RPGs can't be art without character development.

[Luke Bean]

I know this probably won't be a popular opinion here, but I don't think games are art yet. I'm starting to be convinced that they can get there, but there's one big problem they'll have to overcome first-- games that allow you to make choices for your character disallow or actively discourage character development.

I first noticed this playing Bioshock. I started off the game harvesting the Little Sisters, until I got to the bit in Tenenbaum's hideout. I was in kleptomaniac mode as usual, picking up every bit of loot that wasn't nailed down, when I took a chocolate bar, and one of the girls glared at me and said "That's mine." I wasn't used to thinking of this stuff as belonging to anyone. It was a kind of poignant moment, and I decided that my character was affected by seeing Tenenbaum's work firsthand, and that he would stop harvesting Little Sisters from then on. He was a reformed man.

Annnnd then I beat the game and got the "Murder-Everyone-and-Nuke-Shit" ending. I had decided to play my character in a certain mindset, and then the game snatched him back and said "NO, NO, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!" He was bad at the beginning, so he had to be bad at the end.

That's not even the worst example. Lots of games (read: every game with a morality-meter ever) give actual gameplay benefits for playing a static character. In Mass Effect, you can be Paragon or Renegade, but if you want to play, say, a character who's superficially polite and diplomatic but is willing to throw people under the bus when the going gets rough, or someone who starts out truly believing in the Council but gets more and more disillusioned with them each time they "dismiss that claim" and decides "fuck it, I'm going Renegade," well, you can do it, but you won't get enough morality points and half your crew will die. In Dragon Age 2, you and your companions can't have initial tension blossom into a fast friendship as they sway you to their views, you have to pick Friendship or Rivalry and stick to your guns, or you don't get their special perks.

The list goes on. The point is, character development is a cornerstone of the narrative arts, and if games want to join that pantheon they'll need to find a way to incorporate it. One easy way would be to yank control of the character away from the player and make a linear game where the character develops without your input, but that's no fun-- why not just make it a movie instead? The great thing about Bioshock wasn't that it had a great story, it was that it had a great story that could only ever reach its full potential as a game (for reasons too spoilery to discuss in detail). Games are right to allow choice, but they should also let people change.

 

[kyogen]

The point is, character development is a cornerstone of the narrative arts,

Not necessarily. Greek tragedy generally focuses on protagonists who screw up their lives by refusing to change. RPGs that allow little character development may not be very effective role-playing outlets, but it's not the same thing as a failure to be narrative art. Also, did you intend to imply that films are not one of the narrative arts because they are linear?

 

[Luke Bean]

All right, maybe the OP was a bit absolutist. How about: this isn't a problem that absolutely forbids games from being art, it's just one I'd really really like to see fixed. The games I listed didn't run with the refusing-to-change angle the way greek tragedies do, so I'd still consider it a flaw in their context.
No, I'm saying that in most cases, any story in a completely linear game would have been better served by being a film. The main distinguishing feature of games is interactivity, and if that interactivity doesn't extend as far as the story, then I'm not sure why the storyteller chose to put that story in a game.

 

[kyogen]

All right, maybe the OP was a bit absolutist. How about: this isn't a problem that absolutely forbids games from being art, it's just one I'd really really like to see fixed. The games I listed didn't run with the refusing-to-change angle the way greek tragedies do, so I'd still consider it a flaw in their context.

I could definitely agree with that. I just see it as more of a mechanical design flaw than a narrative failure. A role-playing game that limits role-play is struggling with its level of interactivity.

 

[G-Force]

What about RPGs who are blank slates? Would they count as having character development if the player perceives them developing?

 

[mireko]

1. BioShock isn't an RPG

2. BioShock has a shitty morality system.

3. I'm from the future and have come back to spread a virus that will change the course of history.

Two of these statements are true.

 

[Sangnz]

Umm bioshock bad example as this is an FPS not an RPG, sure you can roleplay your character but the game isn't based around it nor can it detect sudden paradigm shifts in how your playing your character because it wasn't made too.

