posted
Before my rant begins, let me first say that Mr. Card is a fantastic writer and perhaps the best reviewer and political commentator of our modern day.
The scenario is simple. In all the chaos of making a movie, video game rights get discussed and passed off to mediocre American video game firm #43. The game gets overlooked as Mr. Card devotes his time and energy to his writing and the movie, the areas of his expertise. Meanwhile, a team of Americans will be taking Ender's Game into the only media form American has not mastered. (We all know that Will Wright is the only American who has ever produced a good video game.)
What can we expect from a Ender's Game video game? Well, games based off movies tend to be spectacular failed copies of ideas that were considered new and innovative a few years ago. Such as:
1. Jumping on platforms. 2. Collecting stuff. 3. Going to find something and bringing it back to someone. 4. Collecting more stuff. 5. Encountering puzzles, then promptly finding the item to overcome that puzzle. Rise, lather, repeat. 6. Collecting MORE stuff.
If we get lucky, we might even see copies of newfangled ideas, such as stealth from Japan, massive environments from Europe, or statistic systems from Canada. Meh, don't hold your breath.
Let's make this into a final game plan:
The game starts, after the opening scenes, with Ender having to find his way to his home from school. This will inevitably involve several generic bully enemies to fight -OR- hide from; the designers will take pride in the "ground-breaking" advance of having two ways to tackle a problem. Chances are the player will find some absurd weapon to fight off the bullies with, like a dodgeball. Then Ender will have to fight Stilson, who I can say with 100% accuracy, will take exactly 3 dodgeball hits to defeat.
The designers will proceed to mention in an interview how close the game follows the book.
Then we see a cut-scene with Graff informing Ender that he has qualified to go to the Battle School. However, he must pass one final test. This will be something along the lines of finding and defeating the 5 robots loose on Graff's space ship. This will be accomplished by jumping on some moving gears and shafts inside the ship, and shooting them with some type of electric weapon that is found in the ship.
The designers will also state in an interview how the game "devulges interesting parts of the backstory not addressed in the books or movie".
On the way to the Battle School, the ship will break down and the player will have to find a certain number of oxygen tanks scattered throughout the space ship. There will be a timer, and the ship will obviously be a complex maze of steel. It will be overly easy, very annoying, or both.
The back of the box will advertise "tense action".
Once at the Battle School, the player will be presented with a multi-floor area that repeats if you walk far enough. (Nevermind that the outer levels should have a bigger diameter.) The player will have to walk to the appropriate door to begin the next activity for the rest of the game, with arrows always pointing the right direction. Tedious walking between the same doors on different floors over and over will get old fast.
The designers will talk about how the game "recreates the Battle School experience".
Next up is the Training session with Petra, where the player is instructed how to aim a cursor. Finally, the player is introduced to the Battle Room. This involves shooting a set of human targets, then kicking off the wall automatically after they are all frozen. You will then stick to the next wall as if by magic, and aim at another set of enemies. The whole time, there is a backdrop of two armies fighting. If the developers had extra time, they might even make the total number of enemies you have to shoot and the ones in the background add up to 41.
The player will do as many Battle Room aim-a-thons as the game designers feel they should, but various filler material will be dispersed between battles too. The fights with bullies will be refreshed as a slightly harder fight with Bonzo's gang, though it will probably be with some type of high-tech energy cells instead of dodgeballs. There will probably be more fights with robots too. Other missions to look forward to include exploring the mechanical depths of the space station (and its many moving platforms to jump between), collecting somethings of some sort, and sneaking through ducts to spy on teachers. (Bean did that? Well, let's keep it at one chacter, for simplicty, ok?)
Oh, and lets not forget the boss battle with the Giant! Hit him in the eye 3 times with the bow and arrow you found lying in Fantasyland to win!
The game will end with a Space Invaders-style shooting of alien ships at Command School. Then there will be the big plot twist: Those were actually the bad guys, but Ender is sad he won and wants to go live on a Bugger world. The End.
Pessimistic? Yes.
