I was up at UCSC last week, giving a talk as part of the Games & Playable Media program’s regular speaker series. Having been preceded by Richard Lemarchand and Clint Hocking, I knew I had to bring it – plus the program itself is really exciting, lots of cool stuff coming out of there.
So I tried to cover something I thought would be helpful to the students very specifically, given the program’s focus on AI and deeper interactive systems. Over the years I’ve focused a lot on accessibility in various forms in what I was working on, and none are more tricky than trying to design accessible, unique AI gameplay. There’s lots of lessons from other areas to apply there, especially the part where I talk about dramatic systems design (mainly on Skulls of the Shogun), which I hope to talk about more in the future.
Turn on the notes view while looking at the slides to see pretty much most of the talk content.
You can also check out the video.
Free to play, free to play, free to play. Is that really the future of games? Blizzard’s jumping on the bandwagon, and they’ve always been on the cutting edge of game design (er maybe not). EA’s gone from 20 releases in a year to 6. Zynga’s gonna get a bajillion dollars in their IPO.
What does all this mean for the game industry overall, not to mention indie developers? Basically every single news piece on these trends is the most hyperbolic thing ever, that each single trend is going to change the entire industry in its favor. The exception is the occasional article with similar bombast, but ending with a single question whether all it is bullshit. Well it is, but it’s difficult to see past all the hot air and try to figure out where trends are actually going.
The real implications of F2P
Paul over at Mode 7 Games has put up a succinct rebuttal to a particular pro-F2P piece by Nicholas Lovell. That pretty much says it all.
The myth of the long tail
The idea that sales via digital distribution will magically continue longer before they die out, has died out itself. Turns out with more access to distribution, there are more titles – who knew? Managing a product’s sales lifespan is solely a matter of constructing a narrative – sales, bundles, new content/updates, and the holy grail of PR narratives, the look-how-crazy-successful-we’ve-become-thereby-making-us-more-successful (ie. Minecraft). If you don’t have a plan for what will keep your game newsworthy post launch, expect sales to die out per normal.
The myth of simultaneous release
Most publishers we talked to trying to sign Skulls of the Shogun for console publishing needed simultaneous release on XBLA/PSN (aside from platform owners, obv). That’s how we capitalize on the marketing expenditure and awareness at once, they say. Only they don’t do any marketing, and it’s not how you build awareness. Given the number of platforms available, taking even a small game like ours to simultaneous release would grow us to a scale that’s quickly unsupportable.
More importantly, awareness is built over time. A successful product being ported to a new platform, with possibly new content, is a new peak in your PR narrative. Popcap basically defined this with Plants vs. Zombies – each new platform sells even more than the last.
This notion that you have to capitalize on the awareness that comes from simultaneous launch is built on an assumption at the core of most traditional game publishers – your game will suck and therefore you want as many people to buy it before they find out it sucks. If you actually have a good game, delaying release to fit your resources actually makes more sense, since it simply means more people will have heard about it by the time it comes out. The myth’s not dead yet, but I can only hope it will be sooner rather than later.
Curated platforms aren’t a bad thing
As a platform owner, you have one concern – building an economically feasible environment for developers to make games, which in turn is what attracts your audience, which is what makes you money. Curating the platform, picking the highest quality games (assuming you are capable of it), is the fastest way to do so.
The iPhone is only now becoming an environment where you have a reasonable chance of making your money back, for a very small development budget. XBLA reached that point much sooner in its lifecycle, for this reason. However much you want to bitch about “closed” platforms, they often have corresponding advantages as well.
As an indie developer, given the odds against you, you’ve got to consider what your chances are on each target platform. If you want to shoot for a riskier one, go ahead, but you’ve got to manage your costs along with that risk.
