6 ms·

This kind of tiny piece by piece interaction with the world is something I desired in the late 90s, dreaming as a teen, but my rudimentary O(n) skills showed me

This kind of tiny piece by piece interaction with the world is something I desired in the late 90s, dreaming as a teen, but my rudimentary O(n) skills showed me was beyond the computers of the time. It's gorgeous & I love the potential that brims here. What if something was this complex and well built, but the storyline was removed - the player simply builds their own story, ala DF Adventurer mode.

headcanon 8y ago
I'm sure we'll get there eventually, its just much more difficult to write for. Even in Westworld, the interactions were semi-scripted, with packaged "quests" along the way. Some games come close though, the Witcher 3 includes choice-based gameplay with real consequences that last thoughout the game. However the developers still had to explicitly write each scenario as it unfolded.
- barrkel 8y ago
  Deus Ex had choices with real consequences lasting throughout the game too, fwiw.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    The entire Deus Ex series is excellent. Well, there was "Invisible War" I suppose, but we don't talk about that one.
    - z3phyr 8y ago
      I only liked one Deus Ex. The first one. Nothing beats it in the genre. I still replay it every two years :)
      - jki275 8y ago
        Best overall game ever released.
- airstrike 8y ago
  Since we're listing games with long-lasting consequences, I'll have to recommend folks who have been living under a rock to play the entire Mass Effect trilogy – to me, still the greatest game ever made (and I've played far too many games)
  - setr 8y ago
    Nothing has ever irrated me more than the realization that Mass Effect is a much weaker version of Star Control 2, and learned next to nothing from its predecessor’s mistakes. The only things I can say Mass Effect did better despite 20 years difference was combat, and perhaps planet exploration, though really only because of the move from 2D to 3D. Planet content itsekf managed to be just as lacking. (This includes graphics; star control’s aesthetic and particularly alien aesthetics are far superior).
  - moate 8y ago
    "Long Lasting Consequences" like changing the color of the sky during the final cut-scene... Don't get me wrong, I loved those games, but when I played 3 and that was the big pay off...jesus.
    - airstrike 8y ago
      The DLCs fixed the endings somewhat, but in any case the journey itself was amazing. Sometimes it's not just about the destination but how you got there
      - moate 8y ago
        Eh, when you say "hey, the things you do are going to have a dramatic affect on the story" but they DON'T have a dramatic affect on the ending...maybe you fucked up a little bit? Again: loved the games, had a lot of fun, but I was also disappointing that decisions I thought would matter wound up being relatively meaningless. Not trying to say your experience playing the game wasn't valid, just that it might not be the best example to point to since that was a rather noteworthy example of what NOT to do for many people.
donavanm 8y ago
Check out some of the critiques for games like No Mans Sky. The short of it is that procedural “story” doesnt really work. You still need writers for engaging content, and that doesnt scale. If you remove written story you get something closer to a tower defense/tactics/arena shooter/grinding genre, which is “fine” but substantially different than most open worlds people envision.
- setr 8y ago
  See dwarf fortress for a counter-example. I’m of the opinion that story-writing is a red-herring in video games; an attempt to apply “tricks” from other mediums, by disregarding the “interactivity” of video games. A story can be sufficiently created by means of the player’s operations, if the simulation is sufficiently complex and built to support it. Another example is competitive fps games like CoD/Halo/Quake — the story (and singleplayer mode in general) is wholly unimportant; players will continue to have, and create, stories, despite the multiplayer modes offering little more than a setting. Interaction between each other becomes the story you tell. No man’s sky (NMS) was simply a bad game, and poorly implemented procedural generation (procedurally generated games are appealing in that you’re exploring the system/simulation, and trying to get a handle on it. No man’s sky had a lot of “elements” to its generation, but its system was very basic; it didn’t take long to mostly understand it, and it was sufficiently complex to allow interesting new phenomena to emerge). NMS’s failure says very little about what procedural generation can offer, because it didn’t make a very good attempt at it. Spore is another example of a failed attempt. Borderlands is another, to a degree. None of these games understood that it’s the system thats interesting, not the combinatorial explosion. Thus their procedural generation is totally unsatisfying, and uninteresting.
  - learc83 8y ago
    Dwarf Fortress is a different kind of game from No Man's Sky or The Witcher 3. It has a huge learning curve and takes a lot of effort to play. For every amazing story that people crafted there are hundreds, maybe thousands of failed game attempts. That's fine and purely procedurally generated games can be amazing (I'm working on one myself), but they are a different type of game play, and often attract a different kind of player. Not everyone wants to be a musician, some people just want to play rock band. For open world exploration games in particular, in every single example I've seen, mixing in hand crafted world building with systemic game mechanics always provides a better experience.
Pristina 8y ago
if you did that, it would be boring. The difference between a livestream of somebody's house and a soap opera is the storyline. Without the story, only the world, the intensity is much lower and you would need the world to be much much more detailed to hold any interest. A real fractal of details like in a real world is much more effortful to implement compared to a good story.
- pnathan 8y ago
  The interesting thing in the article is that there is no story, yet it holds the writer's interest. Narrative is not a hard requirement. Same for, e.g. Minecraft, or Legos, or other common toys. And also, Dwarf Fortress is essentially a story building simulator, it is designed to generate interesting stories. anyway, just some thoughts, people get fun from different things.

