Results tagged “violence” from Softcore Gamer
"Interesting Interactions" is a term that Jamie Antonisse coined last year - or, anyway, one that he used that I haven't heard anywhere else - and it's something that has stuck with me for a long time. It's a description of what modern mainstream video games don't do well. He was talking about Bioshock in the original context, but it's an industry-wide issue. And it's something that I come back to a lot when, for example, I read this article about the survival horror genre on Sexy Videogameland.
Leigh Alexander has had survival horror on the mind the last few days, which makes sense, I suppose, since she's been playing Silent Hill: Homecoming. I never really got into survival horror, as a genre, in games or cinema. I played a bit of Fatal Frame on the Xbox, and it was interesting, but it didn't really stick with me. I do love Shawn of the Dead, but that's really less a zombie movie than a romantic comedy with zombies. I did just buy a copy of Last Night on Earth, the board game, which I am super excited about trying out. But with few exceptions, survival horror is just not really my cup of tea.
So I didn't get particularly excited about Leigh's initial post about Silent Hill. (Although I admit I perked up a bit at the part where she talks about redefining genre labels, for survival horror games and role-playing games.) And I haven't even read her review of the game on Kotaku. But her follow-up today did catch my eye. Apparently, Leigh attributed some of the mechanics of the survival horror games of the early nineties more to technical limitations than deliberate design decisions, which inspired a response from producer John Tynes, of Microsoft Game Studios. Mostly, Tynes addresses this particular issue, stating that 3rd-person combat is a hard problem, but not for any technical reason. "We weren’t waiting for better chips to enable third-person action; we just had to keep iterating from game to game until we got somewhere that worked."
The really good stuff comes at the end, though:
The fundamental problem here is that videogames have not evolved past combat as their primary form of interaction. The branching-tree dialogues of the BioWare games is the only popular alternative route we’ve found to deliver meaty, game-defining (and game-filling) interaction. The evolution of the survival horror games towards a more action-oriented approach is for that reason: you can solve environmental puzzles, or you can have long, rambling conversations with agenda-defined NPCs, or you can kill things. I would posit that survival horror is not enhanced by long branching conversations with NPCs, so that leaves puzzles and combat. That’s all we’ve got so far in our toolbox for these kinds of games.
That, of course, is embarrassing. There are experiments in other directions, as with Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy. But for now, what console games do well is killing things, and when you look at the survival horror genre, it’s clear that its biggest weakness – without stepping outside the problem set they’ve defined – is in crappy combat. They’ve solved that now, and in the process have exposed the real failure: we don’t know how to make moody, atmospheric games that last 10-20 hours without stuffing them full of killing things. We have to step outside of the initial problem set of survival horror and ask how we can give players meaningful, game-filling interaction in a moody, suspenseful environment without resorting to combat. We have a long way to go.
I think this is a great quote. And I agree with Tynes: violence is old hat. For whatever reason - because it's simple, because it's intrinsically high-stakes, or because it's a form of fantasy fulfillment - combat is the form of conflict resolution that modern games have focused on, more than any other. We've collectively put a lot of cycles into the problem, we've gone through a lot of iterations on various approaches, and we've come up with some great solutions. That's fantastic. But it's not enough. Conflict is broader than violence; drama is more subtle.
(I'm reminded of the character Michael Scott from the American version of The Office, who said on his approach to improvisational acting: "What is the most exciting thing that can happen on TV or in movies, or in real-life? Somebody has a gun. That’s why I always start with a gun, because you can’t top it. You just can’t.")
We need to spend some of that energy developing solutions to the unsolved problems, the harder problems: compromise, debate, passive aggression, perseverance, leadership, wit, lateral thinking, personal growth, politics, love. These are all types of conflict resolution that haven't been explored nearly as much as combat. These are all interesting interactions. (And, to be fair, violence isn't the only sort of interaction that's been popular amongst game designers. Economic simulation has also been iterated on quite a lot, as have competitive sports - though combat seems to be explored the most, by a wide margin.)
