Did I really not get back to this one? My first post wasn't exactly the best, I'll admit and I had intended to flesh it out, I think I've gotten better at actually saying what I mean since then though. tokisk did a fair job of trying to bring it out a bit anyhow.
Bear in mind here that I'm good at the old brain-spew, not so hot on the definitive point-making.
it would certainly make movies more watchable if they were different every time, if the heroes occasionally failed and had to live with the consequences.
would it make them better, though?
Firstly, I think that's a prime difference between a movie and a game. In that a movie is exactly the same in the playing every time. That doesn't mean it's not interactive, it's just that the two media offer different forms of interaction.
The way a movie changes is in the way it's experienced by the viewer. You may see things you previously missed, get the meaning of parts you didn't before, it may seem longer or shorter. The film itself plays out the same way though. Taking the same amount of time, every time. But to the viewer, it's a different film every time you watch it, because of the circumstances it's viewed in.
The film interacts with us, but we do not interact with it. The same is true with most traditional forms of music, as music and film are essentially very similar. Both are time-based, narrative art-forms.
Games are different. They follow the same rules as above, but there's another level of interaction. When you interact with a video-game you also affect the way it interacts with itself, and a form of communication takes place. This is more true of some games than it is of others, but it applies at a basic level to even the most linear of games.
Black and White was an example I was going to cite. GTA was another. Both of these games have at least two forms of play. There's the straight-ahead "narrative" play, and there's the sideways "sandbox" play. It's the second of these two that we're really interested in though.
Narrative play absolutely, totally requires the player. It's a group of pre-set goals that the player has to coax the gameworld through, like conducting an Orchestra. All the different elements of the gameworld have to be guided in such a way that they work in harmony with each other to play the right tune. Like training your monster and villagers to work together gathering food. Or using your jetpack to dodge bullets, take out baddies and collect an item.
This won't happen unless a concerted effort is made to make it happen.
When each of the individual gameworld mechanics are coherent enough by themselves they hang together and form Sandbox Play as a byproduct. Although Sandbox Play can be found in many games if you look for it, GTA and B+W are developed with it very much in mind. It's a main selling-point of the game experience.
The creature is undoubtedly the reason that Black and White exists, and zhe does so as a secondary mode of interaction to the player. You already have the hand, with which you can do pretty much anything the creature can. But the fun in playing with the creature is in watching the gameworld interact with itself.
The creature is not the player. It is as little and as much of an element of the game as a hut or the sun rising and setting. But unlike the rest of the game it observes how you interact with the world, it learns, and then it interacts of it's own accord.
Devoid of player input it'll potter about, try using things with other things, aquire likes or dislikes and generally learn how the gameworld interacts with itself. It does this for no reason except that it's curious and it can.
GTA doesn't have a learning feature like that, but works on the inverse-pause principle that Bryan mentions above. The player is never really safe, or out of the action. Stand still long enough and fights will break out (whether they involve you or not), reckless drivers will plow your feet out from under you, planes might even fall from the sky and crush you.
Okay....ummmm.... let's see....
As well as this though.... when you play a game like this (i.e. not stepping outside it by pausing and the like) you effectively become part of that game also. The controller reads your physical actions and converts them into gameplay elements. Your avatar (and by that token your actions) are as much a part of the gameworld as that Creature, that hut or that Sun. Your avatar needs his own processing power and rules and boundries and is as much at the whim of the world as anything else there. The player-character may have certain advantages over the other agents, but that's still true.
From a certain point of view, the game plays itself. Obviously true in the example of Black and White, but even true when it comes to the player. To the game, the player-input is just a slightly different way of generating its internal behaviours.
You have the imaginative interaction with the game, exactly the same as you do with film or music. But you also have the communicative interaction, which is informed by the imaginative, but filtered and bound by the mechanics of the game.
Right. Like I said, that's not in any way a definitive point I was trying to make (because I'm not even sure if it makes total sense), but I'm going to stop there and see if anyone wants to pick up on any of that. |