The browser as platform
Some days I fantasize about HTML5 being a magical genie that lets you take your game from platform to platform, only as difficult as the actual hardware interfaces allow (ie. touch vs. controller vs. mouse). Today, however, that is a joke. The speed at which most browsers deal with HTML5 is laughable and completely implausible for game development. I’d also like to imagine browser makers will optimize for HTML5, but the effort for them all to do so still will make this infeasible for some time. Unless someone makes a high performance browser specifically focused on games…
The return of your favorite phrase, next-gen
Microsoft, Sony, EA, and other third party publishers, need a new console like they need a hole in the head. The exception to this is Nintendo, who will make money on its hardware, having waited several years to launch the now-comparable WiiU.
Third party publishers will support it in the sense that it allows them to port games, with some tacked on features to take advantage of the controller. None of them can afford to do the R&D to actually to do cool multiplayer gameplay with the multiple screens, sadly. But I can’t even imagine official announcements of a new console next year. Perhaps rumblings of developers getting kits, but no substantive info. 2014, 2015 we might see one. Microsoft is ahead here, since they will no doubt use the same code base, spruced up a bit for new tech. When Nintendo says, no really we get digital distribution and
online this time, expect it to be improved but still fall far short of anything you’d really want. With way more games at a lower price and comparable graphics minus the headache inducing 3D, the iPhone’s not a competitor to the 3DS, donchaknow.
Steam vs. 100
I’ve lost count of the small companies trying to create browser-based competitors to Steam (in the sense that they’re PC/Mac digital distro marketplaces for games, usually run with a browser plugin based on WebGL or proprietary tech). When the first bullet point in your required steps to success as a business is “reach feature parity with the competitor that’s several orders of magnitude larger than us now”… Your outlook’s not good.
Not that there isn’t room to compete with Steam, but doing everything it does in the browser is not actually competing – if you care about games on your PC today you use Steam. Going to a different location, the browser, isn’t automatically going to open up a new audience because because it doesn’t offer anything different to the user’s experience – unlike, say, the social graph of Facebook.
The multiplatform app store
This one’s a no brainer, although it will be a matter of some time before an existing platform owner fully realizes the easiest way to get an edge in distribution is to take their brand to more hardware – If I know Steam is great for PC games, and Steam is on PS3 now, I’m going to go there as a consumer looking for quality content & deals. Reduce the barriers for people looking for your brand on any hardware, and you immediately have an edge over everybody.
The kingmakers
Despite everyone’s hopes that digital distribution would remove the role of gatekeepers for games or other media, there they are, still flourishing. It’s easier to get your game out there, but that means more games, which means people want to have trusted sources to shop for them. For every major digital marketplace, success is still defined by being featured on the storefront.
I don’t understand why any of the major marketplaces haven’t pushed on personal recommendations in the same way sites like Amazon & Netflix have. Well, I kinda do in the sense I know Apple does care if their 30% comes from $1 fart app or $1 game, but their not thinking of how to increase their total overall sales. Personalized storefronts and weighted ratings from friends. One platform that is heavily focused on this front, as well as indie games, is IndieCity. If they manage to achieve everything they set out to do, I expect them to do very well.
The slow death of free to play Facebook games
As the number of companies entering the space increases, with only Zynga and a few others at the critical mass to post meaningful numbers, the economic viability of the platform goes down statistically (less chance you will succeed in the larger market). Yet the bar for overall game polish is going up, slowly but surely, as is the cost. Yeah, free to play may drive design of the past and next few years, just like the nature & business model of arcades drove game design in the 70′s. Only we moved away from that and broadened our audience by broadening the types of experiences games offered.
The birth of single-purchase Facebook games
As the cost to compete with Zynga rises, some small scrappy company will innovate by providing a smaller base of users a nag-free *experience* completely different than the obsessive compulsive disorder enducing Skinner boxes that are available now. At the right size and price point, along with a trial experience (so not free to play as in Zynga, but free to play as in ID), a few success stories or two will change the news narrative, although perhaps have little impact on Zynga’s bottom line. And what was old will be new again. Not for a while though (maybe 2013).
