 |
 |
|
If you enjoy reading this site, you might also want to check out these Think Services sites:
 Game Career Guide (for student game developers.)
 Indie Games (for independent game players/developers.)
 Finger Gaming (news, reviews, and analysis on iPhone and iPod Touch games.)
 GamerBytes (for the latest console digital download news.)
 Worlds In Motion (discussing the business of online worlds.)
 Game Set Watch (the Group's alt.game weblog.) |
|
|
|
| |
Braid's Blow: 'How To Make Games That Touch People'
by Mathew Kumar
|
|
| |
|
November 21, 2008
|
| |
As the closing keynote of the 2008 Montreal Games Summit, independent game developer and thinker Jonathan Blow, previously a Game Developer magazine columnist and an IGF winner for his time-bending title Braid, offered a striking deconstruction of a major video game conceit: that they can offer profound experiences through traditional storytelling forms.
Blow argued that, in fact, the interactivity of gameplay -- and its requirements of "fun" and "challenge" among others -- is in fact directly contradictory to such a goal.
In Blow's introduction, he said that his goal as a developer has always been to try and "figure out how to make games that touch people and make them feel something real."
While the question of how to do that was "too big a question" for him to deal with in a mere hour, he explained that his talk at MIGS was aimed at exploring the things that video game developers and games themselves do to make that quest harder.
"As an industry, we have adopted practices that make things fake, unimportant and careless," he declared, arguing that these were all the antithesis to creating profundity.
Yet games actually have an advantage over other media in attempting to impart importance, in that there are two ways of doing so: one, through expressing it to the player, and the other through the player discovering it via their own activity -- and Blow concluded that games largely fell into one camp or the other.
Metal Gear Solid, for example, expresses its meaning to the player, while in something like Pac-Man, the meaning lies in the activity. According to Blow, games that attempt to impart meaning through story are inherently conflicted -- since gameplay structures that render stories fake or unimportant are so "deeply ingrained."
Though he felt that this was largely a single problem, he split his argument up into three sections in order to explore the different facets of the problem.
Conflict One: Story Meaning vs. Dynamic Meaning
To Blow, "art" games such as The Marriage and Gravitation are interesting because they communicate their themes through the player's behavior within the game design and the cues from the visuals.
The Marriage, created by EA's The Sims Studio head Rod Humble, for example, initially looks completely abstract -- but as the player decodes what the game mechanics are, they are also learning the meaning of those mechanics.
The "more accessible" Gravitation instead offers a limited number of quickly-grasped mechanics that can create a number of interesting situations that are open to interpretation.
"If you haven't played this game, please leave the lecture and play it right now," Blow urged.
Gravitation is a key example of the conflict between meaning and play, Blow said. The more additions and features a designer adds to make the game more "fun" and more "exciting", the more the meaning of the game becomes obscured and easier to misinterpret.
If, in one interpretation of Gravitation as it currently stands the concept of collecting stars to become ice blocks is a representation of ideas turning into concrete projects, for example, what would it mean if you added dots to collect? Would that represent when you clean up your house rather than working?
"The fact is, in the games industry we're not used to thinking about the interpretations, and actually, we make jokes about it," Blow said. "'Pac-Man is about taking drugs and going on a rampage' -- But that's a completely valid interpretation."
"In games, interpretation extends past the visual art -- the dynamic system communicates something to the player, whether that is intentional or not."
Admittedly, though Gravitation uses its dynamic meaning, it does not tell a story, whereas most designers aim so directly to create something fun that they forget the importance of the dynamic meaning -- a problem Blow argued other media "do not have."
"If a director is creating a film where a beloved character dies, he doesn't put happy circus music over the funeral scene just because it's more fun. If you were David Lynch, you might put it in to unsettle the viewer, but that's something else entirely."
"In the games industry, we put happy circus music over every one of our funerals," Blow continued. To flesh this declaration, he drew on several recent examples. He called BioShock's little sisters an example of a "supposed dilemma," one undone by an interest in game balance.
"This supposed moral quandary might have worked well in the marketing campaign, but will that stand up as a profound moment in video games in forty years? If it is, I hope I have nothing to do with games when we reach that point."
