innovating in mechanics just for the sake of innovating. If anything is going to cause a video game crash, it's too much focus on this notion of "gameplay" that really just puts most of the concern on the mechanics of the game rather than the story it has to tell and the ideas its creator wished to portray.
Example of what I'm talking about. Let's just think about the single player video game experience for a second. If you're making an action game of any kind, you generally have a system of health, and when that health is depleted, your character dies and you lose the game. Now, the fact that your character dies is not really part of the story, because afterwords you just replay the part where your character died. Now think about this. How many movies, books, comics, anime.... any story in any other media, how many have you seen that show what would happen, especially in an action scene, if the main character performed a mistaken action that ended up getting him killed. Very very few. However, there are several occasions where a main character's death is part of the story. Think about playing a game where you got the character you were playing as killed, and while you didn't intend it, the game intended it to happen on that level in one way or another. So thus you feel emotionally connected to this character's death, because you were trying to prevent it, but it happened and is part of the story. So then, if a revenge story from another characters perspective then followed this character's death, it would be that much more compelling.
Also, the concept of challenge is often misused. Challenge in video games is there to create a more engaging experience. It is an element of the game, not the reason for the game. You don't have to be able to lose for there to be challenge. Challenge doesn't mean there has to be a game over screen. Challenge also doesn't mean you have to feel like you're genius for figuring out a puzzle or defeating a boss. Challenge can be used simply as a psychological element to bring you deeper into the game's story. If the challenge involves fighting an enemy, then that challenge can be combined with the psychological characterization of that enemy to create an extremely engaging experience that goes way beyond the "kill the bad guys before they kill you or you lose" way of thinking. It's something to think about, anyway.
In all these situations, the mechanics of the game would only matter to the point that they need to be seamless in order to convey the message in the best possible way. A game's mechanics involve setting up a system of rules to play by, but if you could make a game where those rules were constantly broken and the player was still able to follow what was going on, the current concept of "innovation" within video games would seem fairly trivial, wouldn't it? Personally, I think we're on the verge of making those types of games. We're on the verge, not of a crash, not of a brick wall, but of an epiphany in video games.
Just look at games like Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from ButcherBay. The game made sure the player knew what to do action-wise, but continuously broke down systems of rules that it had previously established, and in doing so really took the player for a ride. Before Chronicles of Riddick, Enter the Matrix showed some elements of this type of video game storytelling, and it's successor, The Path of Neo, looks quite promising in that aspect. Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Preassure also looks like a game that's bending the rules. The driving concept of that game is one not of a gameplay mechanic gimmick, but of the story-driven concept of using a video game to tell the story of someone trying to overthrow an oppressive government. And the game appears just as culturally-driven as it is action-based, which is something you don't often see. As someone who wants to make video games himself, I think it's ridiculous to say that video games are going downhill when we're on the verge of so many amazing things happening.
“Story telling is not integral for games, it's just an added bonus. What makes games fun is the gameplay."
I dissagree. Storytelling is what games are all about. Not all games necissarily have a plot, but that's not all there is to storytelling. The simple fact that there is cool stuff you can do is a type of storytelling. The term gameplay really comes down to game mechanics, and what rules the game is built on, and I don't beleive that's the reason people play games at all. People play a game because of what they can do in the game, not because of the mechanics they use to control it.
"I can almost understand your point of view when it comes to challenge seeing as how todays games are innept at presenting a good challenge. A big chunk of the replayability in some of my favorite games comes from the fact that the danger is always present and the only way you'll survive is with quick reflexes, not through simple memorization. Games nowadays lack the challenge to really keep the player's interest especially after the player completes the game."
That's not really what I meant. It's not that modern games lack challenge, its just that they aren't utilizing it in the best possible way. Right now, games are classified into their genres based on types of "gameplay" and that genre is what tends to determine the type of challenge that is involved in the game. I think that challenge is something that can change from scene to scene to fit the type of idea a game is trying to portray. In action games, challenge is almost always presented as, if you do something the wrong way, you die and start the segment over. Personally, I don't think that you have to have to be able to die in a givin segment of a game to add challenge as a factor in the way you play. I'll use the film "The Matrix: Reloaded" as an example of this type of storytelling in an action scene. In many of Neo's fight scenes in the movie, there is little fear that the main character is going to die. Because of his messiah-like abbilities, it would seem almost impossible for him to die in battle. But there is still "challenge" as an element in these fight scenes because all the fight scenes in the movie are battles between different ideas. Such as, the idea of corperate control vs. the idea of individual freedom or the idea of coercive power vs. the idea of faith. Challenge can be involved in a struggle between the player and an enemy without using the standard "you mess up, you die" approach. Modern games don't lack challenge, they just aren't using as wide a spectrum as they could. I do think, however, modern games do this a good bit better than games have in the past. That's one of the reasons I don't think it's a matter of "they don't make good games anymore" its a matter of "games have gotten better, but they could still make much better games".
"As for the controls, making them feel natural is kinda boring. Games should allow for experimentation and intrigue in learning/discovering/adapting to new things."
Intrigue through learning discovering and adapting can still be done when a control scheme feels natural. The only difference is that when the controls feel natural, the intrigue is part of the immersive experience, whereas when it doesn't the intrigue is part of a piece of plastic in your hands. I mean, you could start up a game by not telling the player what any of the buttons does, and they learn through experience. That would probably be the ultimate in learning, discovering, and adapting, but even that doesn't stop the control scheme from feeling natural.
"Anyways, call me boring. But i just want better game mechanics, more play support and more inventive multiplayer level design."
But better mechanics don't make any difference when you're not doing anything interesting in the game. That's where storytelling comes in. And what I'm saying is that if the storytelling gets better, you can have an infinitely more valuable experience with video games.
"The most exciting aspects that i am looking forward to is, cross compatability between pcs and consoles... Not pitted against each other, but to play differnt roles.
Imagine, halo 150 players on xbox 360... But you have a commander on the PC playing the Real time strategy portion of it, setting way points and giving orders. That would be bloody brilliant IMO."
I've heard of this concept before and it's a great idea. But think about this... you have that same game, but with episodic story content that gives you something different to fight, a different way to fight, and a different reason to fight every week so that the game is always changing. In the future I see online as becoming more like television, where you can have episodic story content and quick engaging experiences. Where with single-player it's going to be more like movies where you have experiences that are more drawn out and more cinematic that really immerse you in a world for an extended period of time. Of course, the period of time that each game will take up, as well as what features the game will have really depends on how much story and what kind of story you have to tell. I tend to get tired of people saying that it should have been longer or it should have had multiplayer or it should have had online for games that tell their story brilliantly and don't really have room in that story for those features. Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay was one of those games, and I hate when people say that it needed multiplayer just because it had a first-person viewpoint. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
