Okay, so last night I talked a little
bit about advances in gaming and what they meant from a technical
standpoint. It was all very general, and didn't have much to do with
my main point, which was about storytelling advances in gaming.
Traditional games, be they board-,
war-, or card-, largely rely on the players themselves to build any
narrative, and it generally has more to do with the interactions of
those players around the minor structure that the game provides.
Since the games are designed specifically to be replayed, each
session of the game results in a new narrative. In games like chess
and go, the narrative is one of strategy and the interplay of
resources and territory. In games like poker, bridge and other
multi-round games, the story builds over the course of a period of
time, with each round adding complexity and nuance.
But some nebulous time in the late
sixties and seventies, people started getting the ideas that games
could be more than that. Arguments have been had over who had the
idea first, but it was the game Chainmail
that established the dynasty that is now known as Dungeons
& Dragons. Somewhere in this foggy age, we also saw the
beginnings of computer games closely related to the same basic idea,
that games could become explicit narrative, and not just collections
of replayed rounds resulting in group social interactions resembling
stories.
And things have moved forward, ever
since. With the release of Wizardry
and Ultima,
we began to see large-scale, complex worlds created for the player to
interact with. This was in contrast to the text-adventure style
games where choices were not just limited, but often absolutely
restricted to a specific path. Wizardry
gave us the dungeon crawl, heavy on mood, atmosphere, combat and
puzzles. Ultima
struck out in a different direction, focusing on the making of
choices and interaction with pre-programmed characters called NPCs.
Both engendered sequels, and again.
Ultima IV is
still considered one of the finest pieces of role-playing fiction
ever designed because of its depth and focus on moral
decision-making. Wizardry:Bane
of the Cosmic Forge gave us one of the first games with multiple
possible endings, and truly different ones, not just a single
encounter with some optional dialogues and victory scenes.
And as more games, and more kinds of
games, came along, there were greater emphases on the elements of
narrative. The writing of dialogue, the addition of dramatic,
comedic and tragic points, the basic idea that the game was something
more than a simple linear path to be followed like a race-track, over
and over again for the best score or time.
Some of these elements began to show up
in games that, technically speaking, didn't seem to need them.
Fighting games with background for each character the player might
choose or face. Entire mythologies that seemed to add little
directly to the question of how to win a particular battle. And yet,
some of these mythologies have become powerful stories in their own
right, transcending the relatively simple format of the gameplay and
propelling series like Mortal
Kombat and Soul
Calibur into a genre unto themselves.
There's a trick to it all, of course.
Gamers have been arguing technology vs. gameplay for decades. I
prefer to think of it as tools and storytelling. The story can't be
told without the tools, and the tools themselves tell no story.
Recently, we have begun to see true mergers of these ideas, in games
like Bioshock,
Heavy Rain,
Deus Ex, Dragon
Age, and, of course, (you knew it was coming), Mass
Effect.
The trick to good, great, wonderful
gaming, whether it is on a tabletop, playing Candy
Land or building the next multi-billion
dollar online
phenomenon
is balance. Give me beautiful visuals, music and voice acting. Give
me deep, powerful universes in which to play. Make the play itself
feel like play, like I'm back in Brian's backyard in Corvallis and
we're running around pointing our fingers at each other and yelling
“pow pow I got you!”
Do all that, and I'll gladly buy your
game. Do all that, and you'll help us all get games programmed on
higher quality paper.
699
No comments:
Post a Comment