Other examples included Grand Theft Auto 4 making a story-critical character functionally useless (requiring large effort from the player with no reward) and Half-Life 2's attempts to make you form a relationship with Alyx while at the same time your intention is to keep progressing through the game.
"Alyx can't be talking to you while you're in the middle of a firefight or solving puzzles, so it's in the quiet moments between, when you're trying to get to the next section, that she plays the role of the 'character who has to unlock the door that will get you to the next arena'." said Blow.
"Of course, they want you to form a relationship with her, so she can't just unlock it, she has to be like, 'Aw man, this door is jammed. Anyway, did you hear that Dr. Kleiner just got a new girlfriend?' and all you can think is 'Shut up and get the door open so I can get to where I want to go.'"
In Blow's mind, these kind of conflicts are always going to exist -- alternatives are hard to conceptualize, such as AAA titles that offer themes, moods and "interesting mental stuff" without story; pointless, by removing all dynamic meaning (in which case "why bother making a game?"); or unfeasible, such as managing dynamic meaning to precisely match story, which would be as hard as "pressing bubbles out of wallpaper."
Conflict Two: Challenge vs. Progression
Even if it were possible to reconcile dynamic meaning with story, Blow suggested that it still couldn't be enough to make true profundity possible.
"For a story to be interesting, it has to occur from scene to scene in a linear and direct fashion," Blow said -- but, he added, the industry "does not know how to make games that don't challenge the player."
Challenge is the easiest way to communicate, however subconsciously, that the player's interaction is meaningful. Yet at the same time, challenge works as a "friction" against the progression of the story -- so no matter what, a story in a challenging game is structurally unsound.
Blow admitted certain studios have figured this out, and now offer a "dramatic presentation of non-difficulty," where the player feels as though they're in danger but aren't, and dynamic difficulty adjustment, where the bar will be continually lowered until they can walk over it.
Yet, no matter how hard they might try, "friction" must always still exist, because for there to be a portrayed value to the difficulty, there must be at least some, or else players will lose their suspension of disbelief in the game's value system.
From this, Blow felt that "faux challenge" was "unlikely to impact someone deeply or change their life," because it was by its very nature fake, which is (at least to Blow) directly contradictory to depth.
Alternatively, though it does little to help story as a form within games, Blow emphasized that challenge was, in fact, "very precious," as unlike other forms, games could offer this challenge in a direct fashion.
"It is our domain and we ought to understand that," he said, "because if we want to hold our place alongside other arts, we need to play to our strengths."
Conflict Three: Interactivity vs. Pre-Baked Delivery
As every comedian knows, timing is everything. A bad comedian can get booed off the stage, while a good one can receive a standing ovation for an identical set of jokes -- simply due to their method of delivery.
"Games sabotage the timing of their delivery," Blow said of game stories. "In a game, you cannot control where the player does, what he just did or what he'll do next; you can't pre-bake that."
"Chekov argued that if you introduce an idea, like a gun, into a story, you have to use it by the end," said Blow. "The idea is the economy of audience attention. If you put a gun on stage because you thought, 'Oh, I want this place to seem 'Old Westy,' then some people are going to sit there thinking, 'what's the deal with that gun?'"
The core concept of "Chekov's Gun" also has its positive aspects -- the potential for foreshadowing and justification -- but in a game, it is difficult, if not impossible, to manage that within the dynamic meaning.
"Some people say that if we ever have good enough AI to manage the stories we'll be fine. I don't believe that, because managing a problem like Chekov's Gun would require human-level AI to create what would be little more than a stage manager, and a stage manager is nothing without the human-written, pre-baked story."
"Dynamic stories are pretend stories, poorly structured, poorly delivered and they will always be an awkward second fiddle to linear medium," concluded Blow.
"If that is our core value proposition, then our core value proposition kind of sucks," he added.
"I may have come across all 'anti-story', and I personally would like to see if we can make games offer something without them, but I still don't know how to scale up Gravitation to something to MGS4 size," Blow said.
He concluded: "Perhaps the problem is that we so deeply rely on reference points like film, which require stories progressing over time, when we could be referring to things like sculpture or painting, which require no timescale and people find just as moving."