But am I saying Ender's Game has no chance as a video game? Quite the opposite! Imagine, a huge online multiplayer strategy game of scale and inspiration never before seen! The potential is never more evident, and that is why I fear that this will be made into a bad game.
We have seen this before. Quidditch would have made a phenominal video game, but EA managed to turn it into soccer without personality. (It was played on a two-dimentional plane, with inconsistant speeds on all the players at various times. Bludgers were power-ups, and the Seeker/Golden Snitch race would just happen at the end of the game. Sheesh.)
My paranoia may be sillyness, as one doubts that Mr. Card would ever let such garbage knowingly be released. However, there have been situations where content owners don't see the final results until after the game is released. In recent years past, Dave Mirra (BMX bike star) signed a contract for a video game is his name on all major systems with a large American publisher. Only until a good while after it hit shelves did he ever become aware that it was a pornography game!
Certainly not comforting.
Posts: 7 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Mr. Card's eldest son is a game designer. And OSC himself is a geek.
While it's certainly possible that they'll screw up this game, the ideas I've heard Geoff bandying about -- a Band of Brothers-style Battle Room FPS and a space combat simulator -- are concepts that I think will be considerably superior to the platformer of our nightmares.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
"Emergency Ender! This is Colernial Gaf speaking! You have to get to the top of the Battle Ship and hit the override switch before the Bugs eat us all!"
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quote: Meanwhile, a team of Americans will be taking Ender's Game into the only media form American has not mastered. (We all know that Will Wright is the only American who has ever produced a good video game.)
Sorry, is this part of your post a joke?
I mean, I see that most of the rest of your post is a joke(sort of), but eh. I dunno.
Posts: 204 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
It can be said that movies often spawn awful video games, with the exception IMHO of LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth which I found entertaing the few times I've played it. This can be attributed to the rich universe developed by Tolkien and enhanced by Peter Jackson's interpretation.
On the other end of the spectrum lets find Chronicles of Riddick (that may inspire flames but FPS games rarely inpress me), Indiana Jones caper, the CSI release(s), and even a to be released game based on ER.
Here is one I just found for an upcoming game, don't laugh this is real:
Majesco Games is working on a new title based on the 1975 film, Jaws. In the game, you'll play as a Great White shark on a mission to protect his home from underwater drillers.
The race is on to develop a video game that will be laughed off the racks.
All that being said, I hope any license for any Ender video game is held onto as tightly as the movie rights have been. Until someone with some talent can bring it to the reality that myself and others would like to see it at. With OSC lending story thoughts to the inevitable project, of course.
I would like to see a deep, immersive RTS gaming experience, possibly based in Eros, or encompassing Battle School as well. With future releases including scenarios based on the Hegemon wars and battle school grads.
A multiplayer universe option should not be overlooked as well. I am personally sick of Everquestish multiplayer metaverse MP games.
posted
Choc, I laughed all the way through your description of the Ender's Game game I've seen exactly that formula pitched in SOOO many meetings, it's sad. Hilarious stuff.
Of course, usually that kind of formula arises when a game developer is given an impossible task. For example, what would you do if you were asked to make a game based on Shark Tale for a very small budget? I can tell you what I'd do. I'd design a GTA-like urban crime game with full freedom of movement through a vast 3D underwater city. Then I would cut out everything expensive or technically difficult until I was left with a very small children's game about collecting mollusks, dancing, and hiding from crabs
It's easy to talk about making an Ender's Game game that fulfills your wildest fantasies on a scale never before seen. In another thread, someone suggested that an Ender's Game RTS could be like Command and Conquer, only with "more depth and better AI". All very easy words to say. But there are reasons why most games don't have "more depth and better AI". It's freaking hard to achieve, especially on a tight budget. Even Peter Freaking Molyneux can't realize the games he really wants to make because of technical, scope, and audience restrictions. And he apparently has limitless money and hubris So what can the rest of us hope to do?
You've got to realize that game developers are not evil bastards with no taste, who are trying to keep you from having fun. We're usually even more hardcore gamers than you are, with even more obsessive tastes and even bigger dreams. But unlike you, we have reality to deal with, and we can only do our best.
