The Gaping Hole at the heart of Gaming

[GrizzlerBorno]

So, I'm going to state something, and try to prove how important that single statement is:

Spoiler: Ready?

Defeat [this], to save [this].

Now allow me to take a page out of Daniel Floyd's book and say: Imagine your game library for me, and remember the stories of each and every game and answer this question:
"How many games there, can be roughly summarized to conform to that Single statement?"

Need a hand?

Spoiler: Time to piss off some fans

(lets start with my personal favorites, shall we)
Mass Effect: Defeat the Reapers to save the Galaxy
CoD4 Modern Warfare: Defeat the Russians/OpFor to save the world
Dragon Age Origins: Defeat the DarkSpawn to save Ferelden
Shadow of the Colossus: (sorry, but it's true) Colossi, Girlfriend
Ico: Dark things, lady friend
Knights of the Old Republic: Sith Lord, Republic
Splinter Cell Conviction: Government people, Daughter
Halo1,2,3 : Alien Terrorists, Our Planet
Halo:Reach: Same Terrorists, Different Planet
Half Life: interdimensional Aliens, (back to) Our planet
Red Dead Redemption: Old gang members, Family
Costume Quest: Monsters, Little sibling (?)
CoD 123/Medal of Honor.etc. : Nazi's, World
CoD MW2/CoD Black Ops/Bad Company 2: Russians, America (all the EXACT same ones too)
Mario (EVERY single ONE of them): Ahhh....the quintessential

Need i go on?

Now, i realize that this is a very rough synopsis, and many of you may argue that "It's not the rough idea that matters! It's about the presentation." And this is true, Mass Effect has absolutely nothing in common with Shadow of the Colossus other than them both being third-person video games and .....well ^^That. I'm not calling these bad games or derivative of each other. They are both incredible games in their own right. All the games there are fantastic, infact.
And yes, there are a LOT of games that cannot be conformed to this rule. Portal, Bioshock, Fallout, to name just a few.

But humor me and look at your BOOK library (or imagine all the books you've read). Boil them down to their core. Here I'll do my top three:

Spoiler: OMG Books

The Outsider: Man persecuted for following radical ideals
Animal Farm: Mock allegory for Russian Revolution and the birth of Communism
Chronicles of Narnia: Mock allegory for...the bible
Harry Potter: Wizard kid defeats Voldemort to save....Britain......huh?

Similar maybe, but not the same. Do the same with your Movies.

So my question is a simple one:
Why do you think this is so?
Why is video gaming as a storytelling medium stuck in this narrative hole in the ground, of 'daringly saving something from what we define as "evil"?' and how do we ameliorate ourselves from this situation?

Edit: Right let me make something clear. I fully understand that gameplay could never EVER work without a clear goal with a visible obstacle in the way. A lot of you have pointed this out, and i appreciate you doing so, but that is really not the problem I'm discussing.

I agree that "Overcome Obstacle to Reach Goal" is basically the Modus Operandi of the entire Gaming artform. and there is nothing wrong with that. My problem is that we are taking just one very VERY specific interpretation of "Overcome Obstacle to Reach Goal", namely "Defeat [this] to save [this]" and just running with THAT!

Why can't we have more games that open up, is all I'm saying. 'Saving something' isn't the ONLY goal that could possibly be reached. likewise, 'Beating across the head' isn't the only way we can overcome an obstacle. That doesn't mean we should necessarily exclude 'beating across heads' from gameplay. I'm just saying that that doesn't always have to be the 'ultimate objective'.

 

[Serioli]

Because if you boil it down enough, there are very few plots.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3632074/Everything-ever-written-boiled-down-to-seven-plots.html

Cut it down further as the plots have to be made interactive for a game and you lose more.

Another (more positive?) way to look at it would be: The human mind is so creative that we can make millions of stories, (over a variety of media), out of these seven basics.