[UPDATE: Jonathan Blow noted in the comments to this article that he has made the audio and slides of his MIGS talk available on the Braid website's blog.]
|
| |
|
|
http://braid-game.com/news/?p=385
The stories that lack insight or are a retooling of concepts we already understand, are just not interesting for us.
A mutliplayer shoot-em up, with no "Love Story" dynamic, is quite interesting to a person who wants to know more about concepts such as Competition, Victory, and Defeat. Whereas a puzzle tetris clone, is very interesting to a person who wants to understand more fully concepts like Logic, Strategy, Decision-Making. Does the tetris-clone need to comment on society and struggle of humanity, eh maybe not. It's still a vehicle of concepts on par with any pulp fiction out there.
When I say poetry, I don't mean florid, fruity, purple, epic, gothic, emo or any kind of poetry in particular -- I mean poetry in the widest sense of the word, approaching the fundamental act of abstract creation. By adopting poetry as the paradigm we gain a lot of ready tools and a large vocabulary: symbolism, ambiguity, metaphor, irony -- visual, narrative, or otherwise -- rhythm, meter and rhyme are there as pacing, timing, repetition, and so on. Poetry is a very versatile starting point for developing the tools needed for this conversation. Poetry, after all, is also an aesthetic medium where words are chosen not just for their meaning, but for their connotations and feel and look and sound. We just need to stretch it a little into interactivity to make it work here. Whenever I am confounded by a work of art (painting, video, performance, film, whatever), I try to dissect it as a poem. It works.
So yeah. I am kinda bored by games that aspire merely to be FUN. Fun is candy. And while I love candy, I recognize there is more to eat out there.
You shouldn't be playing games, then. I enjoy playing games simply for sheer fun, and the ability to mess around in other people's work. Mr. Blow has quite an excellent argument.
In conclusion, fun is AppleJacks, we eat what we like!
This article explains quite well why tradional storytelling in game is so unpure.
Now we have to admit that having that kind of storytelling helps a lot for building and maintaining an IP. And having a strong IP is an essential part of today's game biz.
I should say I had a "disconnect" instead of a "disagreement," since I don't disagree in the fact that current game design tends to head into lowbrow, or familiar territory. I just don't find this as a new concept.
Most of the games that I play are on the PC, so I'm not sure you could make a valid case that I have any kind of console bias.
I see a lot written about the meaning of representational systems and contextual interpretations of different rule sets and mechanics, but it seems to be extremely analytical and...emotionally disconnected.
A game like Braid is thought provoking, symbolic and allegorical, but each element, from the calculated music and art style, to the meta-mechanics came off as very methodical and diagnostic (to me, that is; this is all very subjective). I felt like I was acting out a thesis of equations, rather than having an emotional experience with Tim and his situations.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the somewhat abstracted and generic designs (Tim, the “stock” enemies and his object of affection) were meant to be this way, but I made no great personal connection to my actions and subsequently with my consequences. It is Gaming that I will think about and respect from a purely logical or philosophical perspective, but it will not stay with me (or be replayed) like the emotional experience of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, or even Mario 64 and Gitaroo Man (as imperfect as those examples may be). It’s the only key factor I find missing in Braid. I found that controlling Tim felt like nothing more than controlling a variable for the solution of puzzles. Hey, the character is one “e” short of being Time itself, and has no greater emotional significance beyond the concept he seems to represent. The fact that the Player’s actions, as well as the variables they affect, are just as perfunctory left me intellectually motivated, but emotional disengaged.
We can debate which emphasis in Gaming has more merit, but I value Gaming for the feelings as much as the ideas, and I feel that the former is not being as fully explored in the lecture/opinions cited in the article above. What someone feels is what will make an impression and stick with him or her. If it so happens that this is happening only with the young and impressionable…well, that begs other questions…
I see storytelling as a sculpture in time. That is where the thread you are looking for lies.
Regards,
But the clash is not bad per se. It is just bad, that it stays unused! maybe games could be a bit more like jazz funerals or Chaplin movies. Even Gravition only uses a dichotomy: "Weird bug _or_ hidden meaning. What is happening?"