Just to be clear: there are a lot of game designers out there who have experimented with interesting interactions, in independent games and in mainstream games. People have done great work in these areas, and are continuing to do great work. But we have to remember, as Tynes says, that we still have a long way to go. I'm not calling on anyone to stop putting violence in your games. But keep in mind, when you're designing, that there's a lot more than combat out there. Ask yourself if you're including an interactive element because it's the best thing for the design, or the easiest, most familiar thing for the designer. Sometimes it's good to get reminders about the more interesting interactions, so that we can work on solving those problems, too.
The issue of player character death is one of the most fundamental in modern game design - perhaps because modern games are so disproportionately focused on violence and death. In more general terms, the death of a player character can be equated to a game state from which it is not possible to complete the game. Placing fourth in Mario Kart is not not equivalent to dying, since it doesn't prevent you from completing the race; scoring too low in Elite Beat Agents is more or less equivalent to dying, because it prevents the player from continuing the game to completion. Whether or not it literally takes the form of a character's death, the way a game handles this sort of state has significant consequences on the narrative of the game. Some of these consequences are positive, and some are negative.
First of all, death is a great motivator. Competitive games have failure states built into them, providing a player with a clear goal ("win" or, alternatively for some games, "don't lose") and continual motivation to progress. Non-competitive games lack such an inherent motivator unless there is a constant threat of imminent failure. Of course, there are other ways to motivate players. The games of the Monkey Island series are prime examples of design that doesn't include the concept of character death or an equivalent failure state, and keeps the player motivated by rewarding progress with humor. Death is also a powerful narrative tool. The notion that the player character is risking their own life in order to achieve a goal amplifies the significance of their actions and can increase the player's emotional involvement. Some party-based RPGs, such as Knights of the Old Republic or Final Fantasy VII, even add emotional drama to the plot by using the death of a member of the party with narrative effect.
But the inclusion of player character death can also have negative consequences on the narrative, especially if it is implemented thoughtlessly. A character's death frequently breaks the continuity of the game, and triggers an extra layer of user interface (like God of War's "You Are Dead" screen) that prompts the player to try again. Trying again generally means restoring an earlier gamestate saved at an explicit or implicit savepoint - frequently at the beginning of the level or just before a particularly difficult section. The act of restoring the game's state effectively erases any progress the player had made past the savepoint, and implicitly asks the player to pretend, for narrative purposes, that the experience never happened. This disrupts the player's experience and forces them, to some extent, to disengage from the story, frequently at a moment when emotional engagement is especially high. If the cost of dying is low and it happens infrequently, then this disruption may be easy to ignore, but the effects are multiplied as the player grows frustrated.
I think it's fair to say that most games include some sort of death-like design element somewhere along traditional lines. But it's worthwhile to consider the many games that have taken a different tack, finding alternative ways to motivate the player. The new episodes of Sam & Max follow the same paradigm as the Monkey Island games, rewarding progress with humor. Puzzle Quest utilizes the inherent motivation of leveling by making level progression relatively rapid and providing a magic system that encourages the player to try out different play strategies. Animal Crossing relies on heavily on the collecting paradigm, and also draws upon social relationships to inspire the player to continue playing.
One of the most interesting examples of games that break from the traditional paradigm is Prey, in which player character death is presented in familiar terms, but doesn't actually represent a failure state or necessitate a break in narrative continuity. Contrast this which Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, which attempts to mitigate the disruptive effects of death by integrating a narrative segue. In Prince of Persia, death still represents a failure state, and the game returns to a previous state and the player is required to try again. Myst is another extremely interesting example, in which the failure state can only be reached at one specific point in the game; throughout the rest of the game, there is no concept of death or death-like failure. In this game, exploration, imagery and story are the primary motivators, and death is used only for dramatic purposes.
I'm of the opinion that the games that don't include this sort of failure state tend to give the player a smoother and more accessible narrative experience. Of course, the issue whether or not to include player character death in a game, and how to handle it if it is included, depends entirely on the context of the game. God of War, while it does have a story and certainly puts a lot of energy into creating an absorbing narrative experience, is at heart an action-oriented, ultra-violent brawler. Death is an important aspect of the game and the traditional model is entirely appropriate. There are only a few segments where I feel the narrative disruption becomes especially problematic. The traditional model of death and failure is valid in many cases, but it's important for designers to recognize that it isn't universally implemented, nor is it universally applicable. These sorts of examples remind us that there are alternative ways to structure story, player motivation and gameplay, when death is not desirable.
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