Friday, August 31, 2007
Game Design: Tough Choices
Is the most powerful tool for gamers' emotional involvement, the ability to make the touch choices for themselves , also what is holding us back from making emotionally compelling worlds?
I've become a fan of Leigh Alexander lately, and in several of her most recent articles she's been discussing the nature of choice in videogames. Here are two focused on the subject:
The Mechanics of Choice
The Aberrant Gamer: Choose Your Own Adventure
She brings up some very interesting points. In particular, she notes the difficulty of putting moral or emotion-laden choices in games. Not that the attempts to do so have been scarce --- it is just that they so often fail.
"...Thus far, what we’ve been offered in terms of "choices" from gaming often tend to amount to little more than what one reader called a “cost-benefit analysis”. In other words, since the impact of our choices is limited to a statistical benefit or penalty (with perhaps a different ending tacked on), any moral or emotional decision presented to us can be reduced to a technicality."Does it all come down to math? When we get in the competitive mindset (and even in a single-player game, we get in that mindset, desiring to "beat" the system or the designer or whatever insubstantial challenger we can imagine as a competitive proxy), it's hard to just 'experience' a game, or even get into the mental state where more subtle emotions can take root. We instead mentally go through a mental calculation of "guess what the designer had in mind."
So is it possible for us to separate the dynamics of gameplay from the elements of story? Arguably, Alexander believes this worked - for her - in Bioshock.
"Cost-benefit regardless, the choices in this game are beyond the mechanics. The merit of choice in games may not be what we get from it, but when done this richly, how it feels."What makes it work for her? And does it work for other players? In Bioshock (which I still haven't played beyond the demo, though it's almost impossible to avoid reading plenty about it the last couple of weeks), you are presented with a choice to commit an atrocity --- but it is presented in such a context and with such great justification as it makes the reprehensible acceptable.
Several players - stuck in the "cost-benefit-analysis" mode, have complained about the lack of leniency in the multiple endings. Outspoken journalist Kieron Gillen eventually came up with a stock answer. "As I’ve said to everyone complaining about being treated as a shithead when they’ve “Just harvested a couple”… exactly how many little girls do you think the world thinks it’s acceptable to kill?"
Interestingly enough, even much-acclaimed Ultima IV, with its complex virtue system, really broke down into just a cost-benefit analysis of decisions. Your choice of whether to be honest or humble often came down to a matter of which virtue needed more points --- or which you felt was easier to "make up" later. What U4 did offer, at least, was a chance to check in and measure your virtue changes - a mirror to your avatar's soul. There weren't any surprises in the end when you discover the depth of the stain on the soul from a single murder - even one performed for the greater good.
The most powerful tool of the storyteller is to evoke an emotional response in the audience. And with interactive entertainment (read: Video Games), what is potentially our most powerful tool for evoking emotions is the ability to give the player the ability to make those key decisions himself. Yet that very potential is frustrated by the challenge of a game - it encourages the player to shut off the parts of his or her brain that get distracted by context, metaphor, and meaning, and instead concentrate on the purity of the elements of the challenge itself.
Maybe the ability to see the "big picture" and appreciate the overall context and metaphor capable of evoking emotions is really only possible when the audience is in a passive frame of mind? While giving the controller a rest during a cut-scene, or while contemplating the game after it has been completed? Or is it just a case of making the player "comfortable" enough in the game-world that they feel free to explore it on all levels, rather than narrowing their focus to pure survival mode.
Is there a better way to present pivotal moral decisions in games to players that are as emotionally laden as they'd be if the player had been merely an observer?
Or perhaps the best way to handle it is, as in Fallout, Bioshock, and other games - to simply have the big reveal at the end to shock (and sometimes delight) players with the realization of the consequences of their action within the context of the games' fiction. Though for too many players, as evidenced by the Bioshock ending complaints, might not be too satisfied with the results of their handiwork.
What do you think?
(Vaguely) related inconceivables...
* Game Moments #7 - Ultima 7
* Why Was Final Fantasy 7 So Successful?
* Fair Game or Drama?
