12 ms·

The Cargo Cult of Game Mechanics

202 points by baoyu 12y ago

verroq 12y ago
>The role of game mechanics should not be the oppressive tyrant telling you to fetch and grind and be thankful for your crumbs of XP and DPS as the scenery blazes past. That's generally not true at all. It may seem that way, but level systems are similar to a proof of work scheme. Player puts in some time and receives some fair reward for his time. Level systems are a way to facilitate this transaction without invoking pay2win overtones.
- Negitivefrags 12y ago
  That is a pretty cynical view. Do you think that was the idea when levels were added to classic pen and paper RPGs like D&D? Levels are a way to give players choices about how their character develops over time. The choices they picked as their character levels up make up part of the story of their character that makes it uniquely yours. This is why I hate easy respec mechanics that a lot of modern RPGs have. When you respec your character you destroy it's story. Your level 60 paladin is now the same as anyone elses level 60 paladin. A blank slate divorced from your personality. You have broken the illusion that even the very term Role Playing Game was intended to be about. In the game I work on, Path of Exile, we have specifically made respec something that has a cost. The more you want to change your character the more costly it becomes. Changing your character then becomes part of the story of how it was created.
  - verroq 12y ago
    Maybe I play games differently but I always try and go for the optimal set up (the min/max)(even if it involves looking it up on the internet). So theoretically, assuming players are somewhat rational. Then they'd always go for the optimal set up and most RPG players will end up converging onto the same optimal stats anyway. This is where level systems shine, they can make the path to the optimal set up extremely painful, but players will still grind for it, since it's the optimal (and players like to be optimal).
    - DanBC 12y ago
      That's one way to play a game. But sometimes people like role playing an actual character, not just grinding to get 'best' character. As an example there are plenty of suggested SPECIAL setups for Fallout3.
      - JetSpiegel 12y ago
        The first Fallouts had low-Intelligence characters. It makes most responses "Uhh?", and everyone responds accordingly.
        kazagistar 12y ago
        Except the other low intelligence characters, with whom you have some extensive and enlightened conversations. One of my favorite twists on mechanics ever.
        JetSpiegel 12y ago
        I didn't remember that. Time to replay Fallout...
        angersock 12y ago
        Fallout 2, chat with Tor.
      - nnnnni 12y ago
        Yeah, exactly. I have more fun making the character that I choose the best it can be relative to its starting state, not every other character in the game.
    - Negitivefrags 12y ago
      Well there are multiple different personalities that we have to cater to when designing a character progression system. You are what we would call a Spike player (going from the terminology coined by the design team of Magic the Gathering). It's okay that you act like that because following towards a goal that you think is optimal is fun for you. However, it's our challenge as game designers to make it so that opinions will differ in the player base as to what is optimal. Once you have a diversity of player builds than you will still feel a bond to your character because you still picked between different efficient options that were presented on the internet.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - imanaccount247 12y ago
    >In the game I work on, Path of Exile, we have specifically made respec something that has a cost. And you made it so I have no idea what I should be taking and not taking. And you made it so the game heavily punishes me for unknowingly taking the "wrong" thing and not being perfectly optimal. This is why everyone stopped playing so quickly.
  - jholman 12y ago
    > In the game I work on, Path of Exile, we have specifically made respec something that has a cost. My gaming group gave PoE a very serious try, and all eventually got bored, and I think this "feature" you boast of is part of the problem. To me, the good part of PoE was in evaluating different combinations, trying them out, seeing what combos work well together, etc. The gem system is fundamentally very good (except see the next graf). But locking in passive-tree choices prevents players from fully exploring the system you built (unless they're willing to invest thousands of hours). With an investment like that, any moderately-serious player will be driven to spend more time studying the wiki than playing, because a wrong choice is very expensive (though at least respecs are not impossible). An even bigger problem, while I'm pointing out this I didn't like in PoE, is how a major factor in creating a potent build is grinding for "currency items", for dozens or hundreds of hours, to do things like reconfigure links on items. I think this sort of system is exactly the sort of thing that validates the sort of cynicism demonstrated in the parent comment. High performance is predicated on meeting a certain minimum skill level, and then investing the (many) hours. And the latter two issues tie together, btw... because the respecs are expensive, you have to ensure that even Very Bad Choices are still viable, which is part of why there's never any meaningful challenge, except the challenge of staying awake while you grind. Since you mention "story" and "illusion" and "role playing game", PoE's story, like nearly every other game's story, is basically total garbage. And the claim that a character is "uniquely yours" is laughable. Go look at your character creation process: choose one of 7 uninspired archetypes, listen to the dopey grimdark backstory, and sign up for the railroad characterization. You appear to want to hang your hat on writing that, in the realm of novels, would consign you to a vanity press, which baffles me.
    - Negitivefrags 12y ago
      Everyone will get bored of a single game in the long run. We still managed to hold your interest for over 23 hours of gameplay. I would call that a win. I can't know this for sure, but if we had offered you free repecs I doubt you would have stuck around much longer anyway. As to your comments on our story, that isn't what I was referring to at all. When someone talks animatedly about their memory of an online RPG experience they don't talk about the game storyline. They talk about how they found this item or used this upgrade which made their character awesome. That is the story of your character and it's what forms your lasting memory of the game.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  Couldn't agree more. Pay to win is the worst mechanic ever and the death of many otherwise good games.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- pjc50 12y ago
  I think you're actually agreeing by framing it as a reward and especially in describing the process leading up to it as "work" rather than "play".
- barrkel 12y ago
  I generally play games as a way to self-actualize in an alternate reality. Trying on a character and a way of (excitement filled) living like it's a jacket. Putting in some time and getting some reward is a poor bargain. In particular, it makes replays agonizingly painful. My time is actually valuable; I'd much rather put time into learning a skill or technique that I can start using immediately in a replay.
- protonfish 12y ago
  I disagree wholeheartedly. Leveling should never be about pavlovian rewards for menial tasks. That is lazy game design that leads to pathetic and unfun games. Leveling should be about 2 things: 1. Pacing. The timing that determines when the story should move forward needs to be tuned so the player has just about exhausted the fun and interest of the current level. 2. Controlling complexity. When a game begins, only the simplest world and player abilities should be available. When it is assessed that the player has a good handle on the world and game mechanics, new abilities and areas should open up. Leveling up should always be about giving the player more options instead of giving an existing option a +1 (and then giving the corresponding challenges a +1 to stay balanced.)
sergiosgc 12y ago
