More Companion Cube, Please.

March 29, 2008

None of what follows (except for the stuff about my obsessive need to finish the video game baseball season) is news. It has all been said, much more eloquently than this, many times. But that’s never stopped me before. So let’s get started.

I’ve been thinking about how there are two ways I play video games: I either play them to play them (most sports games, Guitar Hero/Rock Band, Tony Hawk 3, Tetris and other simple puzzle type games), or I play them to see what happens next (Half Life, God of War, um… I don’t play a lot of this type of game).

Basically, I don’t really care about what happens at the end of Tony Hawk: Underground or NHL 98 or Tiger Woods 2003. I just like playing, and getting better at it, and then stopping eventually.

But with Half Life (and Shadow of the Colossus, and Quake/Doom before them), I don’t really enjoy the gameplay that much. I mostly want to see where the story goes, or what new areas I can open up, or what cool new aliens I can find and blow apart with what cool new weapons. In fact, I prefer to play on god mode so I don’t even have to THINK about playing well (and those jerk game designers still manage to design levels where god mode alone isn’t enough to get through it). I’m extremely confident that if I ever play Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Eleven it will be the same thing.

And it’s not like the games in group A are all built for pure gameplay while the games in group B are built for an unfolding interesting plot. It may seem that way from the games I listed above, but, for example, when I was in college I used to play some baseball game all the time, and I didn’t really like playing it all that much. I just wanted to finish the interminable season (there are 162 games in a season, plus as many as 21 (I think) playoff games; it took about half an hour to play each game; do the math). A lot of it was just my weird compulsion to Complete the effort—to recreate, in microcosm, the months-long slog that is the MLB season—but I also wanted to see the (inevitably disappointing) digital celebration that marked a victory in the Computer World Series.

And I used to play Grand Theft Auto’s various games the same way as I do Half Life. For those of you who haven’t played GTA, it’s the prototypical sandbox game—though there’s a narrative plot you can follow, it’s really just an elaborate but tiny universe in which you can mess around. You just run all over town, stealing cars, running over pedestrians, fleeing the police, over and over and over again. But when I play the game, I tend to get caught up in the plot (some variant on: you start out poor and friendless, you work your way up in the criminal underworld until you ultimately control the city), trying to complete various missions and move on in the narrative.

There is one exception that I can think of, one game in which I actually loved both the gameplay and the gradual revelation of the story and new levels: Portal. That’s it! That’s the only game in the history of ever that I consider a complete success. Unfortunately, it’s only 3 hours long, and I beat it months ago.

Part of this is me, I’m sure. If I didn’t suck at first person shooters, there would probably be some games that I could get through without sweating, and that had enjoyable storylines and interesting enough visuals to satisfy me. But my ineptitude, and the resulting dichotomy in my gaming experience, have let me to these observations, and I think they’re somewhat valuable as a more general way of looking at video game design. I have read enough criticism of this industry to know that combining these two attributes—great gameplay and a compelling narrative—is far more difficult than it might seem. Either that or it’s just not something that most game designers are interested in.

For many years, in my opinion, game designers have recognized the difficulty of succeeding in both aspects—and have chosen to make sure that the gameplay is great. I believe that commercially, this has been a smart move—most game purchasers have been fast-twitch nerds with nothing better to do than sit around mastering complex game mechanics (kidding, sort of—I’m just bitter because no matter how long I spend on it, I just can’t get good at any of these games…). So you get games like Quake, Wolfenstein 3D, Halo, Call of Duty, etc.

And let’s look at some of the historical outliers, games that aren’t necessarily aimed at the hardcore gaming community: Civilization, Sim City, Mario Cart, Grand Theft Auto, Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution, Wii Sports, Katamari Damacy. These are sandbox games. You don’t have to know what you’re doing to jump in and enjoy them. Though you can get better at them, you don’t have to do so to continue enjoying them. And every time you play, even if you never “advance” in the game’s storyline (if one even exists), it’s a new experience.

So, okay, great. Game designers (and the companies that employ them) make a pretty good living making and selling these games. Consumers eat this stuff up. Hell, I eat this stuff up. What am I complaining about?

I am complaining about the missed opportunities. Why aren’t there more games like Portal—games that incorporate an interesting story and fun gameplay? Hell, why aren’t there more games that have a really great storyline and merely passable gameplay? Now, to be fair, it’s more than possible that these games are out there. It sounds like Bioshock may be a pretty good start (although with a major problem—your ability to make choices is supposed to be a big deal but they don’t, from what I hear, actually have any effect on the outcome of the game). And maybe I’m the only person who cares—economically, designing and marketing a game just for me is probably a bad business decision. But I’m still waiting on a game that tells a really good story without being, essentially, a rail shooter.

Which reminds me. Everything I said about Portal is true. It is a terrific game, with a fun story and fun gameplay. But it is a rail shooter, too. You can’t effect the outcome of the game—either you die, or you end up winning the game in one particular way. So although it balances the two traditional strengths of video games, I don’t think it actually serves as an example of the synthesis I’m looking for.

So what’s the solution? I don’t know. I’m an english major. But there’s gotta be somebody out there interested in and capable of combining the fun, and the unfettered freedom, of a sandbox game with the storytelling that envigorates so many other mediums.

I’ve written far too much at this point (and I haven’t even mentioned World of Warcraft or any other MMWAORPs), so I guess I’ll just sum up by saying that I think video games have the potential to be every bit as smart, as insightful, as persuasive, and as important as music, or literature, or movies. And a video game can do one thing that those other media basically cannot: incorporate the “reader”. I’m not going to get into it (or into the many problems that pop up when you allow the player to mess around with the narrative), but it’s the one thing that video games have going. They don’t have to be passively absorbed; they can draw the player in, use the players choices to craft a unique setting and story. And, at least so far, most of them don’t.

Posted in Art, Economics and Advertising, Tech