* Game Moments #4 - Daggerfall
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Labels: Game Design
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:00 AM (Permalink)
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Hello! Thanks for the links and such, and for reading my work, and most of all for thinking critically about it. That, I really appreciate.
With BioShock, I'm finding what's really making it feel impactful to me is the fact that I've chosen to engage emotionally with the game. I think a lot of gamers do think analytically, and it's not like they can easily stop. However, the expectation from most gamers is that they can sit down at a game and have the game give them an emotional reward for their technical approach.
It's emotional, moral, meaningful to you if you decide to invest it with that. It's like with anything else; you have to take a stake in it, suspend your disbelief where necessary (like the fact that some of the splicers are identical to one another).
Like I said in that blog article, I really like the way the game's vibe and environment is resonating with how I chose to play it. If you chose to play it another way, you could still find things in that environment and story to tug on you. I've just reached a point in the game where the AI behavior only very slightly reflects my choices -- it's a minimal reward in terms of substance, but it is killing me because of how it makes me feel about what I've done.
In other words, BioShock is rocking my socks off not because it reads my mind, rewards everything I do or is technically perfect (none of the above, obviously) but because of what I've allowed it to feel like for me.
With BioShock, I'm finding what's really making it feel impactful to me is the fact that I've chosen to engage emotionally with the game. I think a lot of gamers do think analytically, and it's not like they can easily stop. However, the expectation from most gamers is that they can sit down at a game and have the game give them an emotional reward for their technical approach.
It's emotional, moral, meaningful to you if you decide to invest it with that. It's like with anything else; you have to take a stake in it, suspend your disbelief where necessary (like the fact that some of the splicers are identical to one another).
Like I said in that blog article, I really like the way the game's vibe and environment is resonating with how I chose to play it. If you chose to play it another way, you could still find things in that environment and story to tug on you. I've just reached a point in the game where the AI behavior only very slightly reflects my choices -- it's a minimal reward in terms of substance, but it is killing me because of how it makes me feel about what I've done.
In other words, BioShock is rocking my socks off not because it reads my mind, rewards everything I do or is technically perfect (none of the above, obviously) but because of what I've allowed it to feel like for me.
Thanks, Leigh!
I unfortunately can't speak too specifically to Bioshock, as I've only played the demo (and have some issues with how they are handling the PC version). So I have to draw from other games to find the common ground.
However, the expectation from most gamers is that they can sit down at a game and have the game give them an emotional reward for their technical approach.
You may be right - that may be the crux of the issue. If you don't invest emotion into it, I can't see how you'll get much out of it. I guess the question is then one that plagues ALL storytelling forms... how to best invite the audience to suspend disbelief and allow themselves to be drawn into the fantasy.
The solution in the games biz has always been more on "better graphics." And from the article, that (graphics, animation, and the strength of the theming of the level design) was definitely a big pull for you. But you are willing to do the same for other game styles with far less graphic demands. And there have been plenty of graphicly splended games that rarely evoke any sort of reaction like this in players other that, "Woah! Nice graphics."
But is there something better? Can we adapt tricks from other media to better "suck the player in" and help them put their technical play on the shelf a little more and invest themselves a little more into the context / metaphor of the game?
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I unfortunately can't speak too specifically to Bioshock, as I've only played the demo (and have some issues with how they are handling the PC version). So I have to draw from other games to find the common ground.
However, the expectation from most gamers is that they can sit down at a game and have the game give them an emotional reward for their technical approach.
You may be right - that may be the crux of the issue. If you don't invest emotion into it, I can't see how you'll get much out of it. I guess the question is then one that plagues ALL storytelling forms... how to best invite the audience to suspend disbelief and allow themselves to be drawn into the fantasy.
The solution in the games biz has always been more on "better graphics." And from the article, that (graphics, animation, and the strength of the theming of the level design) was definitely a big pull for you. But you are willing to do the same for other game styles with far less graphic demands. And there have been plenty of graphicly splended games that rarely evoke any sort of reaction like this in players other that, "Woah! Nice graphics."
But is there something better? Can we adapt tricks from other media to better "suck the player in" and help them put their technical play on the shelf a little more and invest themselves a little more into the context / metaphor of the game?
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