I agree with the city. Without giving us backround and the cities personalities( sounds weird i know)Its hard to care without a human face.
My Criticism of 'Narrative Mechanics' by Extra Credits
- Thread starter mrc390
- Start date
Recommended Videos
Well, if as you say "Narrative mechanics are simply game mechanics that support the narrative rather than purely the gameplay," when the narrative basically boils down to "I shoot the mans with my gun and they fall down," shooting someone with a gun is a narrative mechanic. As is losing control of your character when a shell goes off nearby, any of the interface screw in the fights where you are clinging on to consciousness, dying from a nuclear bomb in-game, the loading screen that tells you context for a mission, the "game over" for shooting civilians, and so on. Hence the problem with broad definitions.BlindTom said:
Since i am a pretentious wench, i'll say it's lack of imagination on the end user side to blame.hotsauceman said:
To use a more acceptable example - books. When i've read Lord of The Rings first time, ages ago, i could easily imagine each and every scene, every scenery, the character faces, voices, the way they would move and act. In my head i created Middle-earth that was probably far form how it was imagined by Tolkien himself, but it worked perfectly for me.
Few years forward and i got my hands on art-book inspired by LotR - i hated it. It was nothing like i'd imagine. Every single carefully drawn detail there just didn't match to what i've imagined. Things even got worse with the movie, which completely ruined my impression of the triology.
These days, as people watch tv/play games much more than they read, we are getting spoon fed the details. We no longer have freedom in choosing how given character or action looks like, we get it presented visually from the start.
For many of you maybe the city in game like Missile command was just few pixels, but if you would just let your imagination immerse you into the situation provided by the game you could easily visualise more realistic city. For every missile hitting it you could just create images in your head how the buildings crumble.
That's probably the difference between some us. I was growing up among pixels and written word, i didn't have all the fancy CGI doing the work for me. Try it sometime, find a description of a creature or scene you never seen rendered before and try to draw it as you personally see it, then look for artwork and compare it. Good chance they will be vastly different.
First of all, I haven't seen that particular episode of Extra Credits, but I think Missile Command is a good historical reference point; It's the same with other mediums such as film and painting. For example visual art has its earliest reference in cave paintings. It's just a way of seeing what is being said, in the most simple form.
Secondly, you are downplaying the play element that is imagination; what's happening on the other side of the screen in the participant's mind. This is a personal and subjective form of playing, and just as valid as the hard-coded digital interactions. The beauty of those simple arcade games is that they are abstract! Interestingly, the medium has moved from abstraction to realism and not the other way round. You must appreciate the abstract nature of games and the inevitablility of personal interpretation. Texts are open.
I'm personally not interested in whether someone thinks Missile Command is the 'best' at something or other. It's simply a personal opinion; like 'best of' game lists. Sometimes more people agree with each other (See Ocarina of Time as a regular 'best game ever'), but it's still subjective.
I'm not so familiar with the ins and outs of Missile Command, but it definately tells a story. I consider every game to have a narrative or idea.
A game that I loved from that early arcade era was Kaboom! Here is what I wrote about Kaboom's narrative.
-----
'kaboom! is like a straight-jacket.
the player has absolutely no control. in most modern computer games you generally have at least some choices or 'free space' to move, but in kaboom the player is stuck at the bottom of the screen and force-fed bombs. kaboom!
you can only move left and right, while a man at the top of the screen throws infinite bombs in a variety of patterns. as a kind of container, you are forced to scroll left and right with the Atari paddle and 'take it up the arse' so to speak.
if you miss a bomb, your container essentially gets smaller which makes it all the more difficult to catch the falling bombs. miss 3 bombs and its game over.
if you don't miss the bombs, then the speed and rate at which they fall increases dramatically. it's at this point where the game completely dominates the player. you have to react so fast that you become hypnotized in a constant reactionary rhythm.
the narrative of kaboom is one of domination. it manipulates the player to enjoy being controlled, and to enjoy a lack of power or choice.
it's kind of creepy when you think about it...but it's kind of delicious.
of course the story synopsis in kaboom! is that you have to de-fuse the bombs of the terrorist. this still works, but it plays down the 'true' narrative. if kaboom! was made today then it would be completely different; it would most probably be some sort of FPS where you fight... hang on a moment, kaboom! was made by activision!'
