Phoenixmgs said:
Like I said, video games and board games are (mostly) trying to do two completely different things. It's the difference between playing a sport (video games) and coaching a sport (board games). I don't know what depth you think MGS5 is trying to have, all stealth games are easy. It's not hard to wait for a guard to walk off to the side and headshot them while they're standing still. The "depth" in a stealth game is how many options you have to use against the AI, which MGS5 is chalk full of. You can turn off the slow-mo mechanic in MGS5, I never used it myself. Just about any game has a way to play cheap or exploit the AI, it's your choice to do that or not do that. Many games are about player creativity, watch any StealthGamerBR Dishonored video and you'll totally look at that game in a different light or the ridiculous combos you can do in a game like Bayonetta. There's loads of depth in your normal multiplayer shooter when played at its highest level, you have the pure gun skills that come into play obviously, but the games are really about positioning on both a micro (a lean, a crouch, a sidestep, a slide, a roll, a cover swap, etc.) and macro level (map positioning). If you and your opponent both have equal aim, then you need to find every single way to tip that 50/50 gunfight in your favor, that's where the depth is, it really is much like a cat and mouse game a pitcher and hitter have. It isn't that much unlike Netrunner where you are trying to anticipate and counter your opponent but in fractions of a second. I'm not saying video games can't learn some things from board games but the experience a video game is going for is usually something that you don't find in board games like say the feeling from stringing together a great run in Mirror's Edge.
And that's needless divisions on player agency.
In my
Rex example, I explained how a player beat me by
simply being a better human (and why this hurt more, but also will stick with me longer than most videogame deaths you can imagine). In that they lied better than me and use human skills to influence my capacity to assess the
very reality of the game we were mutual playing, in that she
had already won simply because
she created a false narrative I bought into. It turned out I had lost because we weren't actually playing the same game. In the same way you needlessly define ideas of 'positioning', I could explain the myriad of ways
she lied to me. For example, in Netrunner I could describe that seemingly innocuous thumb rub against one person's held cards, before their eye quickly skirts to a specific place on your rig... that they pretend that you wouldn't notice or take into account.
Also take in that situation when bad guys in Avalon Resistance start accusing themselves of being bad guys, and slowly building up that latent aspersion in a 'goodie' in order to try to rouse Merlin from outing himself to the potential strike by the Assassin, or secure how one of the bad guys is on the final quest. Oh definitely ... that 18th reskin of Call of Duty is truly complex and
deep.
Where in videogames, that option boils down to simply to numbers, and broken game mechanics that exchanges complexity of ideas that
social video games could provide through consoles like the Nintendo Switch if and when we decide video game devs should master mechanics and gameplay first. Even the phenomenal Breath of the Wild is paint by numbers when you look at it critically. The sad reality is that it's still brilliant in comparison.
Keep in mind, I have no problem with CoD ... but I don't want a console that can actually transcend gameplay capitulate to the stupid mewlings of people wanting Nintendo to take money out of looking at new ideas of gameplay to simply create another underpowered PC like every other console.
The reason why I say turn-based and real-time is truly a misconception is games like
Xenoblade Chronicle X. Timed attacks, deep characterisation, plenty of experimentation capacity, and intuitive new ideas of timing, space and attack patterns of other characters. And thus I sunk more time into it than anything on PS3 I had at the time. Now imagine if you can bring this alltogether with social gaming aspects that encourages experimentation.
(edit)Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. Imagine a game on a portable that you play where you have a living sandbox world of sorts. Like a Cyberpunk action adventure game ... but occasionally players can fuck with the hacking parts of the singleplayer game ... maybe a passing switch player with the same game running in sleep mode. That by them attacking the same servers learn of your gamerID through passing by your switch, and now they're partly in "your" game world, and they might possibly be fucking with your game directly by hacking the same computer at the same time you're hacking it ... meaning either you or them might accidentally trigger a security subroutine and it actively works against you even in your "singleplayer" game?
Now you can do the Soulsborne thing of selecting 'offline' ... but if you do go 'online' mode ... maybe particularly quick players running into their separate but similar activities might be ablle to open up a chatbox and communicate in real time to tackle online challenges ... and the
gamble that players will actually share information with you if you decide to actively subvert that systems operator while they (you or them) download information.
Maybe a cool idea would be, even if you're not playing at the same time and they're in sleep mode and the random event generator selects their machine and yours to be 'linked' by your mutual efforts attacking the same server, that they may leave a 'trail' they can use to figure out your gamerID tag and through that help or hinder you on future hacking forays? You could even have social gaming rivalries and friendships emerge of players using varying means to try to get into a server faster without being caught, or trying to set up triggers for them to run into and they themselves getting caught by the sysop and getting killed/having to jack out.