The awkward slow death of gamification
When a hoard of VCs jump on a topic that’s actually very difficult to execute well, and expect immediate stellar results, the inevitable failure causes their attention to wane. See also MMO’s, circa 2005-6. That’s not to say you’ll stop seeing games invade other design efforts, but that’s because this is the century of our interactive medium, and not because a legion of thirty something douchebags who were millionaires by 24 think they can make more millions in the space of a year. Good riddance. RIP Gamification, 2009-2013.
In the good-for-me category
As major disc releases from traditional publishers drop dramatically, expect XBLA/PSN sales to shoot up dramatically as well. Instead of a hit XBLA game selling 500k, expect a million, in a much shorter timeframe (by 2013). While XBLA/PSN releases are increasing, it’s not nearly at the rate disc games are decreasing.
Traditional publishers will continue to not get digital distribution – the EA store? More like the EA snore. Some will instead pursue free to play Facebook games, but few will increase investment in XBLA/PSN games (a possible exemption here is Warner Brothers Interactive, publishing Bastion, and Sony & MS, again, obv). More room for small teams & creative games in those spaces, then, which is also great. I wasn’t so solid on this when Battlefield 1942 came out and it did phenomenally, but EA hasn’t followed up with anything to capitalize or stemming from that success (so it’s possible they spent too much money on it and ran away). However mid-sized developers will continue to turn to digital distribution, following Double Fine’s lead. Just god help you if you come out the same week as a Double Fine game.
XBLIG rising up
Till now the platform hasn’t been viable, with several of the most successful devs opting out and moving to other platforms. However the slow but sure increase in quality of games on XBLIG will draw users to it inevitably. Expect next year to be a banner year for the platform, as the XBLIG+Steam combo becomes the lowest-fuss method of getting your game on console and PC (as Robert Boyd/Zeboyd Games is pioneering now). By 2013 it will become a common indie strategy to release episodically on XBLIG and either do the same or bundle episodes together on Steam (given the silly price cap on XBLIG – the single best thing MS can do for the platform is to up that to $15 or at least $10).
Motion control
It will continue to exist. And not be crazy successful again but still hang around with its existing audience.
Streaming games – Onlive vs Gaikai
Regardless of the actual neato factor to this technology, Onlive is trying to compete with Steam by offering digital distribution for games. Like the hundred or so start-ups trying to create a platform that competes with Steam, it’s not just an uphill battle, it’s an up-mountain battle. Gaikai plans to focus on business like Walmart and let them stream demos of games, a completely new market, so I expect them to win out.
The high end market on tablets
While THQ’s Danny Bilson may be on drugs for thinking a $40 price point will work, $15 dollars hits a space for a market already willing to adopt pricey tech for a new experience. That price point also gives devs a fair amount of budget breathing room to make something cool. Any day now people will figure this out, it just takes somebody with the grit to charge $15 for a good iPad game.
Cross platform play
Sony’s got the Vita + PS3, Microsoft has Xbox + Winphone 7 (and PC…?). While imaging worlds of asymmetric, asynchronous play is a designer’s wet dream, no major publisher is willing to put the money into the design research to do it. No large team is going be capable of innovating at the right speed & cost.
And as for opening up really interesting asymmetric play options, unfortunately this basically means building up a large multiplayer base on every platform, something incredibly difficult for an indie to (as there are major difficulties to do that with MP and a small team on just one platform). It’s cool for sure, but it will be several years and possibly another set of hardware before the potential is fully realized.
What does it meeeeeaaaan?
As an indie, you’re in a good spot if you’re planning to take advantage of one of those gaps/opportunities. Since the timing of those windows is crucial for a small team, you’ll need a fallback or two if it doesn’t work out. But with so many options, the hard part is just picking a couple that have a reasonable chance of success. You can’t just consider the biggest possible success you can obtain on a platform, but the odds that you will reach a level where you can stably afford rent.
Most people go on hiatus from blogging during the holidays, but that’s about the only time I have for it these days. The holidays are usually a time to avoid discussion of sensitive, agree-to-disagree topics, like politics and cat vs. dog preference. For me conceptual frameworks fall somewhere in the middle of that list, but I wanted to finally put down some of the problems I have with the Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics model of game design.
