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2nd premise: a rhetorical idea is mostly harmful for the object it refers to. Not just because it's the best tool for conservatorism, which stifles rethinking which in turn is the only doorway to progress, but because common persons never form that idea on their own, there's puppeteers who do it for them, they simply obey to what the few decreed. ---- In the beginning videogames were sporting competitions, now thanks to pretty looking graphics some have decided videogames are movies + gore(+ Pong, as it was before). This is when journalists think it fit to ask the question: do we need story/art/morality in videogames? Do programmers have the skill to do it, since they're not proper novellists or scriptwriters? Is it even worth it? It's important(maybe only for me) to notice that all of this works exclusively through old and rigid abstract ideas nobody durst rethink. But a new media always creates brand-new narrative tools because it has unique features. Story writing in cinema is different from radio and other means, writing(and artistic values and so on) is directly influenced by the characteristics of the recipient in which it has to happen. You can't talk about art and narration for videogames ignoring videogames' unique and most discriminating element which is interactivity... the gameplay. It's inside the gameplay itself that story finds its uniqueness and beauty, and it's in the gameplay's freedom of interaction(choices and problems to be faced) that art finds the strength of genius... like in all those freeware mini-adventures(wish i were the moon and don't look back): the beauty is absolutely not the story itself and the art is not in the imagery, they both are elevated by the beauty of the specific way you interact in the game. The same is valid for moral themes. A deep gameplay interaction, with mind manipulation, choices, crossroads and consequences, is just about as moral themed as it can hope to get... programmers who put C&C in their games managed to give the audience moral themes without even KNOWING it and caring, so there's no need to ask whether one should insert moral themes or will people like them, it's all about interactivity. The question is rather how people like interactivity and how much of that game makers are WILLING to provide us. So to resume and make the final point: Videogames do NOT need writers, do NOT need artists, do NOT need strained moral themes artfully implemented in a game, we just need GOOD gameplay designers, because the interaction of a gameplay is able to encompass all of these themes, in its embrace.
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Only after I finished the game and wiped the sweat from my brow did I realize that the Windosill had no soundtrack at all, and the music was from /The Space Game/! Playing through Windosill again I was surprised and disappointed by the change in the ambiance of the game in the absence of the music. In order to create great interaction, the player must be able to create a framework to understand the significance of her actions. Without that context, we're reduced to flipping bits in competition with the CPU in a vacuum, and that gets old very, very quickly.
Your game wasn't good in any case, you would have gotten tired of it quick even with all the musical ambience.
Real interaction can't last 5 minutes as in your game experience, you can't claim it's the peak of interactivity, the fact that that one needs good music to be appreciated doesn't mean that better interaction will do too... videogames aren't meant to last like a frigging cigarette, they're drama, they're meant to teach you something of cultural value, not be a fleeting ejaculatory TRIP.
"flipping bits in a vacuum for competition" is not what i picture the best of interaction as. Interaction is meant to let you explore humanity, not win sports... so Real interaction won't even need context, it'll MAKE its own context. Like such freeware games as "seven minutes" or "don't look back".
Still, a good ambient music will increase its beauty... but not make one up from nothing.
Graphics or music aren't seperated form gameplays; it's totally unified. You can't have numbers without geometry. Plus if you have something interactive form any of the 6 senses, you also have the reaction of an observer when the interaction takes place.
An interactive event comes at least by 3 (context, mechanism, reactions)... but there are more steps and it the end it is one big unified thing.
Music can be interactive. But it's very rare. Most of the times it's just accompaniment. And accompaniment is not gameplay. As i said above it just adds charm.
Animations, FX, sounds, music, etc... they are all there to fully support and increase the quality of a gameplay. If the animation of a melee attack looks crappy, it will not look powerful even if the player performs 9999 Hit... it will feel like a bad gameplay. If the sound doesn't fit, the engagement is broken and the gameplay will also look weak.
It's very unified...
How can it feel like bad gameplay? Remember Ultima Online? You trained your character partly by having it hit a dummy... it had one single animation of attack, no quickbar moves like today's WoW clones. And in the fray of battles you couldn't even see the animation, just a thudding mute noise.
How could that feel like bad gameplay? You knew you'd hit hard because you were trained, because you had a good weapon, and especially because you could see above the foe's head the energy bar substantially dimming... and that was ALL the visual enjoyment you could ever need. UO had wonderful "inner mechanics"(which is what i call gameplay) that alone gave satisfaction, and made up for the minimalism of the gfx, even further, that minimalism added beauty to it, it felt totally suited for the game.
That's what i meant with this article; when you have deep and mature interaction, art comes naturally with no need to "insert it" consciously.
A gameplay cannot take place if there is nothing to interact with and to have something to interact with also means that it is something perceptible (5 human senses or more). A interaction is just the mechanism, but as I said... you can't have numbers without shapes, the same way you can't have mechanism without something perceptible (a word I usually replace by "context").
So you create your context. Once the context is experienced by a human, it automatically generates a mechanism. Once the mechanism is experienced by a human, it automatically generates a reaction (emotions and thoughts). Once a reaction is experienced by a human, the interaction itself is over and a result (reward) is automatically generated.
It means that you can improve three things to make your gameplay way more effective:
- Better context (story, discussion, sounds, animations, graphics, FX, etc.)
- Better mechanism (jump, crouch, shoot, look at, grab, aim, etc.)
- Better reaction (fear, questioning, excitement, etc.)
I did not include the result (reward) because it is simply part of something much bigger (that information should be available on my blog in a few weeks).
To conclude...
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By McAndrews
Videogames do NOT need writers, do NOT need artists, do NOT need strained moral themes artfully implemented in a game, we just need GOOD gameplay designers, because the interaction of a gameplay is able to encompass all of these themes, in its embrace.
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I must disagree with your conclusion, because the interactivity includes the various aspects all together. Music needs great sounds, photography needs great images, film need great scenes, but video game needs everything at the highest possible level to be more fun - no limit.
Interaction is quite simply a user that's facing a problem of some kind, and to solve it he takes into consideration objects he saw.
It is a locked door... The door is dusty, and you smell lemon. If you look around you find a can of detergent. If you use it to clean the door you see a triangle carved upon the door and co-ordinates. If you examine the bricks on the walls of the room you notice they're squared shaped, like those of ship battle. You get to the indicated co-ordinates, but see nothing peculiar... If you touch the brick, tho, its material feels different from the other ones... so you knock on it, and it falls... behind it's the triangle... you push it, the door opens.
In the IF's lies interaction, and only there. The player is considering the attributes of everything he sees and attempts to connect it with the main problem at hand. The specific act of connecting two indirect objects is the heart of interaction... it's giver of life... it's a kid considering a shape of a block to fit it in the shaped hole of the base of the toy. It's everything.
While in your definition you're wasting time analyzing the mechanical gesture itself of LIFTING something(which in a poor way it's interaction too cause he's employing his arm and the hand with instructions from his brain), so the more ovious mechanical bits for their own sake, i point directly to substantial interaction(the kid considering two shapes to connect them together) and i discard the rest, which is pointless and low interaction, the instinctive, the animal sides of interaction... pushing a key to make a character jump, move the mouse around, is instinct, it's something you learned mechanically from game to game, it's not worthwhile interaction because you don't use your brain in a CREATIVE way.
With my definition i point to the core of interaction, and later i decree what's low and what's high interaction... this should be wholesome in many ways... for the first time we single out and analyze the direct usage of grey matter energy, and consequently we're brought to demand more of this in our games, to gain cultural and intellectual depth.
For more on the definition, check my third blog in the previous page.