Luckily, as the industry matures, people are beginning to take some licensed games more seriously. Spider-man 2 for console, for instance. And Riddick. And Knights of the Old Republic. All those games belong to franchises that game developers have a lot of love and enthusiasm for. All of them (at least while they were in development) looked like big hits to publishers. So they got the money and devotion that they needed to succeed.
If ever there was a property that had earned that kind of devotion from this industry, it's Ender's Game. Trust me. You've got nothing to worry about.
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
B-HAX, I disagree with your assessment of Riddick, but it seems to me that you're an RTS purist of sorts, and I don't expect to be able to persuade you of the value of any game outside your very narrow tastes.
quote:It can be said that movies often spawn awful video games, with the exception IMHO of LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth which I found entertaing the few times I've played it. This can be attributed to the rich universe developed by Tolkien and enhanced by Peter Jackson's interpretation.
So the developers at EALA had nothing to do with it? As long as they based their game on Tolkein's world and adapted assets from Peter Jackson's films, they were good to go?
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
RatDog, I expected that as several of my friends have an affinity for the Riddick release. I have been know to stray from my genre of choice when merited. The Half Life and subsequent HL2 FPS games captivated me completely.
I personally find the idea of FPS/Strategy game based on the battle room to be a fabulous idea, and one that has virtue. I am a huge fan of the Hidden and Dangerous 2, and from what I've seen of Brothers in Arms, that will be some amazing gameplay.
I must lay may cards on the table for my repudiation of Riddick. I simply can't stand Vin Diesel. There it is. The truth. I feel better now, and that I can move on with the rest of my life.
quote: So the developers at EALA had nothing to do with it?
Thank you for stating, through your question, what I neglected to state in my post. How to put this? It is sad but true that the work of the developer, when done to it's utmost perfection, shouldn't even enter into the gamers conscious experience.
The "art, atmosphere, sound, music, visceral impact, smooth-running solid code, etc", as Puppy stated in the other thread, is completely attributed to the developers input and careful guidance. That is what makes a great game truly great.
But even the most advanced gaming engine, interface etc etc is worthless if it is based on a haphazardly thrown together storyline based on this movie, or that television show. But the same can be said for the reverse.
I have been hitting heavily on the story aspect of the game because it would be truely sad if Ender's Game: The Game was indiscriminately put together to simply accentuate the box office income.
posted
While your post was very entertaining (the description of Ender saving the shuttle by "finding the five robots" had me laughing out loud), I have to take issue with your conclusions. You assume, straight off, that EG will inevitably take the form of a 3D platformer. As Geoff and others have pointed out, there are plenty of game types that could be far more applicable to an Ender's Game experience, including FPS and RTS (not to mention the myriad subgenres of each- tactical strategy, team-based shooter, etc).
Personally, I think that an Ender's Game Game would really need to focus on the strategic aspects of Battle School and Command School in order to be "fun" (the story itself is far too "interior" to Ender's mind to really work as an RPG, for example). I would actually think that separate games based on each mechanic would be best- one Battle School game centered around multiplayer armies along the lines of Natural Selection and Halo 2, and one Command School game that would effectively be the ship battles of "Master of Orion" in 3D and real time.
I also heartily disagree with your assessment of Will Wright as the only "good" American developer. Planescape Torment, Halo, Grim Fandango, Total Annihilation, Warcraft (and its various spinoffs), The Sims, Civilization 3, and Half Life are just a few of the games to come from American companies in the last ten years that are considered among the finest games ever made.
posted
Heh... Will Wright was the man behind the Sims... So um, if you're saying that that helps disprove him as the only one, you're not doing that well...
But I do agree, there are many other good games.
Posts: 1831 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
B-HAX, I disagree with you about the importance of story in a game. Story is one important feature, and in many genres, the story is what provides the context that gives the action purpose and meaning. But to give it added importance above and beyond the other game mechanics, I think, is a bit myopic.