I had been working on this post for months, actually, swamped by the general insanity of game development as trapeze work, without wires or nets.
Each time (GDC, Boston Gameloop) I’d attend a panel/roundtable on diversity in games, I’d feel like shooting myself. A bunch of otherwise intelligent people sitting around yet running in circles. Do we need to outreach to more diverse groups for them to understand games and go into game development, or do we need to make games that appeal to more diverse audiences first? We can’t possibly make those games without more diverse developers? How could we attract them first?
Chicken, or egg?
Fuck me. As someone interested in pursuing the representation of characters and settings outside the norm in games, it turns out there is no actual place to meaningfully discuss the creative techniques one can apply to do so.
At IndieCade 2010, Brandon Boyer‘s talk “All Play is Personal” did not address this directly. Brandon’s talk was a very personal look at his own history with games, encouraging indie developers to draw on their own life experiences making games, because that is what allows indies to stand out from mainstream games and is key to their success.
But one of the talk’s points was about diversity - Brandon’s write up of a shorter microtalk version ummarizes some of that. Polling mainstream game developers shows the overwhelming predominance of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings as inspirations. Consider, though, that these are social signifiers – things we choose to invest in because they display our status as members of a particular group. Game developers are into them in part because they show to others they belong to a particular subset of culture.
That’s a pretty strong psychological drive – I find it hard to believe indie developers, given their status as sub-culture, could avoid it. A list by indie devs would certainly be different, but would it just be a second set of non-diverse inspirations (Pavement, Michel Gondry, whatever)?
(While Star Trek and not Star Wars this image by deliciousnewyork about sums up my feelings on the combination of inspirations between mainstream and indie games).
Someone asked Brandon about the responsibility of our community to include subject matter that appeals to more diverse audiences. His response referred to it as a larger cultural problem, one that indies could not necessarily impact. Personal expression was more valuable (I paraphrase horribly, so that was my take on it, seems like there was varied interpretation of it at the conference as well).
I’m also going to paraphrase Darius Kazemi, who will hopefully write his own blog post on the topic – If diversity in games as well as technology is a larger cultural problem, and indie games don’t have to worry about this because they can’t affect it – then indie games are de facto not a part of culture. This conclusion was very much the opposite point of Brandon’s talk.
Nick LaLone also points out some of the cultural implications of this thinking in detail. Even in minds of folks who care about these issues, this stalling and shifting of responsibility actively negates progress. In the world of chickens vs. eggs, if your goal is to collect as many chickens as possible, it’s obvious you want all chickens and eggs you can get.
So I followed up with my own poorly constructed question – what about the value of seeking topics & inspiration specifically outside ourselves? Creating games with characters, worlds, themes, outside of our privileged experience, essentially. Brandon returned to the value of the personal, comparing Generation Kill to Modern Warfare 2.
The creators of Generation Kill sought to convey soldiers’ personal stories, resulting in a complex emotional experience for the viewer. Modern Warfare 2 co-opts its imagery and scenarios for shock value but fails to convey any of the same personal connection.
In this, Brandon pointed out the role of personal experience is invaluable – while I highly doubt many of the creators of Generation Kill had actual combat experience, it is through the tools of our own emotional lives as creators that we can seek to understand and convey the emotional lives of others. We cannot reach more people by being more generic in our work, but through being more specific, by touching on the personal details with which other people can empathize.
Brenda Brathwaite’s talk on One Falls for Each of Us, the next game in her series “The Mechanic is the Message”, focused on her experience in designing games around topics with which she has little personal experience. Despite the fact that she is not Jewish, nor was in Nazi Germany, her boardgame Train captures the human aspect of a system meant to dehumanize and destroy millions of lives.
She used this image as a key inspiration - these otherwise normal children are wearing Stars of David, identifying them Jews, inevitably bound for a concentration camp.