I, for one, like the chutes and doors that lock behind me, reducing the search space when I inevitably get lost after missing an essential key needed to progress. Yes, there's the Internet and walk-throughs and YouTube, but that kind of defeats the purpose. It means the game complexity has exceeded the fun threshold. And I also disagree that linear level design prevents good story building (not story telling) by the player. Good examples abound, one of them being Mass Effect, which the article criticized.
- Mithaldu 12y ago
  You (understandably) skipped over the point he was trying to make: In System Shock 2 there was no need to lock anything behind you. The world you were in was built small enough and diverse enough that it remained in your mind as you traversed it. You weren't just going through anonymous tunnels, but exploring a space ship where you always had at least a rough idea of where you were. Mass Effect 3 has a gigantic world, and has you enter, again and again, dungeons that simply start out as holes in the ground with little guidance for the player as to how they're structured, built with repetitive (though high-detail) 3d assets and textures, thus making it necessary to lock things behind you, since there cannot be a reasonable expectation for the player to keep their bearings.
  - angersock 12y ago
    This. A thousand times this. Every bad experience with navigating a level is because of shitty level design. Every bad experience with "I don't have enough health, I don't have enough ammo" is because of shitty level design. Go back and play Blood, or Duke Nukem, or Doom, and pay careful attention to the way that the levels are made. It's vastly, vastly different than the funhouse rides created for modern shooters.
    - sergiosgc 12y ago
      Duke Nukem? Doom? If your standard for good level design is Duke Nukem, then the conversation is over, with the conclusion that we have different quality standards. I played Duke Nukem as a teen, with truckloads of time on my hands. While fun, the game requires teen-levels of free time to get unstuck here and there. Nowadays I would definitely not spend the time I did. Make a level big enough and people will get lost. Different people will get lost in different points. So, the solution is to either make smaller levels or to lock out areas. Even Fallout, a master piece for these games, closes out areas in critical puzzle points so it can reduce search space.
Havvy 12y ago
Overall good article and food for thought, but the last paragraph is a non-sequiter compared to the paragraphs that came before it.
erikb 12y ago
The tl;dr to me feels like this: The games when I were young were cooler. He argues against it and brings good arguments for what made the games of his youth cool, it's still missing the point. Guys ten years older than him won't enjoy the 90s titles as much, considering them too fancy etc. They would have also reasonable arguments why the 80s titles were better. The same goes if you ask a currently 14 year old child about the games he plays. He probably ignores most (like we do) and can state why he enjoys the ones that are good in his eyes. Imho you can spend all your life being sad about missing the old days and hoping someone revives them, but instead it make you more happy to learn what makes the great new games great in their own regard. They won't be great in the same way Fallout 1 was great. They will be great in other regards, and discovering these can be as entertaining for a 40 year old as it is for a 14 year old guy.
- kefka 12y ago
  When you can only go so far technology wise (think SNES through PS1), the resources go to improving the games go other ways. This usually involves making a very good story, solid game mechanics, and character development. After all, the blitzy super hi-Rez 3D scapes cannot be done.
  - dvhh 12y ago
    I really think that the platform limitations were one of the best point of the games from this era. Where game developpers had to be more inventive with the constrains to build a sufficiently immersive world and rely a lot on the player imagination to fill the jagged pixed. I do not deny that the technological advances had made game more beautiful, but they also seems to make the defects more visible, and force the designer vision on the player's imagination.
    - mercurial 12y ago
      > I really think that the platform limitations were one of the best point of the games from this era. That's were roguelikes come in. Though they have self-imposed limits, they are often pretty innovative (eg, CDDA, or the huge breadth of available classes in TOME).
gabzuka 12y ago
OT, but the root site (http://acko.net/ http://acko.net/) has some great web animation work
- Jare 12y ago
  He is the author of some of the most beautiful presentations on mathematics and computer graphics ever created. Explore the entire site and enjoy.
  - dvhh 12y ago
    And he's also the master behind the (subjectively) most beautiful winamp visualizations
    - sokoloff 12y ago
      My friends whiled away many an hour with his work projected onto the wall of my apartment. I had the chance for that pleasant walk down memory lane because of your comment, so thanks!
- frik 12y ago
  the article page is broken in IE 11 (full screen background animation, unread-able text): http://s14.postimg.org/daqjf0utd/shit.png http://s14.postimg.org/daqjf0utd/shit.png
jules 12y ago
For me there are 4 properties that make a game great. Number 1: breadth of options. Games like rollercoaster tycoon are fun because you have an incredible range of options. There is no linear progression from start to finish with only a few choice points in between that have little impact. There are choices everywhere. The opposite is a game like mario, where there are almost no choices. Number 2: reflexes. Games like pong and mario are fun because they require actions at the right timing. Turn based games do not have that. Number 3: collection. You collect items or upgrades or in game currency that help you later. Although I have never played it myself, an example is World of Warcraft. You collect items, money and levels. There is something satisfying about this. Game designers often exploit it to make a game addictive. Number 4: human adversaries. Playing against AI or against some in game metric (e.g. get X amount of people in your rollercoaster park) is not very fun. Playing against human opponents is much more fun because they are unpredictable and intelligent. It's not enough to just compete, there has to be interaction. If you put 2 games of tetris next to each other where the players compete for the highest score that's not good enough. First person shooters have this point right. The decisions of the players influence each other, rather than only competing via a score. Chess & go are the epitome of this. The games that come closest to hitting all these points are real time strategy games. You have a large amount of options. Not as much as in a sandbox game like rollercoaster tycoon, but still far more than in the average game. You need reflexes to react to threats. You collect resources, upgrades and units. Last but not least, you have human opponents who also have a large amount of options that you need to react to. Not as strategic as chess, but far more so than your average game. Sadly rts appears to be a dying genre...
- Vektorweg 12y ago
  I made a list about the properties a game should have: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/58847/32928 http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/58847/32928
- Vektorweg 12y ago
  Actually, i don't like RTS much, because i often forget to do something important and quickly lose the game. It requires a good training in time and task management, which is a bit stressful. And the unit movement is often a micromanagement skirmish.
voyou 12y ago
The article advocates "building a game that's meant to be played rather than just reacted to." That sounds right, but, then, it's sufficiently general that I'm not sure who would disagree with it. The last paragraph of the article seems to equate "a game that's meant to be played" with "real sandbox simulation, autonomous agents and language-capable AI", and that seems like a narrow idea of what "playing" means, one which equates interactivity (which is the distinguishing feature of games) with choice or nonlinearity. Providing players with lasting choices is one way in which you can use interactivity to structure an experience, but it's not the only one. There's some interesting comments on this in a review by Emily Short of the IF game "Howling Dogs": http://emshort.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/if-comp-2012-howling-dogs-porpentine/ http://emshort.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/if-comp-2012-howling... "Howling Dogs" is something of a masterclass in the different ways games can use interaction, and I'd recommend people check it out as a supplement to the vision of gaming put forward in this article.
