Well, I fail to understand why Crackdown is considered here as le parkour game. It's just sandbox game, nothing more, nothing less. Cartoonish physics aren't making it le parkour out of a sudden. Mirros's Edge on the other hand seems to follow that path nicely (but obviously there's little known about it right now and it's hard to predict whether it'll become a successful franchise).

You must have not read the entire article.

But regardless, I myself perform parkour when I have time, and it is rather enjoyable to move through your environment free of the constraints of sidewalks and stairwells.

It is cool that you are given more freedom with your environment in many of these games. I always marveled at the acrobatics from Tomb Raider and Prince of Persia. I have yet to play Assassins Creed or Crackdown; and from what I've read of Prototype, it will have similar mechanics. This is all well and good, but I don't foresee games surviving on play mechanics alone. It's great that we are finally learning how to allow players freedom of movement through their environment, but what about freedom of expression through their character? Or freedom of exploration through human emotion? Or freedom of definition to write your own, personal, unique story in a game.

I'm going to stop before I start rambling. My initial comment was just supposed to be "it's cool that they are drawing on Parkour for inspiration in play mechanics. It's weird you didn't discuss the actual game, 'Free Running,' by Reef Entertainment and Rebellion, and how well they did or did not stay true to the spirit and nature of parkour."

Certainly we're starting to see more and more games heavly inspired by parkour. It can feel, now, like an over-harvesting of a cultural phenomenon. We roll our eyes slightly when "movement based on parkour" is mentioned in a design docment *again*. And having worked on a couple of designs and a game which heavily drew on the art, I'm guilty of that, too (though I'm glad to say I was guilty of it before it became de rigueur. I even took up the activity in order to learn about how it really felt to do parkour, and was pop vaulting sx foot walls by the time I lapsed. I somehow ended up in the gym scene in Jump Britain.

So it's a little too familiar by now. Assassin's Creed, Mirror's Edge, Prototype... but you know what? It doesn't bother me: If a game benefits from usng parkour as inspiration, and as a reslt overcomes clunky, unflowing, amateurish movement systems, then it's a win for the player, no matter how "sold out" or "last year" parkour is considered.

It's great to see someone else notice how paedaic parkour is, and that the joy of it comes from the proprioception and creativity in path finding - there's an intrinsic joy in the flowing, un-interrupted movement, which some games capture better than others. Whether or not this intrinsic joy is a focus is, I feel, kind of unimportant (certainly, I'd personally prefer it that way, but games are a transcendental medium, and can't rest on one leg alone). Whether fluid motion is the target of the developer, or merely an means to an end, the game will still benefit when there is more thought put into avatar movement - typically one of the core verbs in any first/thrd person game, and thus a bridge for a player into the rest of the transcendental experience.

Whether or not a game perfectly captures the look *as well as* feel of parkour, also, feels irrelevant to me. To me, Quake 3 (noteably the defrag mod) captures the "spirit" of parkour with its model of continuous movement, strafe jmping, plasma climbing and rocket jumping, while Assassin's Creed merely attempts a faximilie of (some of) the moves used (and successfully so). Quake 3's simple, but complete verb set allows for expression, creativity, and skill to be channelled into gameplay. Assassin's Creed, with its well hidden animation states and discrete, contrived movement gives a different perspective - what's it like to have mastered movement to the point that one doesnt consciously think in order to traverse the scenery? Surely then, one is only concerned with the route - means become fairly irrelevant. The destination is all.

I guess my point is that one should be more concerned about how the movement system fits with the rest of the game, and how the level design promotes it, than whether or not it matches the varios splintered philosophies within the freerunning/parkour community. A parkour implementation can be as realistic as yo like, but if it's a pig from a useability stand point, what's the gain?

I'm glad to see these discussions happening. I think discussions like this one point to a paradigm-shift in how developers are approaching player movement. For so long, especially in shooter games, movement has been largely ignored, in favor of increasingly complex combat systems. We've put a lot of focus into enemy movement AI, including taking cover, dives, rolls, etc. but we're just now getting to the player himself and how he moves. Parkour is a single thread in a much broader discussion of player movement itself.

Just a quick note from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkour)

A quote under "Free Running" states: "You have to make the difference between what is useful and what is not in emergency situations. Then you'll know what is parkour and what is not. So if you do acrobatics things on the street with no other goal than showing off, please don't say it's parkour."

There is a subtle difference, I believe, between free running and parkour. By the above definition, Assassin's Creed is more parkour than free running.

Hello, first let me introduce myself: I am the president of the Brazilian Parkour Association (and also a gamer :)).
First, congratulations for the article, like Joel said its a nice discussion. But my comment is mostly about calling "competitive" the way that Parkour is taken in Assassins Creed. (I will use the word Parkour, since Free Running for us means something with a totally different philosofy and I have no interest on it).
First, let me say that Parkour was created by a former firefighter and member of marine corps, David Belle.
It has been taught to him by his father, who fought on Vietnam and used his skills to survive. He had to be fast, he had to be efficient, he had to use whatever his body could do to survive.
I have played a bit of Assassins Creed, about 2-3 hours, and I must say that I was impressed on how techincal the "parkour moves" were represented in the game.
When Parkour is called a non-competitive activity, we actually mean that you should not train to be better than someone else. You should focus on yourself, the competition is with your own limits while training and evolving to be a better person (phisically and otherwise), and thus becoming strong to use your skills in a emergency situation.

That being said, I must say that parkour has been represented very good in this game. I have also played Crackdown and I did not like the way Parkour has been represented, not only because the limitations on the movement, but also the way its being seen as a "sport to jump from building to building".
And by the way, Erwans last name is "Le Corre", and Hebertiste is his nickname on the forums.

I hope you could understand my comment, english is not my first language.

Dear Aaron,

You must have read entirely different article. :) This one doesn't mention Mirror's Edge (for valid reasons, but still). As for the other part: developers might have been inspired by parkour but that doesn't make Crackdown parkour game. "Willow" was inspired by "Hobbit". ;) Please play Crackdown or watch gameplay videos - urban environment + agility skill don't make it free runing experience (it's still great gameplay mechanics IMO). Just a thought. BTW: I still love Crackdown. :]

What I don't get is how AC 'fails' in parkour if it's only inspired by it, but doesn't have the intention to say it's the main focus of the game. If it was, I would agree with you.

"This would substantially change Assassin's Creed, focusing it more authentically on true Parkour pursuits."

The game is about an Assassin and a great plot that unravels while you play. The developers were inspired by it and made playing with Altaïr a lot of fun by running through the city. However it's still a portion of the overall experience. It's *not* a parkour game in my oppinion, just inspired by the moves of it.

Even if a game isn't founded on the "Parkour" concept, most good players incorporate this concept into how they play. Every time I play Mario Sunshine or Metroid Prime I am looking to move from point A to point B in the straightest, fastest and most efficient way. I like that people have started to do this as a sport in real life.

I totally agree with Raymond Grier, the "parkour" philosophy is part of many actual games. By using Google, I'm pretty much sure that you could find "jump tricks" videos for Quake 3, Halo 2-3 and many other games.

In any competitive FPS, you always need to greatly control your movements and tricks passing by a crouch jump to a rocket or grenade-jump.

Great point.

Phillip Baxter probably also mentionend the greatest one.

Parkour is all about optimizing your run. Become faster, more efficient by using your environment or developing your own body.

Parkour isn't a new philosophy in itself, but it's clearly a different life path that I like.