But maybe one could craft gameplay and narration in a way, that the contradiction becomes productive in itself. Fun _and_ sad.
And Blow is only getting this now? Did he have to make Braid to realize this? How about we all get off the whole "omg we have to make art and meaningfulness" and just make good fun games?
I can't imagine a single person who reads this comment never had a game that affected them on a deep or personal level. Why do we have to struggle so hard to figure it out? This whole games as art movement have brought in all of the pretentious ignorance of the art world with none of the weight and importance. We've gained nothing but prophets like Blow who constantly eschew about how all commercial games are bad, but indie is good.
Think about it this way: games have been around for far longer than movies or books. Games have been with us since the dawn of human civilization. They're an important aspect of humanity and they never had to be officially recognized as art to be considered so highly. No one's going to put chess in the Louvre, but it's still cherished and renowned. Soccer isn't considered art, but it's more beloved and respected than all the paintings that ever where and ever will be.
I think, because the nature of video games allows for storytelling we've confused it for needing to tell a story. A game with excellent story but bad gameplay will always be bad, but a game with excellent gameplay and a crappy story, or even no story at all will always be enjoyed.
We can have stories, we've had them for decades, and wonderful, enjoyable and engaging stories. But do we have to bend over backwards trying to figure out how to use them while listening to snobbish (though, not in this article) indie guys like Jon?
How about we focus on games as a learning tool as Blow suggests? And not worry about story. If we can make a great story that compliments the gameplay well that's fine, and if not we can have a story for treating the player. Something extra to enjoy for overcoming a challenge after the player treats themselves for accomplishing a challenging goal.
Do we NEED to be art?
Do we need to be art when being games is just fine?
Or are we struggling to prove ourselves, to prove we aren't useless because we feel we're in the minority, when in fact we've become the vast majority? Do we have to prove Roger Ebert wrong? What are we so insecure about? That's what we should be focusing on more, I think. Perhaps we're confusing games with simulation, since the two compliment each other so much. A simulation can have a story, but the rules are merely there to recreate an experience, not provide a challenge which does work against a story.
A game is nothing more than rules and a goal. Video games just have more rules and more goals, but deep down they're no different than a game of tag. We could dig deep to try and create a dialogue about the human condition through the medium of tag, but why?
Wow! I found this to be a bit more insightful that the article!
However there are some issues I have with your statement. I think that games will be considered art no matter what direction we take them in, especially if we keep thriving in the entertainment industry. I feel this could be a good thing though; never before have we seen such a fusion of science and art since the days of Da Vinci!
Despite whichever side believes, art and science are on in the same: a recording of life. One simply looks at our environment from a subjectively stand point and the other looks at it from a objectively.
Now I think what your mostly afraid of is the idea that sometime in the future that games will be reduced being held in frames and being observed behind walls of glass by aristocrats pondering on the games philosophical meaning.
Where as artists are afraid games will become interactive spreadsheets, pumped out to inform and educate. Simply another tool of practicality.
The beauty in games lies in the fact that they are both science and art! Embrace the fact that we have have finally come upon a medium that can embrace both technicality and spirituality!
Sorry, got a little carried away there.
If my comment came across as anything other than criticism, I apologize. I suppose I found an issue with the phrase “Storytelling Techniques we inherently suck at.” I think it’s more appropriate to say, “Storytelling Techniques that we have abandoned.” I am aware that most experimental games are found exclusively on the PC, since they do not have to meet publisher standards. However, after playing through a little of Gravitation, I found the gameplay to be very console-based – pixellated, tile-based platformer, left/right/jump, a points counter, etc. – hence the comment about console/arcade gamer vocabulary. The intent of the comment was to point out how console games and PC games have evolved narrative independently of each other, and that a plea for better narrative in games is to ignore the progress made by PC games in the past, which I’ll explain in the three examples I brought up.
Myst challenged linear narrative by presenting its story all at once. There are no explanations why you are there, no tutorials on how to proceed, no order of events, and you could skip to the “end” simply by accident. Through visual/audio cues and a very simple interface, you discover the story. In terms of gamer vocabulary, Myst not only introduced non-linear narrative, but the HUD-less interface, puzzles based on logic instead of skill, the absence of time and death, and, most of all, the concept of morality.