- DaFranker 12y ago
  Your analysis of the last paragraph of the article seems pretty spot on. Kudos! But I'm nitpicky; the distinguishing feature of games isn't interactivity, otherwise every fun activity with interactivity would be a game, and I'm not sure conversations are normally included when we speak of "games" in this way. Games have rules, and often some kind of goal, and other things. The Art of Game Design (a book by Jesse Schell) kind of roughly approximates it by describing games as a kind of activity involving problem-solving and fun. If I'm not taking actions specifically chosen towards achieving a result ("problem-solving"), then I don't feel like I'm playing a game, even if there's some interactivity. So I'd say that the key towards quality game experiences lies more in the region of providing options to the player (actions they can take) that have an effect on the game world (resulting conversation, successful quicktime scene, dead goblin, shiny new sword, whatever!) where which option is taken lands the player in a different distance from various desirable goals ("solution" being what the player did to get there). But there's still a lot of fuzzyness, and it's still very hard to even judge what parts of what games are quality experiences for who and when, and especially why. You have it completely right that we can't just say it's "real sandbox simulation, autonomous agents and language-capable AI", and that lasting choices aren't the One True Way.
eswat 12y ago
Good article and pretty timely with the release of Destiny, which suffers greatly from the issues mentioned here: masking addictive random-number-generator gameplay and lackluster storytelling with great visuals and promises that this is just the foundation and the game will become much better with DLC. Many things that Bungie had been famous for doing, such as great story telling and smart AI, were completely absent with this game. And they made $500 million on the first day despite this…
Cakez0r 12y ago
> For a while, there was a really good match between the complexity of the game world and the way it was represented, and I don't think it's a coincidence that this window is where we find many beloved gaming classics. I thought this point was very insightful, and not one that I'd considered before.
- mcphage 12y ago
  I don't think it's necessarily true, though. I think the games he lists are beloved gaming classics because they were the good games out when he was a child. The games I would list as beloved gaming classics are a few years older; others may list games older still, or newer. Every period of time had gaming classics—even now.
spydum 12y ago
I think the indie crowd is actively working against these game mechanics. A great example: http://fullbright.company/gonehome/ http://fullbright.company/gonehome/ One of the main founders of the company is an incredibly bright guy named Steve. He made an interesting wager many years ago: http://www.fullbrightdesign.com/2008/02/wager.html http://www.fullbrightdesign.com/2008/02/wager.html Seems he's now out to prove it false, and making good progress.
- ekianjo 12y ago
  Gone Home is not really a game, though. And it was not particularly well received either. Not sure what you are trying to demonstrate here.
  - spydum 12y ago
    Define a game? I disagree. I thought the main point of the article was that the major game mechanics are these forced scripts guiding the experience, or incentivized,reward mechanisms which provide no real story telling or exploration? I was raising the point that there are other games actively shaping what it is to be a game.. Trying to create more of a self exploratory story.
    - ekianjo 12y ago
      Then if gone home is a game, going to the local dump and looking through used stuff and junk is a game too. And Life is a game too. Seriously, do I have to explain why Gone Home is not really a game?
      - deathcakes 12y ago
        Yes. That would certainly help. Another thing that would help is prefacing this and similar statements with "in my opinion". Should clear up any ambiguity.
        cwyers 12y ago
lmm 12y ago
The author seems to have completely missed the biggest gaming sensation of recent years - Minecraft is exactly the kind of game he's talking about (so is Kerbal Space Program). That list of "classics" also seems very parochial - more like "the best games when I was growing up" than any kind of "all time greats". Freedom and choices can be used as artistic elements. I'd cite e.g. Saya no Uta or Phantom of Inferno as the purest form of this - the interactivity of these "games" is absolutely minimal from a conventional "gaming" point of view, but it's vital to the narrative. You couldn't make these as movies, because the whole point is to make you complicit in what's happening, because the outcome is a result of your choices. But not every story has to be about such things. Many of the best-loved gaming classics - Ocarina of Time, or even FF7 - are those cinematic games, that maybe have puzzles (almost minigames, really), but where the overarching narrative is purely linear. If you can take a movie, or a movie-like narrative, and by sprinkling a few puzzles or quicktime events turn it into something more engaging, a better way to tell your story - why the hell not? Why is that not a perfectly valid form? Criticizing a game for being cinematic seems as pointless as criticizing a sculpture because it could have been done as a painting.
- CmonDev 12y ago
  "...Minecraft is exactly the kind of game he's talking about..." I guess having a flexible system of optional plots is better than no plot whatsoever.
- Retric 12y ago
  I think he used an actual picture from minecraft.
  - jcromartie 12y ago
    That's a screenshot from The Stanley Parable (spoiler alert?)
    - Retric 12y ago
      Ahh thanks, that makes much more sense in context.
CmonDev 12y ago
Making an issue "...in a market that moves very fast, saturated with product..." even worse "...there has been a counterpoint: the wave of DRM-free indies..." Look at Steam Greenlight.
cwyers 12y ago
I feel like this article suffers a lot from multiple rant syndrome, which is what happens when you get partway through a rant and are so locked into full-on rant mode that every time you mention something that pisses you off you go off on a siderant about it. I'm only about 80% sure which of his rants is the one that embodies his main point.
protonfish 12y ago
I think the desire to make games "open-ended" is inherently flawed (if you also want players to enjoy themselves.) The more complex and unpredictable a game becomes, the more difficult it is to balance. A certain (probably small) number of paths will be gravitated to leaving most stories unexplored and ending up equivalent to a linear story line (with a lot more work.) One way to attempt to fix this is to create multiple balanced paths (essentially a "choose your own adventure.") This can be brute-forced by adding more and more optional story lines, but in the end it is just many linear stories which is functional equivalent to selecting from different games to play. It is fun to think about creating a virtual world that is as rich and complex as the real one, but we already live in a reality that often sucks so hard we want to retreat into fiction. Stories with minor interactive components are a fine genre (if well done and compelling) as are puzzle and action games. The fact that they are different than reality is their primary feature, not a flaw.
- DaFranker 12y ago