---
And here is a link to what I wrote about how the player tells the story of Shadow of the Colossus simply by playing. Similar to Missile Command and Kaboom, it relies on the imagination of the player to fill in the gaps.
http://au.gamespot.com/unions/PlayGround/forums/28736549/gameplay-narratives---shadow-of-the-colossus
Secondly, you are downplaying the play element that is imagination; what's happening on the other side of the screen in the participant's mind. This is a personal and subjective form of playing, and just as valid as the hard-coded digital interactions. The beauty of those simple arcade games is that they are abstract! Interestingly, the medium has moved from abstraction to realism and not the other way round. You must appreciate the abstract nature of games and the inevitablility of personal interpretation. Texts are open.
I'm personally not interested in whether someone thinks Missile Command is the 'best' at something or other. It's simply a personal opinion; like 'best of' game lists. Sometimes more people agree with each other (See Ocarina of Time as a regular 'best game ever'), but it's still subjective.
I'm not so familiar with the ins and outs of Missile Command, but it definately tells a story. I consider every game to have a narrative or idea.
A game that I loved from that early arcade era was Kaboom! Here is what I wrote about Kaboom's narrative.
-----
'kaboom! is like a straight-jacket.
the player has absolutely no control. in most modern computer games you generally have at least some choices or 'free space' to move, but in kaboom the player is stuck at the bottom of the screen and force-fed bombs. kaboom!
you can only move left and right, while a man at the top of the screen throws infinite bombs in a variety of patterns. as a kind of container, you are forced to scroll left and right with the Atari paddle and 'take it up the arse' so to speak.
if you miss a bomb, your container essentially gets smaller which makes it all the more difficult to catch the falling bombs. miss 3 bombs and its game over.
if you don't miss the bombs, then the speed and rate at which they fall increases dramatically. it's at this point where the game completely dominates the player. you have to react so fast that you become hypnotized in a constant reactionary rhythm.
the narrative of kaboom is one of domination. it manipulates the player to enjoy being controlled, and to enjoy a lack of power or choice.
it's kind of creepy when you think about it...but it's kind of delicious.
of course the story synopsis in kaboom! is that you have to de-fuse the bombs of the terrorist. this still works, but it plays down the 'true' narrative. if kaboom! was made today then it would be completely different; it would most probably be some sort of FPS where you fight... hang on a moment, kaboom! was made by activision!'
---
And here is a link to what I wrote about how the player tells the story of Shadow of the Colossus simply by playing. Similar to Missile Command and Kaboom, it relies on the imagination of the player to fill in the gaps.
http://au.gamespot.com/unions/PlayGround/forums/28736549/gameplay-narratives---shadow-of-the-colossus
This is what I said in response to the same thing being said on the forum for the video itself
"For all you people saying they're looking to much into Missile Command, I disagree, but more importantly that's not the point of the video it's a example of how you can tell stories in ways other then cut scenes and dialog, yes they could have used Shadow of the Colossus(or any number of other games) it tells it's story in ways other then dialogue but missile command is only narrative mechanics and therefore is a better example piece."
"For all you people saying they're looking to much into Missile Command, I disagree, but more importantly that's not the point of the video it's a example of how you can tell stories in ways other then cut scenes and dialog, yes they could have used Shadow of the Colossus(or any number of other games) it tells it's story in ways other then dialogue but missile command is only narrative mechanics and therefore is a better example piece."
There are bound to be some 'areas of dissonance' though. On the one hand you have story/stories the game is promoting, and on the other you have the player's concepts of what is going on. A lot of the times games are not made very well, and thus there is a disconnect between the representations on screen and the gameplay. However, when these two elements are resolved well (See Braid, Shadow of the Colossus, and any Mario game) there is a clear motivation for playing the story and a clear sense of what is going on.
The truth is that whatever story the designers want you to be playing, the mechanics and the actions always tell the truth. I'm not saying dialogue and plot is irrelevent, but it must be one with the gameplay to create any kind of internal logic. Most games do not handle this very well. It's a delicate balance.
The truth is that whatever story the designers want you to be playing, the mechanics and the actions always tell the truth. I'm not saying dialogue and plot is irrelevent, but it must be one with the gameplay to create any kind of internal logic. Most games do not handle this very well. It's a delicate balance.
Anything i would draw would look like a fat dino in a dress.Keava said:
OT: It just seams in games that really don't give backgrounds makes it hard to care. Maybe thats why points are dead(in non-flash games) Because they used to be a good motivation before stories gave you motivation
Well firstly, after that statement I said:bombadilillo said:
"Now, not saying you can't feel bad for pixels, many games such as Mass Effect, Silent Hill and System shock 2 have brought me close to tears before but that is because these characters are fleshed out, we learn to care for them through the course of the game and can truly sympathise with there struggles. But in Missile Command, we know nothing of these places"
But to the second point I have to say, the children in Pathologic are not blank slates like the cities in Missile Command. The way they live is very
similar to the kids in Lord of the Flies. They've split up into gangs and are subjected to this endless battle with hunger. I did sympathise with them greatly.
