Player Agency

It's been a while. Sorry.

Basically I was reading a superb piece of 'videogame journalism' on 1UP of all places, given the dirge of talent there since the UGO hit the fan. It was an investigative piece on LMNO, EA's Steven Spielberg game.

There was lots of conceptual things being thrown around. Short game experiences, replayability, the endurance of mechanics particularly caught my eye.

We talk a lot about player agency, and interactivity being the pinnacle of this medium. And how it will only be truly embraced, when creators within the medium allow the players more control - making decisions and procedural reactions.

But I just find it difficult to comprehend in a a world where we celebrate the creators i.e celebrities, that the artist - as it were - behind the media we consume is not more important than the media itself. That's a complete exaggeration actually, we always resonate with the media ultimately, but the craft, the design, the execution, it's all stuff we revel in, and it's all down to the people who make it.

I don't actually mind either way, but if I were to make one bold opinion clear on this subject, it'd be that for the future of videogames to remain interesting on a cogniscent level, the thing we need to learn is not to copy from film or novels, certainly not in terms of narrative execution. If player agency is going to important, it will be all down to the characters that we find in the game. Characters are all that matter in games.

Those or they will be the crafted elements that remain. They will define your narrative, as long as they feel interesting. Like meeting someone with an interesting story at a bus-stop or getting an opportunity to ask about your work colleague's past, or your peremptory boss, or the unassuming cleaner.

I'm sorry this post was so illegible. It just all needed to come out.

I'm from a family with a culture of overzealous post-war thrift, I'd prefer the words are here to be fiddled with for a special occasion or recycled in some thought process, even if it's only decipherable to me at the moment. Thanks for trying to understand.

Ludo-Narrative dissonance *BUZZ*

I've read about this buzzowrd, and thought i understood it perfectly.

It's when you're in a happy game like Uncharted, and you're killing 800 people. The actions don't ring true with the character. That IS the dissonance, right?

Without jumping on anyone who reads this with a "WRONG!", that my lame rhetoric perfectly set up, I personally hadn't considered that is may only be circumstancial dissonance. I haven't thought, or read about the intrinsic dissonance between narrative and ludic. It may appear obvious, what I am talking about: the idea that they are so seperate, and we have a hard time incorporating them, sans cutscenes and clumsy interfaces.

In most mediums, narrative has naturally been the thing that catches the mainstream audience attention. We like to hear about stories. We like to hear about fantastic or unexpected events, and the way people react to them. The action and explosions are technically limited on the big screen. Poetic writing can embellish a novel, but it requires a story.

Perhaps games are most similar to music, where we've pretty much established that beat and tone comes before a story. Lyrics can work, as can game stories, but they can also be implemented clumsily, and can often feel unecessary. And the phonetically, the two are in conflict.

In much the same way, story as we know it, is about events that are not mundane. Games are much more about mechanics and ACTIONS that are not mundane, because while we lack the ability to direct a story in games, we have the ability to apply the mechanics, that are the draw of the game.

The reason games can't tell stories like movies, is the same reason movies can't be like our lives.

Our lives are too mundane to be movies, and the actions in movies, while less mundane, in events, are often very mundane in terms of interaction.

These mundanities (is that a word) can be transported into a game world, only when the player sees fit, not when it suits the story.

Revision of Thoughts.

Almost two months later I come back to conclude what I started.

What do we STRIVE for during play? For each individual it changes. Some a completionist, obsessive compulsion, some an experienced, story based drive. But something as humans we all recognise, is that we don't actually strive for success and it's benefits exclusively, we strive for the recognition of our actions - whether it's success, failure or the grey area inbetween.

We complete the game, so we can say we've "one-hundred percented it". Or that we've "completed the story". We play multiplayer games, so that our achievement is shared by REAL people, not just a computer. And we love RPG ending sequences, becuase they have noted our actions.

For me personally, I play imagining I am demoing a game at E3. I try to make it look cool. I find enormous enjoyment, and frustration in that.

And while it's not for me to say what games SHOULD do, I think it's always healthy to note, that in any game design, there should be room for reciprocation of your actions. Multiplayer, co-op, Youtube capturing, live streaming, personalised endings. And to support those elements, the ability to express your actions. It's an important part of the interactive medium.