  I think you're restricting your thinking to a certain type of games and a certain subtype of story. X-Com games are a common example of "open" games. The "story line" is single, of course, so if you're only talking about story they're very linear. However, how you get through is much more up to you. It doesn't force you down the right side of the bunker and require you to throw a grenade inside before you can proceed in the story; X-Com puts aliens in the world, and gives you some tools and options to fight them, and whenever something particular happens, story also happens (for a simple example: you lose all your forces and bases, the aliens take over the world! Game Over) The desire to make games that are open is clearly not "inherently flawed"; Risk is a very open-ended game, yet I've never heard of anyone complaining that the way it divides the story into branching paths just boils it down to choosing the best two or three storylines.
  - protonfish 12y ago
    Your definition of "open-ended" is very, um, open ended? If Risk is an open-ended game then so are all multiplayer games. X-Com (which are great games by the way - not criticizing) does not go too far beyond a basic turn-based strategy game which is basically chess puzzles with upgradable pieces decorated with an alien invasion theme. It has a decent random level generator, but I don't believe it is enough to qualify it what I think most people would term "open-ended."
Paul_S 12y ago
I violently agree with the author. I have something to add specific to competitive FPSs (or any other multiplayer game with a player results table) like Quake and UT. It's my personal measure of whether an online FPS is any good and there's a distinct difference and it's testable (somewhat objectively if you get many people to do this). 1. Play the game without any prior knowledge - just launch the game and play (obviously, look up the controls first). Good FPS: you end up bottom of the table with negative points having killed almost no one and probably dying from environmental hazards. In team games your own team is likely to vote-kick you. Bad FPS: you end up middle of the table and have managed to kill people from all over the table. 2. Play the game after putting in an hour. Good FPS: you started contributing to the team effort and whilst still near the bottom you get in some kills. You know all the mechanics and none of the high level strategies. Bad FPS: you finish the game at random positions of the table, even near the top. You don't know all the mechanics. 3. Play the game after putting in 10 hours. Good FPS: you consistently finish in the middle or higher up - but the point is your position is stable. People playing for the first time pose no threat to you. Bad FPS: you're still all over the place, sometimes at the top other times at the bottom and you sometimes get killed by people who are playing the game for the first time. The reason it ties in to OP is that this used to be the norm in FPS games, now accessibility is king.
- erikb 12y ago
  And why did you choose such method to measure a good FPS?
  - Paul_S 12y ago
    This is my attempt to try and find a common characteristic among fps games I enjoy and trying to make it testable. A good game rewards skill and has little randomness to it. A bad game lets you feel awesome regardless of your skill which means you get less pleasure from getting better. Quake vs Peggle.
    - erikb 12y ago
      I argued the same way about 10 years ago! I feel you! Nowadays I have developed different goals. Because my job and daily life offer enough opportunity to grind my skills. Therefore games that don't require me to get better for enjoying them became more interesting to me.
Osmium 12y ago
"but they lack lasting power once you stop playing." This sounds like a good litmus test for me. If you're still thinking about a game many months after you finish it, then it's probably something more than a mere diversion. In this sense, perhaps, the best game reviews should be retrospective, rather than reactionary on the day of release.
- agentultra 12y ago
  This is the essential difference between amusement and art for me. I may have read Fahrenheit 451 years ago but it altered the way I think. It gave me new faculties for relating to and judging new experiences and ideas. The closest a game has come to that mind-altering experience is Go. I've heard myself relate to and judge new ideas through Go when I say, "... like in Go..." Or I generate new ideas and ways to express myself by using concepts developed while playing Go. We might hear things like, "Life is like that grind in World of Warcraft except it ends," become common place some day... except with some more culturally-relevant analog of some future incarnation of what we call an MMO. But video games are just so darn young as a medium of expression that I don't think we've reached that level yet.
aniijbod 12y ago
It seems to me that if there was ever anything in the cannon of collective behaviour which didn't seem to the participants to be a game, but nonetheless actually happened to have some of the most uncannily engaging 'game mechanics' ever to grace a non-game, it is that decidedly odd phenomenon that is the cargo cult.
agentultra 12y ago
Game developers are exploiting game mechanics and human behavior to raise funds, market, and capitalize on their investments. Other mediums have had their brush with economy too. Painters once had to labor under the patronage of certain religious institutions in order to earn their keep and try to make their art on the side. Writers have always had to suffer in some level of Dante's hell, specially crafted for writers, in order to make bread. The poets never made any money and were free. Can a commercial game developer produce a work of art? Perhaps. We hang those works of religious patronage in the most esteemed museums in the world today. Publishers have capitalized on literature before. Music has tried to make it into a machine. Significant works have been produced even when money has been involved. Have video games produced a significant work of art yet? In my opinion, no. A significant work of art is a psychic program that mutates the human brain that interprets it. The less variation in the outcome of that mutation amongst a significant population of individuals the closer it is to expressing some universal truth of our condition. You can point to a work of Van Gogh, Kafka, or Mozart and explain its significance. Anyone who has experienced that art may have some personal interpretation of the experience but the significance of it remains much the same amongst a very large population of individuals. I haven't played a video game which has communicated such an idea through my interaction with it. Many games have borrowed or stolen ideas from other media in order to express their authors' intent or idea: but that isn't novel or new to video games as a medium. Will video games produce a movement? I think we're seeing some of that. We're seeing examples of games that show indications that we're developing a vocabulary capable of expressing ideas and emotions through interaction and interplay of strategy, choice, and value. However I don't think we've seen our Mozart or our Kafka -- yet. Until then... grind on. We just need to keep making them and experimenting. And I don't think it's valuable to point out that a game is AAA or indie. We still consider The Last Supper to be a great work of art even though it was essentially commissioned by the church at the time. The new religion is Capitalism. In time we may view some of these games today as beautiful. Though for now it seems like they're mere amusements.
- Retric 12y ago
  I have seen a lot of paintings and listened to plenty of music, but none had a significant impact. So IMO they if games fail to qualify as art so does painting, architecture, sculpture, music, and just about everything but books, movies, as possibly TV. However, if simply having a strong emotional response is enough then something as simple as Unreal World can be really intense. Fear, Joy, despair, angst, longing, it covers just about every base except love. http://www.unrealworld.fi/ http://www.unrealworld.fi/ In the end what separates video games from all other art is the experience can vary greatly. Go and see Mad Max and sure you might respond differently but you see the same movie, play in a sandbox game and our experiences can be wildly different.
rwallace 12y ago
I've seen this article template rerun any number of times over the last couple of decades. "Why don't we enjoy the video games of today as much as those we played when we were twelve years old? It's because the video games of these decadent times lack [insert whatever the particular author's imagination can come up with by way of special sauce whose secret has been lost]." Sorry, no. It's because we're not twelve years old anymore.