The Last Express explored storytelling through real-time. This eliminated the A-to-B system of narrative because you could miss essential portions of the story by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, yet you could return to it later. Like Myst, the interface was very simple, puzzles were based on logic, and you were free to explore as you wished, but there was a story that would only reveal itself to you if you knew where to find it.
Syndicate, unlike the previous two examples, did not give you a story. Instead, it gave you a theme – a cyberpunk world with 4 mind-controlled agents at your disposal – and a series of missions. You had indirect control over the agents, your missions would unlock depending on your mastery of the interface, and each mission could be completed as you saw fit. When you conquered the world, the game simply stopped progressing. There was no end in the traditional narrative sense.
This brings me to the core of my argument. To borrow Mr. Gaynor’s words, the player is not “an agent of chaos,” but instead an agent of order. Games are challenges that are meant to be solved. Games present to us chaos and it is the task of the player to figure out its meaning. Videogames are more powerful than books or film because they are able to convey abstract concepts and/or detailed information in a very concise, very accessible manner. While most media convey information through presentation, games convey information through activity. Also, videogames, unlike a traditional game like chess, can convey narrative in any fashion, from any perspective, on any topic.
The problem with current game design is not with content, but with the interaction. Our gamer vocabulary is very limited due to the types of input we are allowed to use in a game. The genres of games existing and the “universal” input they use severely limit our expansion into the mainstream, but that is not to say that they haven’t tried. Games have explored abstract and mature concepts, but they have been shoehorned into an interface that is basically a series of button presses.
In other words, games have already touched me, but that is because I have a gamer vocabulary and I can understand game mechanics. In order for a person in general to be touched by a game, it will have to become more accessible by improving the gamer vocabulary by way of input. I don’t believe we need to expand on games like Gravitation; in a way, it’s preaching to the choir.
Today's games are structured that if it were novels, we would be solving puzzles or other challenges during any idle moments in the story.
For example, first, we'd be reading dialogues, a character's thoughts, feelings, meaningful interaction with other characters. Then when that parts over and time to move to next part of the story, we're slammed with a caculus problem that we have to solve in order to discover what happens next.
While I really do want to see someone try a different path than this, I still want to be told of a touching story, an interactive one, that is. I really would be pissed if all we see in future is AAA version of "Gravitation" or "Marriage." While it certainly is a progression, it's missing story element that I hunger.
What if we take completely opposite way, and instead of suppressing linear story, we take away player control? What if we don't let players directly control anything, but instead, let them merely influence character's actions? I see the true merit of a medium being interactive in its ability to let players influence and thus customize the experience to his or her liking.
In this case, we'd have a game that looks more or less like movies or TV shows, but depending on how a player, or rather a viewer, influence characters, plot turns and twists in response to that. (Something similar to Mass Effect letting players choose the tone of their character's lines, san action/rpg elements)
Just a thought.
I realize I'm a bit tardy to the party on this article (it's dropped off the main page, anyway), but I just had to point out a few things I took exception to in the article and in the comments.
@ Kevin Campbell:
"A game with excellent story but bad gameplay will always be bad, but a game with excellent gameplay and a crappy story, or even no story at all will always be enjoyed."
"A game is nothing more than rules and a goal. Video games just have more rules and more goals, but deep down they're no different than a game of tag."
I could not disagree more with these statements. Video games are so much more than their rules and goals-- they're about creating worlds and characters for players to explore and play with. The rules are simply how we go about interacting with the world of the game.
Do you really think people enjoy games like Bioshock or Call of Duty because of their rules? That the settings and characters are just window dressing for the players to point and click at? Do people play Dungeons and Dragons just so they can roll some dice around?
The world of the game and its story are EVERYTHING-- they're what motivates the player to keep playing, to keep exploring. They inspire the imagination and let us escape reality. Nobody plays games just to move a bunch of pixels around a screen.
A game must have a good story to keep the player interested in playing (unless it's a pure puzzle game, ala Tetris). I think where all the confusion and arguments come from is that we're still (like Blow suggests) defining "good story" in filmic and literary terms instead of figuring out what constitutes a good story for gaming.