A game like The Battle for Middle Earth, for instance, isn't great at telling a story. The story sets up the action and gives closure to each mission, but the action itself is largely divorced from the storyline, and depends entirely on the mechanics of the base-management system, the unit AI, the controls, the strategy ... that's what makes the game fun during each moment that you're playing. The story is just the payoff.
The same applies to Diablo II. The story is a fun reward to unlock, but the game is about hacking up enemies and bringing home ph4+ L3w+
Games make up a huge spectrum. On one end, you have The Longest Journey, Half-life 2, Fallout, Freedom Force, Freelancer ... all belong to very different genres, and all of them depend very heavily on their stories.
But on the other end of the spectrum, you have Unreal Tournament, Sim City, Rome: Total War, and others for whom story is barely, if at all, a consideration.
You can't just make a general rule that says story is the one overriding factor that makes or breaks a game. It is ONE factor, but it is no more important, intrinsically, than any other mechanic. In some games, it dominates. In others, it takes a backseat.
[ March 19, 2005, 03:24 PM: Message edited by: A Rat Named Dog ]
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
While Will Wright is only one of many amazing American game developers, I do have to say, there is no one else who could pitch a concept like Spore and convince me that it will work, purely on the merits of his reputation and past achievements Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Oh yeah, Spore has me excited like no other game this year (with the possible exception of Psychonauts, by Tim Schafer of "Grim Fandango" and "Monkey Island" fame).
Vadon: Touche... I was so caught up in thinking up "good American-made games I've played" that I totally forgot that it was the Will Wright comment I was writing about in the first place. Me brain go boom.
posted
Did anyone else think that the self-automation of the game, what with building a code so advanced that it creates the animations on its own, sound like the Fantasy Game?
Posts: 30 | Registered: Feb 2005
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First, I was being purposefully stereotypical when I said Americans cannot make good games. I only said Will Wright because I had Spore fresh on my mind... (Genius! It's Genius, I say!)
As for an RTS, I think that is too narrow-minded for Ender's Game. Assuming that the Fantasy Game is out of our reach at the moment, we have only one gem to work with: The Battle Room. It is just asking to be a real-time strategy of some sort, but more about action and organization. It would be a big difference from the overhead antics of Age of Empires and the likes.
And I agree that just saying "we'll make it like this game, except bigger and with better AI!" doesn't accomplish much form a design standpoint.
[ March 20, 2005, 01:50 PM: Message edited by: Chocolate Pi ]
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posted
The Battle Room is NOT asking to be real-time strategy. The spaceship simulator is asking to be RTS. The Battle Room is asking to be squad-based FPS.
A RTS Battle-Room would blow chunks.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Now, when I'm saying RTS, I'm saying that is the focus of the game: it is a strategy game in real time. It would be in first-person, and you would have a gun. But that doesn't make it a FPS game any more than Metroid Prime. Metroid Prime is played with a gun in first person, but it is clearly an adventure game. Just like that, Ender's Game would be a strategy game about organizing and ordering your army, despite looking like a typical FPS game.
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posted
As I mentioned in my original post, I think that Natural Selection would be an excellent model for a Battle School game to follow. It is effectively a squad-based FPS, except that the "commander" player gets an RTS-style interface. He can set waypoints for the other players and order them around. Add a "prep room" before each game for the commander to describe overall strategy, and then overcome the not-insignificant hurdles to making an FPS work in true 3D, and you've got yourself the Battle Room.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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quote:However, there have been situations where content owners don't see the final results until after the game is released. In recent years past, Dave Mirra (BMX bike star) signed a contract for a video game is his name on all major systems with a large American publisher. Only until a good while after it hit shelves did he ever become aware that it was a pornography game!
I think it's worth pointing out that the original games they produced were actual BMX games of quality, but then they did the BMX XXX thing as a separate entity, but marketed it to cash in on their previous relationship with Dave Mirra.
Personally, I don't really think that the Ender's Game stuff would translate all that well to a game anyway, at least not following the story. Strategies were all too specific to be implemented in a game in any sort of meaningful way.
Then again, maybe it could happen. I'm pretty uncreative about this sort of thing.
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quote:Just curious, is the Ender's Game game (if there is one) going to be based off the book or the movie?
