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Starting this off with a post from Haus, in which he begins by addressing the issue of what steampunk actually is.
Haus: I think the first question there is how you define "pure" steampunk. Answer: you don't. The term was coined in the early 90s, I think to describe Bruce Sterling and William Gibson's the Difference Engine, on which The Chaos Engine was very obviously based. However, although this book then got to define the field, in this case a Victorian setting in which technology was at an advanced level or moving at an accelerated pace compared to our history. However, the same term has subsequently been applied to a grab-bag of approaches, some of which precede the creation of the term itself - the Victorian submarine in Disney's 20,000 leagues under the sea might be a very good example of steampunk aesthetics avant la lettre, as might the Victorian 1960s in Harry Harrison's A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!.
Anyway, back to games. Why is steampunk not as widespread as, say, its big brother cyberpunk? Part of the answer to that is probably in the question - Cyberpunk is a larger and more successful genre, and so logically more games will be created targeting it. However, I don't think that's a complete answer at all. I'm more inclined to suggest something along these lines:
The steampunk aesthetic requires computers to do things that, at least until recently, computers have not been great at - cloth textures, shadows and flickering light sources, curlicues and high levels of detail (because technology will be handcrafted rather than mass-produced) and, frankly, brass. This is compuned by the fact that the setting does not generally have features that necessarily add value to the "bones" of the game structure - because the advances in technology will in many cases make it play like a modern day/near future setting _anyway_, the gameplay payoff from the setting may well not justify the added complications of the code, especially if by putting in these complications they may actually reduce the appeal, in sales terms, of the product.
Lots to tear apart and disagree with, there, but it's a posit. Now, if I may, let me take a look at a game which I think fits quite neatly into the genre "Steampunk", and which uses that not only as a setting but also as a key part of the gaming experience (albeit with one major structural difference to "steampunk classic" in the Difference Engine Mode): Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura.
This is a Troika game, and like all Troika games shows remarkable attention to detail - which I think makes it a good fit - the manual, for example, is done in a heavily archaicised style which is occasionally wincemaking but kept carefully consistent. It also shows up on of the problems of the style - everything looks muddy and indistinct, because characters and settings eschew bright colours.
Where it differs from Steampunk classic is that its setting is best described as accelerated fantasy - that is, accelerated technological development and Edwardian setting is being appplied to a D&D-type fantasy world, with Elves, Dwarves, Halflings and so on - to steampunk what Shadowrun is to cyberpunk, essentially.
Magic makes technology less likely to work, technology makes magic less likely to work. As such, the player has to balance his or her approach to personal development, moving towards magic or science, which have their own skill trees, applications and so on, which has impacts on their ability to use the other, vulnerability to it and so on. It's also a very pure RPG, which I suspect lends itself better too steampunk as a genre of game because more discursive and based more on explanation and scene-setting, and tend more towards static, two-dimensional screens that can be decorated and detailed without slowing down the game. The social changes brought on by the development of technology are also both a part of the plot and a way of adding detail and richness to the world - so, firearms are modish but most of them are still not very good, but if you follow a weaponsmithing skill tree you can ultimately create technology which is as effective as high-level magic. Probably. I got about 20 hours in and was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the game, but the aesthetics, and the effort put in to create a consistent style, were highly impressive.
So, Arcanum got around the problems I mooted above - if problems they were - by putting the detail primarily in cutscenes, static backgrounds and "character sheet" still pages rather than the objects being used in the world, and by sheer mass of contextualising detail without the need for creating a convincing alternative history of our world - although the weaknesses of the writers (another problem for steampunk - people who work on computer games are likely to be more familiar and more comfortable with contemporary and futuristic milieux than a Victorian or Edwardian setting) at times inserted bum notes.
Can anyone think of a successful approach to steampunk in another genre of game (RTS seems like a promising one), or want to take me up on any of the above propositions? Also it occurs to me that we are limiting ourselves to video games here, which we don't _need_ to... |
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