Brenda has children of her own, and in looking at that picture, could do nothing but tie her own concerns, fears about her children to this moment in time. It is specific, it is personal, it was a crucial element of her creative process, but it is a situation she couldn’t possibly have experienced.
She talked about her research and development as being a process of sculpture. The game underneath the rough hewn stone is a form waiting to be found. Her commercial games, on the other hand, come from her own voice as a designer. Train‘s goals and aspirations as a game turned the design questions one would normally ask oneself from essentially “What do I want to do?” to ”What are best ways that this experience can be conveyed?” and, and asking how can you connect to what is more an objective ideal for the game.
In the research I’ve slowly been doing for The Unconcerned, it is a similar feeling of unearthing. While your ideals as a designer often occupy your mind as you work towards achieving them in your own games, it is oddly freeing, humbling, and full of awe to submit yourself to a process that requires your own self-destruction. You are nowhere near as important as the topic of your game. The struggle to find the ideal communication of the ideas that will do the topic justice is a much more powerful one than the process of self-reflection that is required to focus your voice in your game design.
I have never deeply subscribed to any major religious institution, as its major reward of belonging to a larger purpose, goal, or community I find obscures other thought process that are invaluable to me, such as self-reflection and critical thinking. Submitting myself to this kind of process is the one way I feel a connection to something so much larger, without sacrificing those other ways of thinking, and in fact joining them together.
There are two motivations for seeking topic outside yourself as designer – the first is the obvious one, to hopefully be part of a larger cultural shift that makes games and game developers more inclusive, more diverse.
The second, not entirely intuitive one, is selfish in nature. Submitting to such a goal is to commit to grow yourself as designer beyond your current limitations. To learn your flaws, to accept them, and to grow beyond them.
Diversity in game design won’t be achieved very easily. It is something each of us should and needs to contemplate as to how it impacts us as a designer. As a goal we can’t rely on outreach, we can’t rely on other aspects of culture, and we can’t just rely on more diverse game design. We need all the chickens & eggs we can get.
Despite the appearance here on the blog, it’s been a busy 6-7 months, not to mention the last week of E3 insanity.
A couple weeks ago we (Jake, Ben, Sam, & I) announced the other game I’ve been working on besides The Unconcerned. While that may have come as a little bit of a surprise to regular readers of the blog , it’s something that’s been cooking since day 1-ish (actually somewhere between day 1 and day 30, day 0 being when I left EA last July).
Start-ups, and especially game developers, are inherently stupid about risk. There’s two huge risks you take right out of the gate trying to make your own games. First, you have to get on your target platform (both from a technological perspective and a publishing one), and second, people have to hear about you to buy your game.
So when Jake came to me with his idea for what would eventually turn into Skulls of the Shogun, I thought it would be a great first project – get on XBLA with a game a little more in the style of other XBLA games, while bringing a multiplayer, arcade flavor into a great genre that’s bogged down in boring conventions. It’s a fresh idea with a distinct style – an “invigorating cocktail” as Ben called it. Building a relationship with them would then in theory make it easier to convince them to take a risk on something more out of their element, and let us move into full development on the design-risk heavy game with a fleshed out 2D HD engine.
Why XBLA? (And PC, but that part’s easy). Platform strategy is another easily misunderstood piece of the indie game dev puzzle. There’s so many platforms and publishers on many of them ask for timed exclusivity. It’s hard to know which ones to focus on. Thankfully, Simon Carless’ crucially excellent sales stats provide clarity. The fact of the matter is that the easiest single platform to make a living as an indie developer is XBLA.
Because of that, it’s also growing more crowded. Microsoft is getting pickier, and Sony is getting more lenient with its terms for PSN. Each platform typically requires some sort of exclusivity to compete with the other. Then the formula gets more complicated. Do you target PSN first, then XBLA? Go for mobile platforms first, with a much smaller chance of a possibly bigger success? Or partner with a big publisher for distribution, because they have the muscle to ensure you simultaneous slots on XBLA and/or PSN? Of course, that means they’ll probably want distribution rights for PC, which is brain dead simple and is by far best if you do it yourself.