202 points by baoyu 12y ago

>The role of game mechanics should not be the oppressive tyrant telling you to fetch and grind and be thankful for your crumbs of XP and DPS as the scenery blazes past. That's generally not true at all. It may seem that way, but level systems are similar to a proof of work scheme. Player puts in some time and receives some fair reward for his time. Level systems are a way to facilitate this transaction without invoking pay2win overtones.

Negitivefrags 12y ago
That is a pretty cynical view. Do you think that was the idea when levels were added to classic pen and paper RPGs like D&D? Levels are a way to give players choices about how their character develops over time. The choices they picked as their character levels up make up part of the story of their character that makes it uniquely yours. This is why I hate easy respec mechanics that a lot of modern RPGs have. When you respec your character you destroy it's story. Your level 60 paladin is now the same as anyone elses level 60 paladin. A blank slate divorced from your personality. You have broken the illusion that even the very term Role Playing Game was intended to be about. In the game I work on, Path of Exile, we have specifically made respec something that has a cost. The more you want to change your character the more costly it becomes. Changing your character then becomes part of the story of how it was created.
- verroq 12y ago
  Maybe I play games differently but I always try and go for the optimal set up (the min/max)(even if it involves looking it up on the internet). So theoretically, assuming players are somewhat rational. Then they'd always go for the optimal set up and most RPG players will end up converging onto the same optimal stats anyway. This is where level systems shine, they can make the path to the optimal set up extremely painful, but players will still grind for it, since it's the optimal (and players like to be optimal).
  - DanBC 12y ago
    That's one way to play a game. But sometimes people like role playing an actual character, not just grinding to get 'best' character. As an example there are plenty of suggested SPECIAL setups for Fallout3.
    - JetSpiegel 12y ago
      The first Fallouts had low-Intelligence characters. It makes most responses "Uhh?", and everyone responds accordingly.
      - kazagistar 12y ago
        Except the other low intelligence characters, with whom you have some extensive and enlightened conversations. One of my favorite twists on mechanics ever.
        JetSpiegel 12y ago
        I didn't remember that. Time to replay Fallout...
        angersock 12y ago
        Fallout 2, chat with Tor.
    - nnnnni 12y ago
      Yeah, exactly. I have more fun making the character that I choose the best it can be relative to its starting state, not every other character in the game.
  - Negitivefrags 12y ago
    Well there are multiple different personalities that we have to cater to when designing a character progression system. You are what we would call a Spike player (going from the terminology coined by the design team of Magic the Gathering). It's okay that you act like that because following towards a goal that you think is optimal is fun for you. However, it's our challenge as game designers to make it so that opinions will differ in the player base as to what is optimal. Once you have a diversity of player builds than you will still feel a bond to your character because you still picked between different efficient options that were presented on the internet.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- imanaccount247 12y ago
  >In the game I work on, Path of Exile, we have specifically made respec something that has a cost. And you made it so I have no idea what I should be taking and not taking. And you made it so the game heavily punishes me for unknowingly taking the "wrong" thing and not being perfectly optimal. This is why everyone stopped playing so quickly.
- jholman 12y ago
  > In the game I work on, Path of Exile, we have specifically made respec something that has a cost. My gaming group gave PoE a very serious try, and all eventually got bored, and I think this "feature" you boast of is part of the problem. To me, the good part of PoE was in evaluating different combinations, trying them out, seeing what combos work well together, etc. The gem system is fundamentally very good (except see the next graf). But locking in passive-tree choices prevents players from fully exploring the system you built (unless they're willing to invest thousands of hours). With an investment like that, any moderately-serious player will be driven to spend more time studying the wiki than playing, because a wrong choice is very expensive (though at least respecs are not impossible). An even bigger problem, while I'm pointing out this I didn't like in PoE, is how a major factor in creating a potent build is grinding for "currency items", for dozens or hundreds of hours, to do things like reconfigure links on items. I think this sort of system is exactly the sort of thing that validates the sort of cynicism demonstrated in the parent comment. High performance is predicated on meeting a certain minimum skill level, and then investing the (many) hours. And the latter two issues tie together, btw... because the respecs are expensive, you have to ensure that even Very Bad Choices are still viable, which is part of why there's never any meaningful challenge, except the challenge of staying awake while you grind. Since you mention "story" and "illusion" and "role playing game", PoE's story, like nearly every other game's story, is basically total garbage. And the claim that a character is "uniquely yours" is laughable. Go look at your character creation process: choose one of 7 uninspired archetypes, listen to the dopey grimdark backstory, and sign up for the railroad characterization. You appear to want to hang your hat on writing that, in the realm of novels, would consign you to a vanity press, which baffles me.
  - Negitivefrags 12y ago
    Everyone will get bored of a single game in the long run. We still managed to hold your interest for over 23 hours of gameplay. I would call that a win. I can't know this for sure, but if we had offered you free repecs I doubt you would have stuck around much longer anyway. As to your comments on our story, that isn't what I was referring to at all. When someone talks animatedly about their memory of an online RPG experience they don't talk about the game storyline. They talk about how they found this item or used this upgrade which made their character awesome. That is the story of your character and it's what forms your lasting memory of the game.
blueskin_ 12y ago
Couldn't agree more. Pay to win is the worst mechanic ever and the death of many otherwise good games.
- deleted 12y ago
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pjc50 12y ago
I think you're actually agreeing by framing it as a reward and especially in describing the process leading up to it as "work" rather than "play".
barrkel 12y ago
I generally play games as a way to self-actualize in an alternate reality. Trying on a character and a way of (excitement filled) living like it's a jacket. Putting in some time and getting some reward is a poor bargain. In particular, it makes replays agonizingly painful. My time is actually valuable; I'd much rather put time into learning a skill or technique that I can start using immediately in a replay.
protonfish 12y ago
I disagree wholeheartedly. Leveling should never be about pavlovian rewards for menial tasks. That is lazy game design that leads to pathetic and unfun games. Leveling should be about 2 things: 1. Pacing. The timing that determines when the story should move forward needs to be tuned so the player has just about exhausted the fun and interest of the current level. 2. Controlling complexity. When a game begins, only the simplest world and player abilities should be available. When it is assessed that the player has a good handle on the world and game mechanics, new abilities and areas should open up. Leveling up should always be about giving the player more options instead of giving an existing option a +1 (and then giving the corresponding challenges a +1 to stay balanced.)

sergiosgc 12y ago

I, for one, like the chutes and doors that lock behind me, reducing the search space when I inevitably get lost after missing an essential key needed to progress. Yes, there's the Internet and walk-throughs and YouTube, but that kind of defeats the purpose. It means the game complexity has exceeded the fun threshold. And I also disagree that linear level design prevents good story building (not story telling) by the player. Good examples abound, one of them being Mass Effect, which the article criticized.

