09.26.07
Quote of the day
Chris Avellone on a slight tangent from the topic of Knights of the Old Republic 2:
I still feel story-writing for games (if you want to label it that way, I think it’s better to approach it as “experience-driven” instead of story-driven) is still in its early stages
Experience-driven. I love it 
Smike said,
September 27, 2007 at 21:19
I completely agree with him. VERY early stages. We’ve hardly even cracked the nut the way I see it. Good term coinage.
Jonas said,
September 29, 2007 at 21:11
I don’t know, I think some games have done great things with stories. Maybe I’m not visionary enough but Half-Life 2 stands to me as the ultimate example of storytelling in games: It persistently does not tell you anything, but it shows you everything - and it’s left up to you to look in the right places.
Like I said, maybe I’m not visionary enough, I just have a hard time seeing how narration in games would get much better than it is now, in the games that get it right. Different, sure, but I enjoy the stories and the means of delivering them in KOTOR, in Half-Life 2, in Deus Ex, in Myst so much that I just can’t think of any way to improve it.
Maybe that means I’ll never be as highly respected as Will Wright
EER said,
September 30, 2007 at 11:24
yesss… Spore
Jonas said,
September 30, 2007 at 17:31
Of course maybe that wasn’t the best example: Will Wright is squarely in the simulation camp, and the stories in his games emerge from the gameplay and are interpreted and created completely by the players. In my experience this often creates a sort of non-story where the drama (if there is any) is sporadic and badly connected - because the stories are a byproduct of the gameplay, rather than the point.
I tend to enjoy the games where a sort of balance is struck, which is why I play so many RPG’s.
Smike said,
October 4, 2007 at 01:59
This is such a huge question for me. Especially right now. But it’s something I’ve oft thought about in the past few years. I’ve never reached a satisfactory conclusion.
In a comment on his web log (that you linked to) on September 18th, 2007, Warren Spector said:
“The old crotchety side of me wants to [say] that the proverbial “they” aren’t making good movies these days, but there are other ways to look at it: for one thing, my lists [of favorite things] are usually biased toward older things — things that have stood the test of time. It’s awfully hard to say what films (or games or books or whatever) will hold up over the years and which will be forgotten flashes in the pan.”
“One of my criteria for determining if a film (or game or whatever) belongs on the list [of greatest things ever] is whether the work has demonstrated, proven value — the work has to be as entertaining and enlightening today as it was when originally released.”
I think this is an important concept to understand. I also think it’s basically wrong. I think that you are PLENTY visionary enough, Jonas, but I also think that you, too, are wrong. I think that I know a bit about story, but I also think that I am undeniably and completely WRONG.
Bill Goldman is the only person I trust on this one, and he’s the only person whom I think is NOT wrong. As he said, “NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING.”
That’s what I think.
On the one side of it:
I think that Spector is being damned near irresponsible or just plain stupid or ill-informed by not including more recently-produced great pieces.
Because if I’m backed into a corner and am forced to name those pieces that people should really experience, I’m likely going to include a very small number of them stretched over nearly every decade. These are the pieces that match the criteria in his second quote. I do think that some pieces are difficult as hell to measure as truly great when placed against their contemporaries, and they stand out ONLY with the benefit of hindsight.
I ALSO think that with some, like “Iliad” and “Odyssey” and “Henry V” and “Deus Ex” and MM6 and Torment and “Dances With Wolves” and “Sullivan’s Travels,” you don’t NEED hindsight or perspective or any of that. They’re as great after you finished them the first time - the very year of their birth into the world - as they are a hundred years later. And they will always be so great. They stand up and slap you in the face and say “We’re the best there is. Deal with it, bitch.”
But on the other side:
What it boils down to, for me, is that ultimately we’re all retards compared to our sons and daughters. The exceptions to that general rule are few and far between, and difficult to see when they’re right there in front of you. So you can’t entirely trust your own eyes - for the good OR for the bad - and you’ve just got to assume that we can ALWAYS do better.
I think that in 1908, Ford was making cars that amazed the world and people thought “It can’t get any better than this!” and it would have been completely ludicrous to suggest that someday there might be a Ferrari with an Italian twelve-cylinder combustion engine that could go from Zero to One Hundred Kilometers-per-Hour QUICKER than a US NAVY F/A-18 Hornet with twin Rolls Royce JET engines on maximum burn. And here we are, literally a hundred years later, and you can go to the nearest Ferrari dealer and buy one for the bargain-basement price of only Eight Hundred Thousand Dollars.
