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.