Mithaldu 12y ago
You (understandably) skipped over the point he was trying to make: In System Shock 2 there was no need to lock anything behind you. The world you were in was built small enough and diverse enough that it remained in your mind as you traversed it. You weren't just going through anonymous tunnels, but exploring a space ship where you always had at least a rough idea of where you were. Mass Effect 3 has a gigantic world, and has you enter, again and again, dungeons that simply start out as holes in the ground with little guidance for the player as to how they're structured, built with repetitive (though high-detail) 3d assets and textures, thus making it necessary to lock things behind you, since there cannot be a reasonable expectation for the player to keep their bearings.
- angersock 12y ago
  This. A thousand times this. Every bad experience with navigating a level is because of shitty level design. Every bad experience with "I don't have enough health, I don't have enough ammo" is because of shitty level design. Go back and play Blood, or Duke Nukem, or Doom, and pay careful attention to the way that the levels are made. It's vastly, vastly different than the funhouse rides created for modern shooters.
  - sergiosgc 12y ago
    Duke Nukem? Doom? If your standard for good level design is Duke Nukem, then the conversation is over, with the conclusion that we have different quality standards. I played Duke Nukem as a teen, with truckloads of time on my hands. While fun, the game requires teen-levels of free time to get unstuck here and there. Nowadays I would definitely not spend the time I did. Make a level big enough and people will get lost. Different people will get lost in different points. So, the solution is to either make smaller levels or to lock out areas. Even Fallout, a master piece for these games, closes out areas in critical puzzle points so it can reduce search space.

Havvy 12y ago

Overall good article and food for thought, but the last paragraph is a non-sequiter compared to the paragraphs that came before it.

erikb 12y ago

The tl;dr to me feels like this: The games when I were young were cooler. He argues against it and brings good arguments for what made the games of his youth cool, it's still missing the point. Guys ten years older than him won't enjoy the 90s titles as much, considering them too fancy etc. They would have also reasonable arguments why the 80s titles were better. The same goes if you ask a currently 14 year old child about the games he plays. He probably ignores most (like we do) and can state why he enjoys the ones that are good in his eyes. Imho you can spend all your life being sad about missing the old days and hoping someone revives them, but instead it make you more happy to learn what makes the great new games great in their own regard. They won't be great in the same way Fallout 1 was great. They will be great in other regards, and discovering these can be as entertaining for a 40 year old as it is for a 14 year old guy.

kefka 12y ago
When you can only go so far technology wise (think SNES through PS1), the resources go to improving the games go other ways. This usually involves making a very good story, solid game mechanics, and character development. After all, the blitzy super hi-Rez 3D scapes cannot be done.
- dvhh 12y ago
  I really think that the platform limitations were one of the best point of the games from this era. Where game developpers had to be more inventive with the constrains to build a sufficiently immersive world and rely a lot on the player imagination to fill the jagged pixed. I do not deny that the technological advances had made game more beautiful, but they also seems to make the defects more visible, and force the designer vision on the player's imagination.
  - mercurial 12y ago
    > I really think that the platform limitations were one of the best point of the games from this era. That's were roguelikes come in. Though they have self-imposed limits, they are often pretty innovative (eg, CDDA, or the huge breadth of available classes in TOME).

gabzuka 12y ago

OT, but the root site (http://acko.net/ http://acko.net/) has some great web animation work

Jare 12y ago
He is the author of some of the most beautiful presentations on mathematics and computer graphics ever created. Explore the entire site and enjoy.
- dvhh 12y ago
  And he's also the master behind the (subjectively) most beautiful winamp visualizations
  - sokoloff 12y ago
    My friends whiled away many an hour with his work projected onto the wall of my apartment. I had the chance for that pleasant walk down memory lane because of your comment, so thanks!
frik 12y ago
the article page is broken in IE 11 (full screen background animation, unread-able text): http://s14.postimg.org/daqjf0utd/shit.png http://s14.postimg.org/daqjf0utd/shit.png

jules 12y ago

For me there are 4 properties that make a game great. Number 1: breadth of options. Games like rollercoaster tycoon are fun because you have an incredible range of options. There is no linear progression from start to finish with only a few choice points in between that have little impact. There are choices everywhere. The opposite is a game like mario, where there are almost no choices. Number 2: reflexes. Games like pong and mario are fun because they require actions at the right timing. Turn based games do not have that. Number 3: collection. You collect items or upgrades or in game currency that help you later. Although I have never played it myself, an example is World of Warcraft. You collect items, money and levels. There is something satisfying about this. Game designers often exploit it to make a game addictive. Number 4: human adversaries. Playing against AI or against some in game metric (e.g. get X amount of people in your rollercoaster park) is not very fun. Playing against human opponents is much more fun because they are unpredictable and intelligent. It's not enough to just compete, there has to be interaction. If you put 2 games of tetris next to each other where the players compete for the highest score that's not good enough. First person shooters have this point right. The decisions of the players influence each other, rather than only competing via a score. Chess & go are the epitome of this. The games that come closest to hitting all these points are real time strategy games. You have a large amount of options. Not as much as in a sandbox game like rollercoaster tycoon, but still far more than in the average game. You need reflexes to react to threats. You collect resources, upgrades and units. Last but not least, you have human opponents who also have a large amount of options that you need to react to. Not as strategic as chess, but far more so than your average game. Sadly rts appears to be a dying genre...

Vektorweg 12y ago
I made a list about the properties a game should have: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/58847/32928 http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/58847/32928
Vektorweg 12y ago
Actually, i don't like RTS much, because i often forget to do something important and quickly lose the game. It requires a good training in time and task management, which is a bit stressful. And the unit movement is often a micromanagement skirmish.

voyou 12y ago

The article advocates "building a game that's meant to be played rather than just reacted to." That sounds right, but, then, it's sufficiently general that I'm not sure who would disagree with it. The last paragraph of the article seems to equate "a game that's meant to be played" with "real sandbox simulation, autonomous agents and language-capable AI", and that seems like a narrow idea of what "playing" means, one which equates interactivity (which is the distinguishing feature of games) with choice or nonlinearity. Providing players with lasting choices is one way in which you can use interactivity to structure an experience, but it's not the only one. There's some interesting comments on this in a review by Emily Short of the IF game "Howling Dogs": http://emshort.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/if-comp-2012-howling-dogs-porpentine/ http://emshort.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/if-comp-2012-howling... "Howling Dogs" is something of a masterclass in the different ways games can use interaction, and I'd recommend people check it out as a supplement to the vision of gaming put forward in this article.

