The thing about videogames
(as I came upon this post -in Alice archives- was just thinking, what do people like about games?)

There's a particular story-game format out there that we're all I think familiar with - think Max Payne to Resident Evil to Lara Croft. Interactive narrative. Not branching narrative, but pure, linear story, with interactive bits stirred in with animated bits. Maybe a bit of sandbox these days if you're lucky, but usually it's start at point A, go through various traumas and challenges until you arrive at point Z, The End.
...
It's already an intense experience, this being in control thing, exploring something, coming up against characters, face to face, any angle I choose - except, most of the time we're face to face with some lump marching out his lines and waving a wooden arm around for emphasis. I know people are often asking, 'when are games going to make us cry?', but really. When? Here's my point: it's easy to forget, but games are still fantastically primitive when we're talking interactive entertainment. Hamming amateurs. If this kind of story and acting were on the television, we'd be throwing tomatoes, up in arms in outrage. Yet in games, we fall about, goggle-eyed with delight.
This can only mean one thing. We're not even close to what makes great "interactive entertainment". Interactive entertainment is going to get better, and better, and better, and it's all unfolding in front of us right now. There's a semi-popular view that the magic is all about gameplay, and graphics aren't everything, but it's not all about gameplay, because it's not just a simple game anymore. It's about play, and story, and environment, and story, and immersion, and story, and yes graphics matter, they matter a lot: you know that bit in Half Life 2 when the bloke on the train at the very beginning looks you in the EYE? Did you feel that? Creeped out? That's just the beginning of it.
Next-gen is here soon, and given a few years of practice, those wily designers should have us some characters we can really get into the heads of.
06:52 PM June 30, 2005 Permalink Comments (8)