Right now, Warner Bros holds the game rights as part of their option on the film. It is highly unlikely that they would permit anyone to make a game that did not tie in with their movie.
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
A few comments on the development of this thread so far...
With the thought of a battle room simulator, think Brothers In Arms. First person WWII shooter with a simple but very meaningful squad command system. The emphasis is on tactics and manuevers. But what I really like is the multiplayer, where each player in a 2 on 2 battle controls a fire team. It wasn't twenty minutes into my first XBOX live session with that game before I was calling them toons.
As for Will Wright and Spores, I am amazed by it not based on Mr. Wright's reputation, but on the breakaway uniqueness of the concept.
On the subject of story-driven games, Geoff had listed some games that aren't dependent on story such as Rome: Total War. But that game, along with Battle for Middle Earth or Civ III or the Sims or Black and White, derives a good portion of it's magic from the fact that it provides a setting or mechanic for you to create your own stories. It is not spoon fed, but as Wright mentioned, it was a rudimentary tool to channel the imagination of the player. The game industry is on the verge of achieving something visually and with depth of play that will fully define a universe for us to explore and farm our own stories in. Spores certainly is a wonderful example of that.
Posts: 12 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Allowing a player to create his own stories is a very different process, for a game developer, than providing a story yourself.
I actually think that guided user-created stories is one way that the computer game industry is going to revolutionize storytelling in the future ... though I think we're still at a very experimental stage at the moment.
The problem with telling stories in games is the fact that most stories derive much of their power from final cause — from showing WHY people make the decisions they make, not just WHAT they decide to do.
In a game, however linear it may be, the viewpoint character is still always under the control of the player. Which means that final cause cannot be provided by the game developer. Instead, it is provided by the player.
In Halo cutscenes, for instance, the Master Chief may be basing his choices on his duty to mankind. But once control is handed over, the actual battles are motivated by the player's desire for thrill and accomplishment, and no one is more aware of that fact than the player. The Master Chief's identity and motives vanish as soon as the player takes the reins.
Thus it is very difficult to communicate a story with any kind of power surrounding the Master Chief himself. Scenes involving other characters may still be powerful, but the Master Chief story is heavily nerfed.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how to turn this limit into a strength, and I've got some ideas ... but I also have no time at the moment, so seeya later Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
I agree with the analogies of squad-based gameplay, but I believe that when you reach the scale of the battle room, the game's fundamental nature would change.
In a squad game, you are part of a team. Although one player may have the final say in decisions, for the most part each player is equal. Communication is the passing of information, not giving and recieving orders. (For the most part.)
But Ender's Game is about leadership. Most the kids there existed for the benefit of the rest.
However, that could actually be used in the very premise of the game. A game could be designed to gather a large number of FPS fans, for use by the players who are commanders and toon leaders. Given the large FPS fanbase, this model could actually be used to financially fuel the game.
This model comes for a similar game idea I've been playing around with for a while: Having a online strategy game between two players, but with massive armies played by other humans who are unknowlingly just along for the ride. While these players may be having a blast in ground engagements, driving vehicles, and piloting aircrafts, the real game is the duel between the two commanders.
As for the story, I think Ender's only existence in the game should be in the title. Discard the plot, and provide the player the resources to craft their own. Let them move around the School between battles, and talk to other students, learn their personalities.
On a tangent, I would love to see one of the console companies put some kind of updatable NPC engine in the hardware itself. It could have an updatable database on a hard-drive, filled with vocabulary and a large variety of aspects to randomly mix. Few games would have the resources to waste on such an engine, but almost every game has a number of brain-dead NPCs walking back and forth sayign the same two lines over and over. If the designers of any game were capable of adding intelligent NPCs with only a minimal amount of customization, alot of games could benefit.
But alas, easier said than done.