People also forget that just because a game is simple doesn't mean it doesn't have a story. "Asteroids" has a story. It has a protagonist, a setting, obstacles, villains, and conflict. Of course, the story of Asteroids would make for a terrible book and a lousy movie, but it makes for a great videogame. Why?
In my opinion, it’s because Asteroids has great conflict- dodging and blasting asteroids, white-knuckle near misses and an increasingly chaotic field of play. Everything else about Asteroids’ “story” serves to enhance and give context and meaning to that conflict. It makes for immensely entertaining game play that still works today.
I think in this way, we can judge a game’s story (by which I mean the accumulated effect of its characters, settings, and plot) by how well it enlivens and enhances the core conflict of the gameplay. Half Life, Bioshock, and Call of Duty all share the same basic conflict/gameplay, but the differences in their stories result in radically different player experiences. All three (in my opinion, anyway) are examples of great interactive storytelling because they use all the elements of traditional storytelling in conjunction with excellent interactive conflict to engage and provoke the player’s imagination.
I realize I’m straying pretty far from the original article at this point, so I’ll simply say that I think Blow is wrong when he calls Gravitation a game without a story, and I think he’ll find that at the end of the day, it’s impossible to separate games FROM story. The second a triangle becomes a spaceship, the second a series of colored pixels become a character and the greenish blob behind them becomes “land”, you’ve already turned into a storyteller. What’s needed isn’t games without storytelling, it’s games that truly understand what interactive storytelling means and what defines it against other artistic mediums.
Games do not NEED story, they certainly add something to the experience, but in what you're saying they're essentially nothing more than simulations with a story attached.
Games obviously need graphics and sound, but a game with bad graphics and sound can still be good if it has great gameplay. A story can suck but a game with a suck story or no story at all can still be a good game. A game can come in an ugly box but still be fun, a game can be downloaded or bought at a story and still be fun. The point is that while many people BUY games for stories they are not at all REQUIRED, thus if we want to find what's so special and magical about games that nothing else can do we should probably look to the one thing REQUIRED to make a good game.
Music can contain stories and sometimes people buy concept albums just for the stories (ala Coheed and Cambria) but music doesn't NEED to have a story. Books can have illustrations in them but they aren't required, and comic books can have good art or bad art, so long as the story flows well, is competently framed and well told.
Furthermore games ARE nothing more than rules and a goal. Tetris only has rules and a goal, Tetris with a storyline is rules and a goal with story inbetween, the way the stories are told ARE unique to games but are not necessary. This is the problem as a lot of developers have it in their head that they need to make the Citizen Cane of video gaming by marrying story and art which is nonsense since it's not required.
Another problem is that you and many other developers confuse games with simulation. A simulation doesn't need a goal, it's just recreating atmosphere and the feeling of doing something, a simulation. However simulation isn't required at all, just like sculpture doesn't always require an art installation or poetry doesn't always require music.
Think about games
Boil them down to their basics
Get to the heart of what works
Think about non video games
In our immaturity and desperate rush to feel relevant we've taken to grasping at straws. Hell, most game developers who get so into this don't even know what art is, or went to art college (real art college, not "learn to work like a soulless robot" factory school.) Actually, no, you don't even have to be classically taught.
As you said, Dungeons and Dragons is a game, but it's also a storytelling mechanism. You can play DnD just with the rules and no story (sorta like the new edition), though it won't be fun because creativity and mutability defines DnD, but it DOES NOT define games. You see the difference? If it's not required then it doesn't matter when thinking about the big picture.
one think I would like to highlight: if you are going to put a story into a game, why do you need a game to tell your story?
Would it be possible to tell your story without compromise in book form or as a theatrical play, or a movie? If so, why do you need a game to tell your story...?
Following does not make much sense in an aesthetic way: I have a great story, now I build my shooter gameplay around it. Or: I have a great game with great gameplay, now I inject a story... in the first example the story gets confused or looses focus, in the other example the game / gameplay looses focus... so where is the merrit?
I think games work more like architecture or abstract music or paintings.
Problem is also, that shooters and RPGs require storys for their context, maybe we should think of other genres
cheers,
George