Well I can’t IMAGINE a story being told better in a game than the very same games you mention, but frankly, I think that’s the fault of my humanity, and not the limits of what can be done.
In the end, though, we’re standing on the frontier of the new age of gaming. And all bets are off because we simply haven’t yet ventured far enough. It’s the 1920s of film:
On the heels of the Wild West, settlers have built studios out here in the desert, beyond the old frontier, and they’re just now starting to do something extraordinary…
Jonas said,
October 4, 2007 at 11:51
Perhaps somewhat disappointingly, I agree with all of that comment of yours. Although I’d be hard pressed to compare the current state of the computer games industry to any point in film history. I’m not entirely convinced that the game industry hasn’t evolved faster than the film industry did, so that we can’t just say “well we’ve been running this op since somewhere around ‘73, so that means we’re at the same stage as the film industry was in 1929.”
After all, can you say that we don’t have a lot more in common with the other AV media (film and TV) than they had with theater and the printing press? In which case we have had the advantage of being able to build on previous knowledge much better than they once could. It’s quite possible you can say that though, and I won’t argue with you if you think the difference between our start point and that of the film medium is negligible.
Even if we’re still in the metaphorical 1920’s of our medium, didn’t that decade offer certain films that were narratively almost up to par with much of the stuff we see today? The speed and the aesthetics with which stories are being told have changed dramatically since then, but has the basic nature of our storytelling changed all that much?
That’s not a rhetorical question.
Smike said,
October 5, 2007 at 11:39
Well it sure was phrased like one. And it might as well have been one, because my answer is no. No. But I’m of the opinion that storytelling hasn’t really changed for pretty much EVER.
God is in the details, and it’s what you can DO with a medium - and how much of an impact you can therefore make on the receptive party - that does advance. Show a given modern film to a 1925 New Yorker and they’d be traumatized for life. It’s too much. It’s like showing midget porn to an eight year-old or Oprah to a, well, to a man from any time really. That’s never pretty.
(It’s a “television to a caveman” sort of deal.)
Sometimes a great piece does emerge, shock everyone, and stay competitive and relevant forever. Definitely. It’s just incredibly rare. And certainly the days before the 1938 Flood Of Greatness were no exception. Joan d’Arc, Nosferatu - they’re still great today. And it’ll always BE difficult to best them, today or tomorrow. But the TOOLS we use to do it become more advanced as time goes on, and so it gradually becomes easier to best them, and so it happens all the time. I say that with some reservation, but ultimately I take a carnivorous “show no mercy” stance on what came before. Because setting the actual overall impact, importance, and story aside, those films are obviously far, far into worst-crap-ever territory today.
I remember a recent conversation I had. I was discussing how wonderful Andrew Niccol is with story, and somehow I wound up comparing that ease of story with the mastery that “Citizen Kane” displayed:
“Yeah, but that thing’s basically unwatchable,” he said.
“I liked it.”
And that pretty much says it. I didn’t disagree, because it’s basically a true statement. But if you can afford it a bit of CONTEXT, then you can see it as if you were there at the Premier, and you can love it. Yet, having seen the great films of today - sans precious CONTEXT - how does it stack up? Same as the other oft-touted Greatest Thing Ever (TM), “Seven Samurai” - a firm 50% on the watchable scale.
So the question isn’t as simple as separating the overall impact and the narrative from the actual thing its self. It ISN’T just the speed and aesthetics that have changed. Hell, that’s not even half of it. Unfortunately, the THING ITS SELF has a massive amount TO DO with the narrative and overall impact.
So does that mean that Half-life is going to be as great in fifty years? HELL NO. I’d bet that in twenty years, even the history boys will start to forget. You’ll need fucking Wikipedia. With perspective, it might be just another popular game from a bygone era. You might play it if studying the decade, as one of the highlights. But it won’t stand up to the new waves except for the scholars and the students who afford it more than it was ever really worth with that special CONTEXT one affords “Citizen Cane” or “Seven Samurai.” But it sure is great now. For what we’ve got, it’s the fucking savior. It and a few others are just damned great right now and as far as you or I can tell they’ll always be great. And from what I’ve learned about history, that tells me only one thing with absolute surety: Jesus Christ the savior from Nazareth - we haven’t even cracked the nut.