headcanon 8y ago

I'm sure we'll get there eventually, its just much more difficult to write for. Even in Westworld, the interactions were semi-scripted, with packaged "quests" along the way. Some games come close though, the Witcher 3 includes choice-based gameplay with real consequences that last thoughout the game. However the developers still had to explicitly write each scenario as it unfolded.

barrkel 8y ago
Deus Ex had choices with real consequences lasting throughout the game too, fwiw.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  The entire Deus Ex series is excellent. Well, there was "Invisible War" I suppose, but we don't talk about that one.
  - z3phyr 8y ago
    I only liked one Deus Ex. The first one. Nothing beats it in the genre. I still replay it every two years :)
    - jki275 8y ago
      Best overall game ever released.
airstrike 8y ago
Since we're listing games with long-lasting consequences, I'll have to recommend folks who have been living under a rock to play the entire Mass Effect trilogy – to me, still the greatest game ever made (and I've played far too many games)
- setr 8y ago
  Nothing has ever irrated me more than the realization that Mass Effect is a much weaker version of Star Control 2, and learned next to nothing from its predecessor’s mistakes. The only things I can say Mass Effect did better despite 20 years difference was combat, and perhaps planet exploration, though really only because of the move from 2D to 3D. Planet content itsekf managed to be just as lacking. (This includes graphics; star control’s aesthetic and particularly alien aesthetics are far superior).
- moate 8y ago
  "Long Lasting Consequences" like changing the color of the sky during the final cut-scene... Don't get me wrong, I loved those games, but when I played 3 and that was the big pay off...jesus.
  - airstrike 8y ago
    The DLCs fixed the endings somewhat, but in any case the journey itself was amazing. Sometimes it's not just about the destination but how you got there
    - moate 8y ago
      Eh, when you say "hey, the things you do are going to have a dramatic affect on the story" but they DON'T have a dramatic affect on the ending...maybe you fucked up a little bit? Again: loved the games, had a lot of fun, but I was also disappointing that decisions I thought would matter wound up being relatively meaningless. Not trying to say your experience playing the game wasn't valid, just that it might not be the best example to point to since that was a rather noteworthy example of what NOT to do for many people.

donavanm 8y ago

Check out some of the critiques for games like No Mans Sky. The short of it is that procedural “story” doesnt really work. You still need writers for engaging content, and that doesnt scale. If you remove written story you get something closer to a tower defense/tactics/arena shooter/grinding genre, which is “fine” but substantially different than most open worlds people envision.

setr 8y ago
See dwarf fortress for a counter-example. I’m of the opinion that story-writing is a red-herring in video games; an attempt to apply “tricks” from other mediums, by disregarding the “interactivity” of video games. A story can be sufficiently created by means of the player’s operations, if the simulation is sufficiently complex and built to support it. Another example is competitive fps games like CoD/Halo/Quake — the story (and singleplayer mode in general) is wholly unimportant; players will continue to have, and create, stories, despite the multiplayer modes offering little more than a setting. Interaction between each other becomes the story you tell. No man’s sky (NMS) was simply a bad game, and poorly implemented procedural generation (procedurally generated games are appealing in that you’re exploring the system/simulation, and trying to get a handle on it. No man’s sky had a lot of “elements” to its generation, but its system was very basic; it didn’t take long to mostly understand it, and it was sufficiently complex to allow interesting new phenomena to emerge). NMS’s failure says very little about what procedural generation can offer, because it didn’t make a very good attempt at it. Spore is another example of a failed attempt. Borderlands is another, to a degree. None of these games understood that it’s the system thats interesting, not the combinatorial explosion. Thus their procedural generation is totally unsatisfying, and uninteresting.
- learc83 8y ago
  Dwarf Fortress is a different kind of game from No Man's Sky or The Witcher 3. It has a huge learning curve and takes a lot of effort to play. For every amazing story that people crafted there are hundreds, maybe thousands of failed game attempts. That's fine and purely procedurally generated games can be amazing (I'm working on one myself), but they are a different type of game play, and often attract a different kind of player. Not everyone wants to be a musician, some people just want to play rock band. For open world exploration games in particular, in every single example I've seen, mixing in hand crafted world building with systemic game mechanics always provides a better experience.

Pristina 8y ago

if you did that, it would be boring. The difference between a livestream of somebody's house and a soap opera is the storyline. Without the story, only the world, the intensity is much lower and you would need the world to be much much more detailed to hold any interest. A real fractal of details like in a real world is much more effortful to implement compared to a good story.

pnathan 8y ago
The interesting thing in the article is that there is no story, yet it holds the writer's interest. Narrative is not a hard requirement. Same for, e.g. Minecraft, or Legos, or other common toys. And also, Dwarf Fortress is essentially a story building simulator, it is designed to generate interesting stories. anyway, just some thoughts, people get fun from different things.