Posts: 7 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I read an excellent article awhile ago that I really wish I could find. It deals with the difference between "realism" and "realistic", in games. Games can't be totally realistic, or they wouldn't be fun. So, if you're developing a game that should be more realistic, then you generally resort to "realism" as the guy put it. It's almost a kind of symbolism for what this would be in real life. Even in games that seem to be very realistic, just about everything is represented with realism. Nobody is going to tell me that when I kill a bad guy a little thing of ammunition is just going to pop up and float in the air until I touch it, which makes it somehow go into my gun, or whatever. How is it that I'm wearing absolutely no armor or protection, and yet I can take hundreds of bullets/lasers/koopa shells until I die? Who ever designed this dungeon was an idiot...they put an item I need to defeat the bad guy with RIGHT OUT THERE IN THE FREAKIN' OPEN!
That's just a small list of things that aren't exactly realistic. But a game CAN'T be realistic because it wouldn't be FUN, or possible. But in some games shouldn't be realistic. Which brings me to my point. A game based off of a movie or book has to be extrememly hard to make. They need to keep the realistic portions of it, but they also need to add in the realism to make it work as a game. They also need to find enough material to make into gameplay. In my opinion just about the only place that would give use enough material from Ender's Game to make into a game would be the battle room.
No, we don't want the game that Chocolate Pi envisioned, but the sad thing is that it's very possible.
But I can imagine we could have a good game if it stuck to the Battle Room. Do we even need the story in there? Sure, some of it, but we don't need a retelling of Ender's Game in game form, since they would probably resort to Chocolate Pi's description.
Well, that's my two cents. ^_^
Oh, on a slightly different note:
quote: But that doesn't make it a FPS game any more than Metroid Prime. Metroid Prime is played with a gun in first person, but it is clearly an adventure game.
You know, I'm not all that sure Metroid Prime should be considered an adventure game. No, it's definitely not a FPS...I'm not sure what it is. That game, by description, shouldn't have worked...it doesn't have all of the good qualities of a good adventure game, and it doesn't have all of the good qualities of a FPS. Throw in the fact that it's got no story to speak of, the fact that Samus has no apparent motive, and the easy bosses with relatively dumb AI and you should have a pretty cruddy game. But it's not...I liked it. What with all the awesome different areas, the cool enemies, the feeling that you're not safe anywhere, really add up to make an extremely creep atmospheric game.
Sorry. Back to Ender's Game. Posts: 290 | Registered: Sep 2002
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In response to the strategy duel you have mentioned, there have been a few attempts at games that have attempted to harness this concept without success. The first thing that pops to mind is, as mentioned before, Natural Selection, or also Savage, from S2 games. In the latter, the "Commander" is presented with an RTS style view of the field, complete with the standard Warcraft style build and command menus. Aside from some AI workers, the rest of the units are player controlled from a first person perspective.
You might already know all of this, and it is the same way Natural Selection works. However, it is an evolutionary step forward towards what I would consider an ultimate game experience.
Being a fanatical war sim gamer, I imagine a full war time simulation style game. Jane's actually attempted this back in 1999 with "World at War", which got some press and quietly disappeared without a trace. This massively multiplayer game concept would have been written into all future Jane's sim games, allowing each game to connect to a central server and fight out a war on land, air and sea. You would have a contested area, so you could start up your flight sim and fly with some friends of yours to bomb an enemy position. Luckily, someone on your side with a spec ops game connected earlier and took out a SAM site with a helo insertion, and a coastal air strip controlled by the opposition is being shelled from a battleship group out at sea.
Very cool, in my opinion. But missing a few things. There's also WWIIOnline, which has quite a few flaws even now, but still translates into the best multiplayer war experience I've had. Nothing quite like flying in a formation of Blenheim bombers to support your troops at the front line.
In my concept, every position of every unit could be controlled by human players. From grunts with a standard first person perspective to squad leaders who could issue orders to other players or AI soldiers. Fighter pilots dodging anti-aircraft weapons fired by their next-door neighbor. Sonar operators in subs yelling out contacts over their headphones to the captain of their boat, once again, both human players, and then the commanders, utilizing a variety of RTS or turn-based styled maps and UIs to set down the orders that determine the missions available to the units below them.
Of course, at the top, the core groups of commanders for each "nation", working their own chess boards against each other, trying to exploit any appearent weakness and knowing that every advance, every success, is actual men and women playing out the various simulations below them.