Whatever platform your game is on, people are always ready to tell you it would be better on another. You can gun for a multi-platform engine, but that is solving the wrong problem. If you target a smaller (or more compatible) number of platforms, you’ll have more time to focus on your game and make it as good as possible.
That’s the first thing you’ve got to do to - if you succeed your worst problem will be trying to ensure as many people can play it as possible (now that enough have played/bought it so that you can code from the beach). Never solve the problems that will arise due to your incredible, odds breaking success. It’s a problem that only arises due to your odds breaking success – in other woords, a good fucking problem to have. Don’t waste time on the problems you’ll have only if you’re super-succesful, solve the problems that will keep you from that success.
Oh yeah, and if you’re wondering about something like Unity, they haven’t even released the Xbox or PS3 version of their engine. Never mind their marketing about being on all platforms.
Why XBLA for The Unconcerned? Given the Xbox Live Indie channel is slowly up-and-coming, it could be a more accepting place for controversial content. My goal with The Unconcerned isn’t just to make a game that informs about a serious topic, nor is it just to make an entertaining game (together a fairly difficult design problem). I need it, and the game industry needs something like it, to pave the way so it’s acceptable to make a game like this for a more mainstream platform/marketplace. To that end, it’ll take longer than the many of you who have encouraged over the past few months would like it to take. This is what needs to happen, though – and by grace or by talent over the past few months every single thing needed for the this plan to work has fallen into place (knock on wood).
One of the reasons I don’t talk about the master plan much is that most people think it’s crazy – except for the occasional industry old-timer who would nod respectfully, giving me the rare positive feedback I’d need to stick to the plan.
As Skulls has progressed to the point where we were able to make our big announcement, and now start showing it to publishers, I’ve been working slowly with my other teammates (Dan, Amanda, And Dren) on the Unconcerned. The goal is to progress to a point where we can ramp up & the design and story are solidified – the first concept & development phase finished around GDC, now it’s in the early “first playable” dev phase.
Unlike Shogun, which has benefited from immediate playtesting and rapid iteration, The Unconcerned is attempting to have its story finely woven with it’s mechanics, and conveying lots of story/real world information in subtle ways – which takes much more planning. Dan & I are close to a finished story treatment for the level progression, while Amanda has been working a bit on the first few maps. Then my teammates from Skulls will help out – getting Jake’s help on the animation style (using our custom 2D anim tool) was another key element of starting down this path.
It’s a long, hard, complicated road ahead, and thankfully I have some good company, but time to get back to work.
While it’s easy to get bogged down in the bad writing, Heavy Rain is noteworthy in its treament of the relationship between the player and its playable characters. The game’s success and failures challenge strongly held notions about empathizing with characters though gameplay.
And oh yes, spoilers ahead.
Back in 2005, when the game industry was awash with huge risk averse studios and sequelitis, things were looking bleak. I wrote an opinion piece for Gamasutra about the future rise of the indie scene, where I talked about how personal expression (including the a-word), experimental funding & distribution models, and creative production cost management would become hallmarks of the successful indie scene. (Today, I know, predicting that doesn’t sound like rocket science, I was just trying to cheerlead at the time.)
One of the key elements of a thriving independent game development community that I brought up is an established circuit of festivals throughout the year. These festivals are meant to help bring attention to the works that need it the most – the games that will have a profound impact, that will advance the medium, that will touch people, and that otherwise would not get made were it not for a small team of very passionate, underpaid, people.
Suzanne Seggerman (of Games for Change) gave a great microtalk at GDC, with one of my favorite quotes of the conference: “You can’t find Bob Dylan in the serious music section of iTunes.” She was encouraging developers to explore real world themes though personal messages in their games.
People often asked me, at GDC and SXSW, if The Unconcerned was a “serious game”. Lump it in the same category as shooters developed for military training? Games developed for exer-bikes? Huh?