DaFranker 12y ago
Your analysis of the last paragraph of the article seems pretty spot on. Kudos! But I'm nitpicky; the distinguishing feature of games isn't interactivity, otherwise every fun activity with interactivity would be a game, and I'm not sure conversations are normally included when we speak of "games" in this way. Games have rules, and often some kind of goal, and other things. The Art of Game Design (a book by Jesse Schell) kind of roughly approximates it by describing games as a kind of activity involving problem-solving and fun. If I'm not taking actions specifically chosen towards achieving a result ("problem-solving"), then I don't feel like I'm playing a game, even if there's some interactivity. So I'd say that the key towards quality game experiences lies more in the region of providing options to the player (actions they can take) that have an effect on the game world (resulting conversation, successful quicktime scene, dead goblin, shiny new sword, whatever!) where which option is taken lands the player in a different distance from various desirable goals ("solution" being what the player did to get there). But there's still a lot of fuzzyness, and it's still very hard to even judge what parts of what games are quality experiences for who and when, and especially why. You have it completely right that we can't just say it's "real sandbox simulation, autonomous agents and language-capable AI", and that lasting choices aren't the One True Way.

eswat 12y ago

Good article and pretty timely with the release of Destiny, which suffers greatly from the issues mentioned here: masking addictive random-number-generator gameplay and lackluster storytelling with great visuals and promises that this is just the foundation and the game will become much better with DLC. Many things that Bungie had been famous for doing, such as great story telling and smart AI, were completely absent with this game. And they made $500 million on the first day despite this…

Cakez0r 12y ago

> For a while, there was a really good match between the complexity of the game world and the way it was represented, and I don't think it's a coincidence that this window is where we find many beloved gaming classics. I thought this point was very insightful, and not one that I'd considered before.

mcphage 12y ago
I don't think it's necessarily true, though. I think the games he lists are beloved gaming classics because they were the good games out when he was a child. The games I would list as beloved gaming classics are a few years older; others may list games older still, or newer. Every period of time had gaming classics—even now.

spydum 12y ago

I think the indie crowd is actively working against these game mechanics. A great example: http://fullbright.company/gonehome/ http://fullbright.company/gonehome/ One of the main founders of the company is an incredibly bright guy named Steve. He made an interesting wager many years ago: http://www.fullbrightdesign.com/2008/02/wager.html http://www.fullbrightdesign.com/2008/02/wager.html Seems he's now out to prove it false, and making good progress.

ekianjo 12y ago
Gone Home is not really a game, though. And it was not particularly well received either. Not sure what you are trying to demonstrate here.
- spydum 12y ago
  Define a game? I disagree. I thought the main point of the article was that the major game mechanics are these forced scripts guiding the experience, or incentivized,reward mechanisms which provide no real story telling or exploration? I was raising the point that there are other games actively shaping what it is to be a game.. Trying to create more of a self exploratory story.
  - ekianjo 12y ago
    Then if gone home is a game, going to the local dump and looking through used stuff and junk is a game too. And Life is a game too. Seriously, do I have to explain why Gone Home is not really a game?
    - deathcakes 12y ago
      Yes. That would certainly help. Another thing that would help is prefacing this and similar statements with "in my opinion". Should clear up any ambiguity.
      - cwyers 12y ago

lmm 12y ago

The author seems to have completely missed the biggest gaming sensation of recent years - Minecraft is exactly the kind of game he's talking about (so is Kerbal Space Program). That list of "classics" also seems very parochial - more like "the best games when I was growing up" than any kind of "all time greats". Freedom and choices can be used as artistic elements. I'd cite e.g. Saya no Uta or Phantom of Inferno as the purest form of this - the interactivity of these "games" is absolutely minimal from a conventional "gaming" point of view, but it's vital to the narrative. You couldn't make these as movies, because the whole point is to make you complicit in what's happening, because the outcome is a result of your choices. But not every story has to be about such things. Many of the best-loved gaming classics - Ocarina of Time, or even FF7 - are those cinematic games, that maybe have puzzles (almost minigames, really), but where the overarching narrative is purely linear. If you can take a movie, or a movie-like narrative, and by sprinkling a few puzzles or quicktime events turn it into something more engaging, a better way to tell your story - why the hell not? Why is that not a perfectly valid form? Criticizing a game for being cinematic seems as pointless as criticizing a sculpture because it could have been done as a painting.

CmonDev 12y ago
"...Minecraft is exactly the kind of game he's talking about..." I guess having a flexible system of optional plots is better than no plot whatsoever.
Retric 12y ago
I think he used an actual picture from minecraft.
- jcromartie 12y ago
  That's a screenshot from The Stanley Parable (spoiler alert?)
  - Retric 12y ago
    Ahh thanks, that makes much more sense in context.

CmonDev 12y ago

Making an issue "...in a market that moves very fast, saturated with product..." even worse "...there has been a counterpoint: the wave of DRM-free indies..." Look at Steam Greenlight.

cwyers 12y ago

I feel like this article suffers a lot from multiple rant syndrome, which is what happens when you get partway through a rant and are so locked into full-on rant mode that every time you mention something that pisses you off you go off on a siderant about it. I'm only about 80% sure which of his rants is the one that embodies his main point.

protonfish 12y ago

I think the desire to make games "open-ended" is inherently flawed (if you also want players to enjoy themselves.) The more complex and unpredictable a game becomes, the more difficult it is to balance. A certain (probably small) number of paths will be gravitated to leaving most stories unexplored and ending up equivalent to a linear story line (with a lot more work.) One way to attempt to fix this is to create multiple balanced paths (essentially a "choose your own adventure.") This can be brute-forced by adding more and more optional story lines, but in the end it is just many linear stories which is functional equivalent to selecting from different games to play. It is fun to think about creating a virtual world that is as rich and complex as the real one, but we already live in a reality that often sucks so hard we want to retreat into fiction. Stories with minor interactive components are a fine genre (if well done and compelling) as are puzzle and action games. The fact that they are different than reality is their primary feature, not a flaw.