Hell, if you wanted to, you could even throw in a Sims type game mode where you play the guys back home, buying war bonds and saving gas.
Anyways, the point of this thread is the Ender's Game Game. It had all just got me thinking of a multi-tiered war game like this set in the Formic Wars. It could be pretty crazy, with an entire section dedicated to making it through battle school before heading out to face the real war.
Just some thoughts.
Posts: 12 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I should clarify, by "without success", I mean that it didn't achieve the tactical battle that I have hoped for.
Very interesting things there, RatDog...I'm going to be deep in though while I am hunting British convoys in Silent Hunter III.
I think this notion is what made Half Life and it's sequel so convincingly immersive to me. There was no attrition of my own motives for success. While the story was there and very cool to me, it never took it out of my hands, or more importantly, out of my eyes. Marc Laidlaw and Valve were able to tell their story while I lived out mine: just escaping Black Mesa.
Posts: 12 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
"Throw in the fact that it's got no story to speak of,"
Sorry, but I'm going to have to cut you off here. Now I don't want to get into a silly argument over video game opinions (enough of those on the internet as is) but I think this applies to the story-telling topic.
In my opinion, Metroid Prime has one of the best stories in video game history. Not because of the depth, and certainly not because of the characters. But rather because it is an optional story, with several parts scattered around for the player to see, find, observe. Thrusting the player into cut-scenes, interrupting the game to try to tell the player how his character should act (like Rat as Rat pointed out about Halo) is not my idea of a good story. But In Metroid Prime, we found a respectable amount of logs and information scattered around on computer terminals and engraved in walls in ancient lore. The sequel described an epic struggle between five very different forces besides the player. This type of fully interactive story is what video games need, not imitations of movies.
Half Life takes a very similar approach, as Zero points out. (No pun intended, Zero ) There we watched the story unfold around us as we remained in control of the game, and no meaningless characterization was pushed onto the player.
[ March 21, 2005, 08:01 PM: Message edited by: Chocolate Pi ]
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posted
Sure, I agree with you on that. I'm not sure MP even needed cutscenes, at all. It's not like she has anybody to talk to. They weren't necessary in this particular game.
The thing that bothered me the worst was how it all played out. Samus chases Ridley down to Tallon IV, and evidentally wants to find him. (Heh, wouldn't you? He's supposed to be dead...) But anyway, after that all she does is follow the messages from her suit. It really made me wonder why she was investigating some random seismic disturbance when I thought her motivations was to kill as many Space Pirates as she could/find out more about the Chozo/find Ridley. Then why is she investigating these random things?
Other then that, I definitely agree with you. In fact, that was more of what I was trying to say. Yes, the Pirate logs and the Chozo lore did definitely give a lot of interesting background that really worked.
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Of course, you might notice that the physics theory my name relates to is noted in HL2 in the proper name of the gravity gun.
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posted
Thing about some games that annoys me is pretty simple:
Without a story, they're just no fun.
That's what gets me about multiplayer... no matter what you do, or who you're playing against, you're always going to have the same basic play experience. You might not know where the enemies are going to come from or how they're going to behave, but it's always going to be pretty similar.
Good single-player, story-driven games give you so many more options of different play types, different situations, and they give you an actual motive to play the game.
Would a game as immersive as Half-Life have been possible without the strong story? Could it have worked in multiplayer?
I'd say "No" to both questions.
I admit that I probably wouldn't get an Ender's Game game if it came out just because it would not likely be in a genre that I find interesting.
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posted
Ax, I think you're pretty unique if you are incapable of enjoying a video game without a strong story. For most people, a strong story is only one of many elements that makes up a good gaming experience, and it isn't necessary for all games.
Now, if you decide, for the sake of your argument, to point out a game like Half-life, which was designed from the ground up with a strong story in mind, then yes, removing the story would make it something less than it is.