Maybe they might even leave 'digital gifts' through emails, like single use programs or credits? With a fleshside date, time, and a game location, with a quick invite message like; "Up for it? You'll need this..." Of course, you don't actually know whether or not they're on the level and not simply trying to get you killed to reduce competition in a shared market with shared objectives and you're just making it harder for them, where up to four players and their equipment purchasing habits, their activities, and the like are shaping your "singleplayer" gameworld. Making black market items scarcer, more expensive, or increasing corporate security.
Players could use various means to circumvent security problems, like hiring mercenaries to storm a corporate front operation, buying custom programs, or building their better rigs ... People who meet via these random connection events might even decide to meet eachother in the flesh and connect! Play active co-operative adventures in the game space ... possibly organise to set challenges
for themselves in a structured environment that simply gives you the tools and puzzles, and suitable rewards for the victors ... like a 3 person free for all race to getting sufficient dirt on an executive.
That's the type of social gaming trends I want to see, personally. Active means to influence 'shared' worlds. I want to see this ideaof augmented reality tweaked. By basing it on passing Switch players rather than some randos on the server that you've never run into in the flesh and may never see again, instead by basing it on geographical locations you're currently in and people you may have passed on the subway give it this idea that, yeah ... you could potentially meet up, but also the ideathat the game world 'cityscape' is being actively shaped in some ways by the players who might be in your
apartment complex.
Not only that the idea that because of that potential very local interference, if you or them are running at odds with eachother, you might need to kill their character. Which resets that connection and nulls their further activities in your gameworld. Right up until you possibly run into their character (with a different server tag, thus maintaining that unnerving anonymity) after a fortnight down the track and suddenly new friendships or rivalries are born once more as your gameworld feels like it's being invaded by another protagonist out there. That you can actively look for them, investigate their actions, and actually set up traps for them ... or perhaps you might extend that olive branch by leaving them a hidden message in game someplace?
Of course by doing that, you run the real (ludonarrative) risk that
suddenly they know "who" "you" are and thus can start fucking with you either
just cos or because they're bored and prefer competition to co-operation.
The kind of cool thing I want to note is that by almost simulating a lan party, or communicating with players through emails or other indirect means in active gameplay, is the gameplay itself might actually create new types of languages thatwe see in MMORPGs ... so it's almost as if a social experiment, that through necessity you have this divergent mother tongue shaped to meet in game challenges which means the systems of gameplay and social gaming itself influence the
culture and even
language of the players involved until I string of incomprehensible acronyms and contractions becomes its own descriptive lexicon of incredibly complex gameplay interaction.
If you could deliver evolving ludonarrative structures like that, I'd be in 100%.... and imagine how awesome the lexicon would be after a few expansions introducing new means to influence the world, new locations, new corporations to fuck with ... and all new challenges, equipment, hireable mercenaries, new rig components? It'd be great. Moreover we might actually get a game like that through a device that doesn't need a thousand people working on achieving 4K graphics, pretty shader effects, and rdiculous fucking polygon counts ... rather than joining the 21st century and looking at evolving means of communication and the techno-isolationism.
Videogames might even start to be able to tell a story of the human condition by interweaving it with natural human desires of escapism
from people who might only be next door to you and deliver next generation
interactive ludonarrative actually befitting the hardware and technological capabilities we do have to create
very human stories. Not merely contained on a game disk but extended to others around us as we wallow in hollow escapism to find meaning through what are, in the end,
fucking pixels and
mechanical sounds. Devoid only momentarily, only fleetingly, only whimsically, only
pathetically meagre moments of the true abyssal loneliness that would otherwise be between us if we couldn't otherwise connect and know of eachother's efforts or existence without said game as we haplessly cross paths on the street without knowing one of us just nullified 3 hours of "progress".
You know ... like real life.
Pretty powerful message if you ask me. It's like
Inception to the power of 8. Anyways call me when videogames, that have that capacity to deliver such a critique on our humanity, decide to make that jump. The cool thing is that despite the futuristic setting, you could almost be making a critique that we're almost living the future they envision in game when compared to the punkish interpretations of the future from narratives written in the 80s. This idea of 'Future Imperfect' ala the Star Trek episode... player driven world exposition in a world where 'theme' and 'story' are almost 'lost' in the crushing normality of existence that we suffer in the ever-present, and the slings and arrows of romantic escapism itself being hollow and ultimately pointless.