Maybe this is just me, but there is also the fact that, you're killing a child, committing one of the worst crimes imaginable in your desparation. When I started the game I never imagined having to sink that low.
And lastly, no it's not a calculation. Killing some kids won't go over well with the others and many will not interact with you after. So you can lose precious time, more than the medicine was probably worth, by killing to many.
You could treat Missile Command passively and not care about that at all, but you could do that with any game. I've known people who didn't care about the story choices in Mass Effect, which to me was staggeringly mind-boggling. It's all a matter of why you're playing.
Now admittedly, Missile Command was not a game I ever took that seriously. But here's the deal: that's exactly why they used it. Because Missile Command does not explicitly give us its premise in that level of depth, most of us just blasted missiles without a second thought. The game was too simple to do otherwise, right? But no; within its simplicity, there is depth. Simply in the game mechanics. Which, I'm sure you remember, was the point of the entire episode.
The game you were talking about presented its moral choice as powerfully as it did because it expanded on the story. It was not solely because of the mechanics, so it would have had no place in that episode of Extra Credits.
The point of that episode was to point out how a game can have narrative depth through its mechanics, not just its story and visuals and such. Missile Command may not be the best example of this, but it is one of the simplest, and thus one of the most powerful to use. If Missile Command can have depth simply in its mechanics, those principles can be spread to other games as well.
As a side note, my favorite example of narrative in mechanics is the final boss fight of Beyond Good and Evil. Brilliant symbolism in the controls and such of that battle.
Now admittedly, Missile Command was not a game I ever took that seriously. But here's the deal: that's exactly why they used it. Because Missile Command does not explicitly give us its premise in that level of depth, most of us just blasted missiles without a second thought. The game was too simple to do otherwise, right? But no; within its simplicity, there is depth. Simply in the game mechanics. Which, I'm sure you remember, was the point of the entire episode.
The game you were talking about presented its moral choice as powerfully as it did because it expanded on the story. It was not solely because of the mechanics, so it would have had no place in that episode of Extra Credits.
The point of that episode was to point out how a game can have narrative depth through its mechanics, not just its story and visuals and such. Missile Command may not be the best example of this, but it is one of the simplest, and thus one of the most powerful to use. If Missile Command can have depth simply in its mechanics, those principles can be spread to other games as well.
As a side note, my favorite example of narrative in mechanics is the final boss fight of Beyond Good and Evil. Brilliant symbolism in the controls and such of that battle.
There is also a difference in what was possible on arcade machine in 1980 could do and what PCs few years later could. Have you actually played the game back then?mrc390 said:
You see the phenomena of MC is that it managed to convey a certain message with minimal resources while modern games having all the CGI capabilities, advanced visuals and audio fail to come close more often than not.
Yes it was score driven game, but it also was heavily rooted in the Cold War's culture and the whole "what if" surrounding possible nuclear scenario. The cities that now may seem "empty" due to lack of real context, back then were supposed to reference actual cities in California.
Actually you get points for each city you saved at the end of the round. And their certainly is a way to play the game correctly (the way that's successful.)grumbel said:
For me the desire for people to add moral choices in mechanics usually feels superficial, you can replace collecting coins with helping woodland creatures and it doesn't make much difference to me.
