The Complexity of Simple Game Narratives
Thursday, May 8th, 2008“All video games are crap,” a student asserted at an IGDA Chapter meeting some time ago, “they can’t tell a story worth a damn.” I, of course, disagreed… mostly.
The problem, I’ve come to realize, is not that video games are inherently bad at providing a linear story experience, but that it is extraordinarily difficult to [...]
Assassin’s Creed: Enemy of the Poor?
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008There’s an interesting narrative dynamic at play within the cities of Assassin’s Creed (AC) and I constantly found myself wishing it had more impact on my overall participation with the narrative.
At various points within the cities there are poor citizens being harassed by guards. They show up as goals on your map and rescuing all [...]
Videogames Mean Nothing
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008Hopefully that got your attention.
I think I’ve come to believe that the term videogame is applied to so many different types of games that it’s practically meaningless. Of course, we’ve been using the generic terms board game and card game for a very long time now and the same could probably be said of them. [...]
My Critical Approach
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008I believe it may be time to formalize my critical approach to videogames a bit. Clearly, I am discussing videogames as narrative and my focus is on how well they utilize their various components, particularly gameplay, to communicate and inspire story. To this end I’ve worked on various models, ranging from the story-plot-narrative model discussed [...]
Sloppy Endings
Thursday, March 20th, 2008You know, a bad ending can ruin an entire narrative experience for me. Like a bottle of wine that has turned just enough that the finish tastes a little of vinegar, the final chapters of Assassin’s Creed (AC) serve to turn my enthusiastic praise into a solid, “Meh.” My first two complaints are the result [...]
A Matter of Context
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008I have often lamented the lack of context for violence in videogames. What I mean by this is that while the player is frequently required to wreck terrible violence upon their environment, there is little or no consequence attached to it. You do not witness the grieving families on the home planet of the dead, [...]
Character Profile: Moblins
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008I thought it might be nice to follow up my character design posts of last week with some concrete examples of good (or bad) character design and/or use of back story. Today’s post focused on the Moblins as they are portrayed in The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (WW). It will come as no surprise [...]
More on Narrative Consistency & Effective Storytelling
Monday, March 10th, 2008Part of me wants to take some time this morning to fire off a reply to the conversation that’s happening over here, but in my past experience when someone has decided that ’story’ means ‘linear expression of the author’s will’ then there’s very little to say to them without being accused of muddying the waters [...]
Narrative’s Creed
Thursday, March 6th, 2008I’m going to jump back to the topic of narrative consistency for a moment.
The “other” Jason pointed out that as long as videogames continue to follow certain accepted paradigms of measurable life force, invisible area containment walls and InstaCureAll life packs, we’ll never really be able to attain narrative consistency with videogames. I’m not entirely [...]