At 10/25/06 02:04 PM, pirateemoninja wrote:
Picture Coca Cola. The bottle and it's advertising changes to suit the times, but inside it's the same flavour as it was when it was created. Granted, that formula's been perfected (and de-cocained) and variations have been drafted, but inside it's the same game.
Like me and Lu said - games can be stripped down to thier underlying patterns if you remove all the surface trappings. Those elegant stories in Half Life and Deus Ex that are ranted and raved about for thier breakthroughs in storytelling, those top of the line PS3 graphics in Motorstorm, and those perfected control systems are the red bottle-cap on your Coca-VideoGame
I think stories and settings affect a game more than the bottle cap though. Maybe as much as a bottle? The bottle can make a big difference.
Sure, games can be stripped down to what we have to press when we get down to it, but the information we're fed back is just as important.
Example 1 - my own two games for FSFS - 'click the difference' and 'pull the carrot'. The former asks the player to spot a difference and click it. The latter asks the player to follow a line leading from a carrot to one of 4 bunches of leaves and click the correct leaves. Both require the same task to be done - click a certain area within the four seconds. But both are accomplished in different ways by the player's mind.
Example 2 - Pokemon Snap/1st person shooters. Really, they're both about lining up a target then clicking. Again, motivations differ and the stuff going on in your head, which is what really matters, is different.
In a game, if you're told 'shoot person x', that'll result in different thoughts passing through your head than if you're given some information, before you're faced with the task of deciding upon the morally correct decision and maybe searching for other clues.
Any game with any grounding in reality has a setting, which forms part of the package. Games can and should take advantage of that - a fusion of a better story and a tired genre is a big step forward. Narration, difficult as it may be to pull off effectively when we're allowed to control the protagonist, is something that can take games places they otherwise couldn't go.
Films are a fusion of pictures, sound... and the story. Whilst some do have stunning visuals (House of Flying Daggers comes off the top of my head) and some do stylise their colours or whatever (Fight Club) the main thing that distinguishes live action films, in my opinion, is the story.
In games, that will (and should) normally be second place to the issue of interactivity - forcing us to make interesting choices. But just think how much potential there is in meshing good narration with good, constantly working, game mechanics.
For the record, I'm not saying Half-life is original. In fact, I haven't played through either (though I've been meaning to). Just that they should totally be applauded for any progress they made in the field of storytelling.
And the controls? Come on, man - that's vital! That's maybe like developing the formula. The graphics are the wrapper on the bottle.
I HATE the concept of photorealistic and physically accurate games... I'm not going to get into it though, because you've covered some of my points without realising it. Cars shouldn't crash - but when they do, they should crash properly. Shame no one at Ferrari will ever let thier car ever be shown damaged. Ever
But other cars do crash properly... or at least try to.
Try any brainshatteringly original game, like Siboot, Façade or Game of Life
I don't know those. Format? Era?
Trust and Betrayal, the Legacy of Siboot
Façade; A One-Act Interactive Drama.
Conway's Game of Life (Wikipedia Article).
Thanks very much for those links.
No time at present to read the article properly and play, but am looking forward to doing both - specially the latter - at some point in the future.
"Good artists copy. Great artists steal"
-- Pablo Picasso
Speaking of which... did you guys hear about Damien Hirst and the 'perfect daisy' image (or whatever the original was called)?
What's your take on that?
At 10/25/06 02:37 PM, NegativeONE wrote:
For example, defense games are pretty much considered a genre now, but they shouldn't be. It was a game idea that was emulated again and again until everybody decided that they weren't so much borrowing a known idea as they were just making a game in a certain genre or something like that.
I'd argue that what you actually do in a defense game can vary massively though. I mean grabbing guys and flicking them in the air is different enough to shooting, and giving projectiles an actual trajectory again alters it sufficiently.
And if we can call colour-matching defense game, defense games, then we could maybe stretch the term to Zoop...
This trend is definitely going to become a refuge of the creatively dull, in the Flash world, and out. I think they've already got a 'genre' name for the games boosting off of GTA's fame.
Well, technically, it may be a very specific genre, or an awfully contraining one, but can't it still be a genre?
The whole concept of having to pigeonhole and label stuff is stupid anyway. Everything can just be explained on its own terms using as many or as few words as necessary.
At 10/25/06 02:46 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote:
If the games is fun, it doesnt matter what it's based off of, the important thing is to do it well.
And to do it better than any identical games, if such things exists.
At 10/25/06 09:15 PM, PureGonzoMedia wrote:
An example of this, or something that relates to it, is when you're on certain drugs, you get this same feeling where shit all becomes the same, for example I remember feeling my shirt and then feeling a friends shirt, then him saying 'So that's what Blue feels like..', Well no it's not, that's what that fabric feels like. It's the same thing when you clench your fist and bite your teeth together.
???
This leads onto something else i've been closely thinking about.. how do you relay the feeling/texture etc of something through film? How do you show the weight of it etc, how do you convey that feeling.
I'd say you show the weight mainly through motion. No idea for texture, other than either showing something moving by it and reacting (friction?) or just showing a close-up and hoping your brain realises what something that looks that way would feel like.