"By killing too many" you say, implying there is a right amount to kill...meaning its a calculation. Im not saying you personally don't find it easier to sympathize with the kids in that game over the cities. But the point extra credit was making (which you missed) was how simple it was to express a narative through gameplay. So using an example like Missle Command is objectively much better due to the games simplicity rather then the one you suggest. In your game there is a lot of story and narrative going on that the player is observing to tell the story so it is not a good example. (though that game sounds awesome!)mrc390 said:
But the right amount is never obvious as it is in Missile Command, the game was never very popular outside of Russia so good luck finding that info online. It's quite the slippery slope, once you commit the deed once, what's the hard in doing it again and again and again.bombadilillo said:
Again, my biggest problem with the episode wasn't using Missile Command as an example of Narrative Mechanics, it was the statement that it has "the best and most difficult moral choice any video game has ever presented" maybe I'm making too much of a big deal out of this, but the statement left me frustrated at how ignorant and pretentious it sounded to me before I made the thread. If nothing else at least someone else might try Pathologic now because of my thread
PS: Sorry bout the late reply. Been busy
I know the point was to show how narritive mechanics can be presented even in the most simple of games, I think it would have been better though if they also gave more modern examples, they gave the feeling that narrative mechanics are so rare that they needed to use a 30 year old game as an example when narrative mechanics exist in practically every game( I used the Counter Strike example but there are hundreds of others)Keava said:
I just discussed the main point of the thread in the message before this so I'll just copy and paste that
"Again, my biggest problem with the episode wasn't using Missile Command as an example of Narrative Mechanics, it was the statement that it has "the best and most difficult moral choice any video game has ever presented" maybe I'm making too much of a big deal out of this, but the statement left me frustrated at how ignorant and pretentious it sounded to me before I made the thread. If nothing else at least someone else might try Pathologic now because of my thread
"
Were you paid by the Pathologic developers to make this topic? All joking aside:
I never had a problem with the point they raised about Missile Command. Now, I don't know your age but I would imagine you never actively experienced the Cold War, you never experienced a time where nuclear annihilation was a distinct and real possibility. To the developer, and perhaps to other people of the time, the cities didn't need names, you'd fill in the blanks yourself, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle and Los Angeles. Or New York, New Jersey, Chicago and Washington DC. Or even London, Paris, Brussels and Berlin. Any four cities in relative proximity to one another that you've been to. And you are trying to keep them from going up in mushroom clouds, but you know what, you are only delaying the inevitable. I think the simple graphics in fact, help with the terror.
The game Defcon is pretty much the opposite of Missile Command, you still try to stop missiles from hitting your part of the world, but more importantly you are launching nuclear missiles at facilities ~and cities~ of your enemies. You pick which cities the missiles will fly to and then you sit there, watching the missiles slowly travel across the world on your simple display until they erupt into a blast, a number indicating how many millions of lives you've just ended and as a result, the glow representing life around each city growing dimmer and dimmer until you've exhausted your arsenal or met your objectives and the game decides a "winner". I never managed to play this game past the tutorial because I frankly felt sick at what I've done, destroyed millions of lives of cultures and nations that I appreciate and know, all because diplomacy failed and you are left with the task of genocide in the coldest way imaginable. And its graphics were pretty much equal to Missile Command's with some added glow effects.
After having played Defcon I can fully believe that the developer of Missile Command was plagued by nightmares during and long after the game's development of the west coast cities going up in flames.
So yes, as far as I am concerned, Extra Credits made its point and it made its point well. Just because you (perhaps) lack the imagination to empathise with such simple graphics or never looked further than the surface of the game doesn't mean that how others experience the game is less valid.
All joking aside:I never had a problem with the point they raised about Missile Command. Now, I don't know your age but I would imagine you never actively experienced the Cold War, you never experienced a time where nuclear annihilation was a distinct and real possibility. To the developer, and perhaps to other people of the time, the cities didn't need names, you'd fill in the blanks yourself, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle and Los Angeles. Or New York, New Jersey, Chicago and Washington DC. Or even London, Paris, Brussels and Berlin. Any four cities in relative proximity to one another that you've been to. And you are trying to keep them from going up in mushroom clouds, but you know what, you are only delaying the inevitable. I think the simple graphics in fact, help with the terror.
The game Defcon is pretty much the opposite of Missile Command, you still try to stop missiles from hitting your part of the world, but more importantly you are launching nuclear missiles at facilities ~and cities~ of your enemies. You pick which cities the missiles will fly to and then you sit there, watching the missiles slowly travel across the world on your simple display until they erupt into a blast, a number indicating how many millions of lives you've just ended and as a result, the glow representing life around each city growing dimmer and dimmer until you've exhausted your arsenal or met your objectives and the game decides a "winner". I never managed to play this game past the tutorial because I frankly felt sick at what I've done, destroyed millions of lives of cultures and nations that I appreciate and know, all because diplomacy failed and you are left with the task of genocide in the coldest way imaginable. And its graphics were pretty much equal to Missile Command's with some added glow effects.
After having played Defcon I can fully believe that the developer of Missile Command was plagued by nightmares during and long after the game's development of the west coast cities going up in flames.
So yes, as far as I am concerned, Extra Credits made its point and it made its point well. Just because you (perhaps) lack the imagination to empathise with such simple graphics or never looked further than the surface of the game doesn't mean that how others experience the game is less valid.