Every GDC there’s always tons of interesting side conversations spawned by elements from the talks. One of the more innocuous comments that started a number of conversations was from Sid Meier’s keynote. He told a story about playtesting Civilization Revolution - when presenting players with simple odds, like 2 to 1, they would expect to win disproportionately (more than two times out of every three).
In writing, there’s a general distinction between a plot driven story and a character driven story – the events in the former are driven by external causes, while the events in the latter come about because of characters’ internal motivations. Many times, the plot driven story is looked down upon by writers because it doesn’t provide any additional character depth. A character driven story can have the same dramatic highs and lows of a finely structured plot driven story, but it also fleshes out characters’ inner lives to resonate more deeply. It’s just harder to apply both constraints.
In games we certainly suffer from the lack of character driven writing, but have our own unique form of failure in writing – the spatially driven story. In this, the characters exist soley to provide rationale to place gameplay in interesting locales (either visually interesting, mechanically interesting, or both).
Assassin’s Creed 2 suffers more from this than any other game I’ve played as of late – Ezio clothes are far richer than his personality. What do we know about Ezio? He has some family, he’s a bit of a playboy, and he’s out for vengeance. All of these are used, to varying degrees, to give the player reason to move through the space as the fiction behind mission objectives. (Jorge Albor covers these flaws well at Experience Points). But what else do we know about Ezio? Not much. Granted, I’m only halfway through at this point, but I’m not going to hold my breath for them to animate cardboard cutout Ezio with some life.
Avatar manages to take these elements of video game writing (to be fair, they do have their roots in action blockbuster writing), and singlehandedly disproves the notion that games are not fit to tell stories. It shows even in film, when you start with context sprung from a teenage boy’s mind to take place in fantastic locales and look awesome, you end up with the same exact result, regardless of the medium. It is essentially a video game storyline, albeit a finely overwrought one. Even Ebert turns hyprocrite, often criticisng movie plots for being game-like, loving it. You like space marines, Rog? Really? We can hook you up.
In its details, it is almost textbook in the application of Hollywood formulae. Payoffs abound, from the moment of realization Sully has waking in his human body after sleeping with Neytiri, to the final fight where Sully in Na’vi form defeats Colonel Quaritch in his mech. However, while the Na’vi are immediately likeable as the underdog, it takes Sully three months and the better portion (in size) of the film to finally change his mind at the last possible moment, when he finally realizes that the Na’vi and their home are worth saving. There’s is no worthwhile character justification given for such wild shifts in behavior. Sully is either dumb as fuck or temporarily psychopathic. The decision and its timing only serve to create visual drama.
Uncharted 2 attempts to apply the exact same formulae. Yet while the levels also take place in one amazing location after another, their flow comes from and represents Drake’s internal conflict between hedonism (money and sex) and virtue (information or truth, and love). He alternates evenly between desiring treasure, wanting to find the historical truth, saving Chloe (lust) or saving Elena (love). Even trying to save Chloe (since you do it so many times) oscillates between motivations of purity (to actually keep her from dying) and impurity (when’s she’s double-crossed you and you need her to get back to the treasure).
In this way, Naughty Dog externalizes the conflict that makes Drake a likeable reluctant hero. The purpose the other characters serve isn’t to bring you to a specific location, it’s to change Drake’s motivation for going somewhere. Story elements that at first glance seem like they are there to superficially highlight exotic locales serve a deeper purpose to communicate internal character motivation (as cliche as it may be).
These works obviously have more positive and negative aspects, these are only criticisms of their overall storylines. Games can also achieve so much more with emergent story structure, but in writing story elements for The Unconcerned, with it’s more traditional storytelling methods, these are unavoidable problems. I want to incorporate key locations like Baharestan Square, Tehran University, or the Grand Bazaar because they afford opportunities to include the subtext I want and provide visual interest. You do spend more time looking at game environments than you do parsing story context; it’s not inappropriate to make sure level locations meet these kinds of requirements. What should be be discouraged is assuming that is enough. Storytelling in games will never avoid the morass of juvenile discussion the topic naturally encourages if we only settle for the highest priority requirement – we gotta do it all.