At the end of the day how you develop your character be it a blank slate (neverwinter nights) or a predetermined character (DA/ME) is up to you, radically changing your characters out look ends up with consequences (you loose the rivalry perk, drop a lot of paragon points) it was YOUR actions that led to this outcome. Not all games have the same level of depth and many do just use things like moral choice to determine if you get the good powers or bad ones to help pad out longevity.
Games are an interactive medium, the fact that a simple moment in bioshock can make you have a sudden reversal of thought process due to a simple encounter with someone doesn't this make it just as thought provoking as any bit of literature out there just in a different manner?


Also remember gaming is a new medium and it does it no justice to try and mash it in with how things are done in literature or or movies, we have to recognise it on its own merits not judge it the same we do other mediums, sure they share some similarities but the way games go about telling a story is vastly different from the two mediums we often try to compare them too.

 

[Kahunaburger]

character development is a cornerstone of the narrative arts, and if games want to join that pantheon they'll need to find a way to incorporate it.

^Penelope + Odysseus, static characters. As were 95% of Homeric characters, actually.

Really, I think the Greeks had the right idea about narrative arts:

But the most important of these is the structure of the incidents. For (i) tragedy is a representation not of human beings but of action and life. Happiness and unhappiness lie in action, and the end [of life] is a sort of action, not a quality; people are of a certain sort according to their characters, but happy or the opposite according to their actions. So [the actors] do not act in order to represent the characters, but they include the characters for the sake of their actions.

Static characters are okay. There's nothing wrong with a dynamic character, but "middle-aged middle-class male navel-gazing over coffee," while a popular subject for modern litfic, is hardly the only way to tell a story.

 

[Luke Bean]

I know Bioshock isn't an RPG. The fact that the gaming part is done with guns and not dice rolls isn't relevant to the narrative structure.

Narrative conventions can be consistent across media. Literature, film, and theatre all have fundamental differences and similarities, and character development is something all fully-developed narrative media have in common. I agree that it was a thought-provoking moment, in fact, it's the moment that started to convince me that games had the potential to be art. I'm just saying that the moment was somewhat soured for me because the game didn't acknowledge that I felt that moment. It underestimated itself.

Games with blank-slate characters can be perfectly good games, but I'm not able to see them as artful stories.

 

[Luke Bean]

Static characters are okay. There's nothing wrong with a dynamic character, but "middle-aged middle-class male navel-gazing over coffee," while a popular subject for modern litfic, is hardly the only way to tell a story.

My problem isn't that static characters exist, it's that they're the only option.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Static characters are okay. There's nothing wrong with a dynamic character, but "middle-aged middle-class male navel-gazing over coffee," while a popular subject for modern litfic, is hardly the only way to tell a story.

My problem isn't that static characters exist, it's that they're the only option.

You might like JRPGs, then. Character development isn't generally the focus of WRPGs.

 

[Zhukov]

Uhh... I guess?

Do you have any other examples?

I agree with you regarding Bioshock. However, that's because it had a crappy moral choice system. I love the game and all, but the little sister business was pretty half-hearted. However, I disagree with the ME and DA2 examples. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from doing the things you described.

Anyway, character development is severely lacking in games generally, regardless of how much player choice they involve. And those that attempt it rarely pull it off well.

 

[Richardplex]

In Mass Effect, you can be Paragon or Renegade, but if you want to play, say, a character who's superficially polite and diplomatic but is willing to throw people under the bus when the going gets rough, or someone who starts out truly believing in the Council but gets more and more disillusioned with them each time they "dismiss that claim" and decides "fuck it, I'm going Renegade," well, you can do it, but you won't get enough morality points and half your crew will die.