DaFranker 12y ago
I think you're restricting your thinking to a certain type of games and a certain subtype of story. X-Com games are a common example of "open" games. The "story line" is single, of course, so if you're only talking about story they're very linear. However, how you get through is much more up to you. It doesn't force you down the right side of the bunker and require you to throw a grenade inside before you can proceed in the story; X-Com puts aliens in the world, and gives you some tools and options to fight them, and whenever something particular happens, story also happens (for a simple example: you lose all your forces and bases, the aliens take over the world! Game Over) The desire to make games that are open is clearly not "inherently flawed"; Risk is a very open-ended game, yet I've never heard of anyone complaining that the way it divides the story into branching paths just boils it down to choosing the best two or three storylines.
- protonfish 12y ago
  Your definition of "open-ended" is very, um, open ended? If Risk is an open-ended game then so are all multiplayer games. X-Com (which are great games by the way - not criticizing) does not go too far beyond a basic turn-based strategy game which is basically chess puzzles with upgradable pieces decorated with an alien invasion theme. It has a decent random level generator, but I don't believe it is enough to qualify it what I think most people would term "open-ended."

Paul_S 12y ago

I violently agree with the author. I have something to add specific to competitive FPSs (or any other multiplayer game with a player results table) like Quake and UT. It's my personal measure of whether an online FPS is any good and there's a distinct difference and it's testable (somewhat objectively if you get many people to do this). 1. Play the game without any prior knowledge - just launch the game and play (obviously, look up the controls first). Good FPS: you end up bottom of the table with negative points having killed almost no one and probably dying from environmental hazards. In team games your own team is likely to vote-kick you. Bad FPS: you end up middle of the table and have managed to kill people from all over the table. 2. Play the game after putting in an hour. Good FPS: you started contributing to the team effort and whilst still near the bottom you get in some kills. You know all the mechanics and none of the high level strategies. Bad FPS: you finish the game at random positions of the table, even near the top. You don't know all the mechanics. 3. Play the game after putting in 10 hours. Good FPS: you consistently finish in the middle or higher up - but the point is your position is stable. People playing for the first time pose no threat to you. Bad FPS: you're still all over the place, sometimes at the top other times at the bottom and you sometimes get killed by people who are playing the game for the first time. The reason it ties in to OP is that this used to be the norm in FPS games, now accessibility is king.

erikb 12y ago
And why did you choose such method to measure a good FPS?
- Paul_S 12y ago
  This is my attempt to try and find a common characteristic among fps games I enjoy and trying to make it testable. A good game rewards skill and has little randomness to it. A bad game lets you feel awesome regardless of your skill which means you get less pleasure from getting better. Quake vs Peggle.
  - erikb 12y ago
    I argued the same way about 10 years ago! I feel you! Nowadays I have developed different goals. Because my job and daily life offer enough opportunity to grind my skills. Therefore games that don't require me to get better for enjoying them became more interesting to me.

Osmium 12y ago

"but they lack lasting power once you stop playing." This sounds like a good litmus test for me. If you're still thinking about a game many months after you finish it, then it's probably something more than a mere diversion. In this sense, perhaps, the best game reviews should be retrospective, rather than reactionary on the day of release.

agentultra 12y ago
This is the essential difference between amusement and art for me. I may have read Fahrenheit 451 years ago but it altered the way I think. It gave me new faculties for relating to and judging new experiences and ideas. The closest a game has come to that mind-altering experience is Go. I've heard myself relate to and judge new ideas through Go when I say, "... like in Go..." Or I generate new ideas and ways to express myself by using concepts developed while playing Go. We might hear things like, "Life is like that grind in World of Warcraft except it ends," become common place some day... except with some more culturally-relevant analog of some future incarnation of what we call an MMO. But video games are just so darn young as a medium of expression that I don't think we've reached that level yet.

aniijbod 12y ago

It seems to me that if there was ever anything in the cannon of collective behaviour which didn't seem to the participants to be a game, but nonetheless actually happened to have some of the most uncannily engaging 'game mechanics' ever to grace a non-game, it is that decidedly odd phenomenon that is the cargo cult.

agentultra 12y ago

Game developers are exploiting game mechanics and human behavior to raise funds, market, and capitalize on their investments. Other mediums have had their brush with economy too. Painters once had to labor under the patronage of certain religious institutions in order to earn their keep and try to make their art on the side. Writers have always had to suffer in some level of Dante's hell, specially crafted for writers, in order to make bread. The poets never made any money and were free. Can a commercial game developer produce a work of art? Perhaps. We hang those works of religious patronage in the most esteemed museums in the world today. Publishers have capitalized on literature before. Music has tried to make it into a machine. Significant works have been produced even when money has been involved. Have video games produced a significant work of art yet? In my opinion, no. A significant work of art is a psychic program that mutates the human brain that interprets it. The less variation in the outcome of that mutation amongst a significant population of individuals the closer it is to expressing some universal truth of our condition. You can point to a work of Van Gogh, Kafka, or Mozart and explain its significance. Anyone who has experienced that art may have some personal interpretation of the experience but the significance of it remains much the same amongst a very large population of individuals. I haven't played a video game which has communicated such an idea through my interaction with it. Many games have borrowed or stolen ideas from other media in order to express their authors' intent or idea: but that isn't novel or new to video games as a medium. Will video games produce a movement? I think we're seeing some of that. We're seeing examples of games that show indications that we're developing a vocabulary capable of expressing ideas and emotions through interaction and interplay of strategy, choice, and value. However I don't think we've seen our Mozart or our Kafka -- yet. Until then... grind on. We just need to keep making them and experimenting. And I don't think it's valuable to point out that a game is AAA or indie. We still consider The Last Supper to be a great work of art even though it was essentially commissioned by the church at the time. The new religion is Capitalism. In time we may view some of these games today as beautiful. Though for now it seems like they're mere amusements.

Retric 12y ago
I have seen a lot of paintings and listened to plenty of music, but none had a significant impact. So IMO they if games fail to qualify as art so does painting, architecture, sculpture, music, and just about everything but books, movies, as possibly TV. However, if simply having a strong emotional response is enough then something as simple as Unreal World can be really intense. Fear, Joy, despair, angst, longing, it covers just about every base except love. http://www.unrealworld.fi/ http://www.unrealworld.fi/ In the end what separates video games from all other art is the experience can vary greatly. Go and see Mad Max and sure you might respond differently but you see the same movie, play in a sandbox game and our experiences can be wildly different.

rwallace 12y ago

I've seen this article template rerun any number of times over the last couple of decades. "Why don't we enjoy the video games of today as much as those we played when we were twelve years old? It's because the video games of these decadent times lack [insert whatever the particular author's imagination can come up with by way of special sauce whose secret has been lost]." Sorry, no. It's because we're not twelve years old anymore.