Interesting article

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Keerith
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Interesting article

Post by Keerith »

From Pop Matters, it's an editorial on metagaming and immersion; I thought it was interesting and I wanted to share. :)

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/13361 ... me-ending/
To start with something fundamental, consider enemy respawn. An experienced gamer knows that if he comes back to an area again after a given amount of time, enemies will reappear. He’ll also observe where the hotspots are, what the enemy party will be comprised of, what weapon works best against which class of enemy. But a player who disregards studying the finer details might be surprised every time or will keep using the same weapon. It might take until the latter player has heard lines being repeated that he’ll get a sense of just how pre-scripted and limited the entire encounter is. Once he does, the mystique is gone, and the latter player starts to resemble the former.

Nothing could be more tired in games discourse than a Matrix analogy, but bear with me, as I’m going to use one anyway. It’s a little like becoming Neo. Once the player starts that transformation—in fact, as soon as the player even becomes aware of the possibility—his relationship to the game irrevocably changes. The mere thought that the player is inside a system that can be bent to accommodate less than obvious solutions begins to lend power to the act of play.

Recognizing the patterns in simplistic AI programming is one example of how a changeover can occur, but there are many that we could list.
(And after giving some more examples from Fable III:)
At that point, the game had ceased to be anything except the gleeful abuse of a system that was clearly unprepared for aggressive extremes. The game was no longer a fight for Albion or differentiating myself from my sibling but was now a battle against what I saw to be an unfair binary, in which I could be a savior or a humanitarian, but not both. So with endless enthusiasm I turned the game in on itself, flaws and all, and beat it. Utterly. But was that worth completely objectifying its components, shattering the illusion of a living world?

And yet, games are frequently about those impossible accomplishments, which by their nature break with the same logic that gives rise to them as problems. Thus, the dichotomy. Why design games to be fluid, seamless, and immersive if breaking that immersion is needed to be good at them? It isn’t enough to simply fight my way through an onslaught of bodies in God of War; I need to adapt to the delay between command and action, memorize combos and Rock Paper Scissors-like rules of what works best, look for any amount of give or slipperiness that the mechanics will allow. In Assassin’s Creed, I must rely on the terrible attention span of the city’s populace to practice and perfect my skills in the first place. Realism takes flight the first chance it gets.
-Keerith
See you later, space cowboy!

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Tivia
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Re: Interesting article

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The game’s ending confirmed how little my misdeeds weighed upon the result. By acting like a good King (generally, excluding the brothel), maintaining alliances and protecting lakes, the NPCs praised me for “doing the impossible.” That is, I managed to come out of the final fight without a single civilian casualty, with high approval ratings, and a budget surplus. Yet the game was right. It should have been impossible. It was only thanks to the limitations of the system, which, having revealed themselves to me, broke all semblance of realism—or even an acceptable line of causality.
This is literally how modern politics operates in most any modern country. Without getting into a political mudslinging I fail to see how this "Breaks" immersion for this guy when this is EXACTLY how it works in the real world. It was an interesting read, but the guy pretty much lost any chance of a meaningful point when he displayed willful ignorance to how reality works. :?:
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Re: Interesting article

Post by Keerith »

I don't think it was so much about the 'realism' of the politics, but that knowing the metagame (mechanically how Fable III tracks your "good vs. evil" score) allowed her to do all the evil things she wanted, and still make the game give her the 'good' ending. I've done the same in Fallout 3, carefully balancing actions that gave me good karma and bad karma in order to get the 'neutral' karma achievements on one play through.

"What? The quest gave me enough good karma to bump me out of the grey zone? Crap, I have to go murder some people now."
-Keerith
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Re: Interesting article

Post by MikaMeow »

Theres another kinda interesting video I saw a bit ago, that this article reminded me of. This lady is talking about how gaming can make a better world. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE1DuBesGYM
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Re: Interesting article

Post by Asphe »

After all that... it's a game.

In Warband, I started my own faction by betraying my king (It was his fault, he got into an argument with my father-in-law and I took daddy's side, hubby told me he had no reason to go against King Graveth but said he'd go along with me if I wanted it. I think I'll keep him :D ) and then proceeded to run a 100 day campaign that saw me ruler of all Rhodok fiefs. Then the three neighbouring factions declared war (basically the germans, the arabs and the mongols) and I beat the pants, the underwear, the socks and the darn boots of them. Then I skinned the enemy leaders, from the toes... down.

OR...

Once I managed to get the choicest piece of real-estate awarded to me (by luring the enemy's main force right to the best city in Rhodok, then stood by as they capture it. Then I in turn laid siege to the weakened defenders and won. I knew that from the way the game awarded fiefs, I would get it.) I also waited until the King got in an argument phase and interfered. I then send potential rivals off on a goose chase in enemy territory, then squeezed hubby's balls until he admitted I was Queen (the future Ruler of Calradia, not the music group... but then the game always has hubby 'whipped'). After I proceeded to take over all my former faction's fiefs (few defenders because they are all overseas... !!), I knew the game would have the neighbours attack. But I also knew their targets and repeatedly ambush them along their routes, always targeting the leading Lord, forcing their armies to stop and elect another leader... lol. You'd think that people would learn after having this done to them dozens of times... but it's a game.

It's a game. Imagine if every mob in FFXI/XIV was another player. It would be a miracle if you made it out of Limsa. Instead, players have this sense of pride by beating this almost blind, moronic mob that fights in predictable ways, never follows up a retreating player beyond a 'comfort zone.' We might as well be pick-pockets preying on obese tourists sunbathing on a beach. Hmmm... that's a good idea for a MMO! That's why we call this sort of activity, 'farming'. It's just a more interactive way of games like Farmville or whatever.

Wouldn't you pay $50 a month to play such a game where all the mobs were players (or more likely, groups are human controlled) . Even better, your 'gear'? Barely improves as you get more experience. Someone who just joined the game has gear as good as yours. Here, experience really means just that.

I bet I could fool players into paying $20 or more, and by introducing multiple sides, they'll play as 'mobs' for each other without me having to outsource Mob AI control to China.

Regardless, the games are what you make of them. You need to fool yourself to enjoy the games fully. A little like the 'suspension of disbelief' you need to cultivate when watching movies. Otherwise, the games are pretty much a more random iteration of tower defence games... speaking of which...

Meow.
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Karou Ariyen
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Re: Interesting article

Post by Karou Ariyen »

Fable III, though, was so stereotypical. Good Queen/King (Both, but depends on your fable 2 save), and Good Child who forms a rebellion to shutdown the evil child who has control of the throne. Gee, how original is that story, Lionhead Studios....
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