But remember that, while Half-life was an amazing, popular game, it wasn't nearly as popular in single-player as it was after the Counter-strike mod team got to it. That was when it became the most popular online shooter of all time. The story was awesome, but it was the design and gameplay of Counter-strike that kept it legendary for seven years. Right now, no one is playing Fallout or Deus Ex or Planescape (all of which are widely thought to have some of the best-told stories in the industry). But thousands are still playing Counter-strike.
Your individual preferences != fundamental truths about game design.
That's one of the first lessons I had to learn in the business
[ March 22, 2005, 05:57 AM: Message edited by: A Rat Named Dog ]
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Not to mention the seriously vague and subjective term "good story". Of course, people can have different concepts of what is good and what is crap. But it's also important to see how other aspects of the game affect the strength of presentation of the game. Would the story in Half Life been as good if they strayed from the first person perspective and managed to get someone with crappy voice acting to do the role of Gordon? Would that jolt have ruined the immersion?
Realistically, there isn't one element that defines a good game, which is why most reviews break down their judgements into smaller pieces. It takes a combination of these elements to craft a strong game.
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posted
An interesting story on Gamespot about story in games: Link! Pay particular attention to Chris Avellone here — he's really hitting it on the head, and his answers are the most entertaining. Ragnar Tørnquist is my other favorite — keep the adventure game alive, man!
It's also kind of funny to read Hideo Kojima completely dismissing the value of story in games, while in the meantime designing games that are 75% cutscene
[ March 22, 2005, 12:44 PM: Message edited by: A Rat Named Dog ]
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posted
Heh, I read that article. It was funny how Tim Schafer acted like he could care less about all this. Exactly how you would expect the person who made the Monkey Island games to act.
And I agree that Hideo Kojima's attitude was a little strange (and somewhat oxymoronic). Doesn't he write all of the text in the MGS games? You'd think he'd be a major advocate of stories in games.
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We should organize a secret society dedicated to the betterment of games through subterfuge and clever manipulations.
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I've never heard of that game and dag-nab-it I'm impressed! (personally I hated the SIMgames, was more into RPG.. but being able to actually create litterally almost anything!)
*rubs hands together...* "Smurfs, Carebears, My Little Ponies, Glow Worms, Disney, watch out! Here comes Predator! Alien! Werewolves! Peter Pan the Immortal Childe Vampire that lives forever replacing all the Wendies of the time, eventually! And once The bad guys have the fun I'll start all over and see to that the Good Guys win in their own special ways!" LOL
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quote:Ax, I think you're pretty unique if you are incapable of enjoying a video game without a strong story.
Not incapable of enjoying, just much less likely to become immersed in.
I mean, Tekken and Gran Turismo and all those are enjoyable. It just doesn't feel much like accomplishing something when I play through them, except to get to play the game at a harder level.
Though I will admit that plotless multiplayer free-for-alls can be fun on consoles.
quote:Your individual preferences != fundamental truths about game design.
No, but they are truths about what I want a game to be, which is all I really care about anyway. ;-)
quote:That's one of the first lessons I had to learn in the business
Yeah, I have the luxury of just playing what makes me happy, you have to make others happy. Your lot is probably more deeply satisfying, but mine's a heck of a lot easier.
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quote:I mean, Tekken and Gran Turismo and all those are enjoyable. It just doesn't feel much like accomplishing something when I play through them, except to get to play the game at a harder level.
This made me laugh. Something is weird of playing any videogame gives you much of a sense of accomplishment. Posts: 1002 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
I think if Enders Game were to be, literally, turned into a game, it would suck. It is a much better ideal when written down, but turned into a game, it might not be so great.
It would also depend on how the game is set up. If, for instance, you start the game with "Create Character" and than train forty kids in the Battle Room. Doing this would be boring, and repetitive, thus making the game not so popular.
But if the game were to take a surprising twist, which I no doubt would expect, such as playing a game from Ender's point of view when he was "playing" against Mazer. You have a squad of a certain number of ships, and the rest of the stuff. And you fight battles, and you get better and better.
Of course, eventually, you would have to win the game, and then start over, but eh.
But no, Enders Game should stay a book, and of course the movie will hopefully be ingenius, as was this beautiful novel.
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