That's where your wrong. I have had said character, said character has had character development, developing a reason for saving people who aren't useful to her and being utterly polite, but will not think twice about snapping someone's neck if they might go against her at some point. Even her fighting style, lunging into enemies with charge, and regenerating shields that way, I see as a continuing internal struggle between wanting to die while taking people down with her, as she is tired of the BS of life, and fear of dying, thus regenerating her shields with another lunge. And I never had a problem with morality. And no-one died. Same with my primary character, who is 60:40 renegade paragon, whom I can't be bothered to type out the wall of text of why. And no problems with people dying. And the fact you can choose paragon/renegade ending, regardless of your previous actions, is better than other morality games I've stumbled across.

However, for the most part, yes, morality systems need to find a nice fire to jump in and never bother us again, unless they can pull their act together and not constrain RPing. Maybe have the Mass Effect 1 morality lines to put points in, though all the boxes being unlocked, and putting points in where you want, with the option of resetting and re-allocating points at some cost. So if you undergo said character development, you can just reset it and make it appropiate to your new development.

TL;DR, I disagreed, then I read your post, and then I agreed with you.

 

[Luke Bean]

Anyway, character development is severely lacking in games generally, regardless of how much player choice they involve. And those that attempt it rarely pull it off well.

That means we should demand more of developers!

Games will have a harder time producing their first great work of art than film did, since film was building on the traditions of theatre, whereas games have been devising very different narrative structures, and it'll take time to perfect them. Most of the last century's greatest works of art have been character-driven-- Michael Corleone, Jay Gatsby, Leopold Bloom, Captain Yossarian, Charles Foster Kane-- and it's so difficult to make the structure of an event-driven work meet the conflicting demands of good storytelling and good gameplay that I suspect that if gaming does produce a great work, it'll be character-driven too.

And what about leveling and looting in Mass Effect and other RPGs like it? Do those two things count as character-development? To me, they are, because they increase my character's abilities, allowing them to take on harder, more dangerous challenges.

Huh, there's an interesting thought. I've never really seen a game incorporate the leveling process into "who this character is as a person." Any ideas on how they could do that?

Morality systems were a good idea at their heart, the idea that the game could notice what sort of person you were being and respond to it. They're just way too simplistic. I want Mass Effect to notice if I'm being polite to Asari but rude to Batarians and ask me "Why?"

 

[Evil Top Hat]

Art is supposed to be creative, if you start creating rules dictating what can and can't be art, then you're missing the point. Anything can be art, so long as it's trying to be.

Of course, that doesn't make it good, it might be terrible, but if the designer wanted it to be artistic, then it is art.

 

[GiantRaven]

In Mass Effect, you can be Paragon or Renegade, but if you want to play, say, a character who's superficially polite and diplomatic but is willing to throw people under the bus when the going gets rough, or someone who starts out truly believing in the Council but gets more and more disillusioned with them each time they "dismiss that claim" and decides "fuck it, I'm going Renegade," well, you can do it, but you won't get enough morality points and half your crew will die.

Not true. At worst you can potentially lose Tali/Legion and Miranda/Jack due to not having enough Paragon/Renegade points. I played through Mass Effect 2 starting off as a Renegade who slowly became more Paragon towards the end (especially towards the crew) and I only lost Legion at the end of the game.

edit: Also, your thread title should be 'RPGs can't be art that I like without character development'.

edit (again): Furthermore, RPGs can have plenty of character development when you disregard the main character.

 

[Luke Bean]

By "linear," I mean games in which player input doesn't substantially affect characterization or plot. I deliberately didn't make that an absolute statement, because I know that there are counterexamples-- excise the moral-choice bullshit from Bioshock, and it would be completely linear and still work best as a game. Just saying my statements need rethinking isn't going to make me rethink them, but if that nice little list is nice enough, it might.

 

[Luke Bean]

Also, your thread title should be 'RPGs can't be art that I like without character development'.

True, but less catchy. I made the title provocative on purpose because nothing develops your ideas as well as lots of people disagreeing with you.

Furthermore, RPGs can have plenty of character development when you disregard the main character

I agree, and I think all of the games I mentioned are good examples of that. But that's not quite as interesting to me, since they develop them the same way all narrative media do. The development of video game protagonists has the untapped potential to break new artistic ground.