 

[erbkaiser]

Games are by nature interactive, this requires an active plot. It is very hard to fit something like Animal Farm in standard game formats.
We are seeing some change though, with for example 'The Path', which is not a game in any real means since its only goal is to wander through the forest and through that find insight in the girl you are 'playing' as, or their followup Salome, which is nothing less than a real adaptation of the character from the poem in a (slightly) interactive form.

Heavy Rain, with all its flaws, also breaks the standard game mold mostly. But the real genre which has in the past done the most to move past this simple 'narrative hole' is (classic) adventure games (not 'action adventure' or its like). Boil down the essence of Myst?

It is very easy to design a game around the basic "beat X to safe Y" format since this requires minimal abstraction. It's far more difficult to create a game that is structured like a literary novel and still keep it accessible and fun to play. Games that try to break outside the mold are punished for this in sales -- just look at the critical darlings of the past years that never made their money back and in many cases even bankrupted their developers or publishers.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

Games are by nature interactive, this requires an active plot. It is very hard to fit something like Animal Farm in standard game formats.
We are seeing some change though, with for example 'The Path', which is not a game in any real means since its only goal is to wander through the forest and through that find insight in the girl you are 'playing' as, or their followup Salome, which is nothing less than a real adaptation of the character from the poem in a (slightly) interactive form.

Heavy Rain, with all its flaws, also breaks the standard game mold mostly. But the real genre which has in the past done the most to move past this simple 'narrative hole' is (classic) adventure games (not 'action adventure' or its like). Boil down the essence of Myst?

It is very easy to design a game around the basic "beat X to safe Y" format since this requires minimal abstraction. It's far more difficult to create a game that is structured like a literary novel and still keep it accessible and fun to play. Games that try to break outside the mold are punished for this in sales -- just look at the critical darlings of the past years that never made their money back and in many cases even bankrupted their developers or publishers.

True, but i don't think a game has to be an "out there"/crazy concept to overcome the hurdle. I mean, as I've said, look at Fallout 3? You can't boil that down to the basic.
Also, wasn't Heavy Rain also, defeat the serial killer to save your son or something? are you sure you're not talking about gameplay mechanics? cause that's not what i'm talking about.

 

[Mr Pantomime]

I can list a few games that dont apply. Hitman: Blood Money for one. But in general you have made a good point. Its probably because games are generally based around combat, so you need enemies, and for a story to take place, you have to have a goal. The easiest goal is to save someone or something. To change this, youd have to come up with another driving force to encourage people to go on, and become interested in the story

 

[migo]

Dead Rising - hang out for 72 hours (you don't ever defeat the zombies) to live out one of 7 or so different endings
Hexic HD - match 3 pieces to get a high score before the bomb goes off


ok, puzzle games is cheating in this case

Mario Kart Double Dash - win races to win rank

ok, so racing games is also cheating?

Geometry Wars - defeat shapes to win high score, no saving, except your life and you always die eventually anyway

There are plenty of games that don't follow that basic plot. of course plenty that do, but that doesn't mean it's a serious problem

Hell, even WoW doesn't follow that - it's just grind in order to ???

 

[New Troll]

Because I want to be a hero damn it!

 

[moretimethansense]

While you bring up a good point, as has been said before when you get down to it there are only so many basic plots.

Besides there are plenty of games that don't follow that pattern, less than those that do, but still plenty.

 

[erbkaiser]

Fallout 3 has two plots which follow after each other: Explore the world to find your father. / Defeat the Enclave to get the water.

HR was a bad example probably as its plot was indeed to simple, but it does serve as an example of gameplay that could be used for a better plot (Fahrenheit and Omikron had the same problem -- David Cage is just not a good writer and his plots tend to collapse somewhere in the middle). I mentioned it because it uses gameplay methods which could fit a more literary plot, but was still successful (far more than other non-standard gameplay games which could fit different plots).

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

-Snipped OP-

Your comparsion fails because it compares apples with oranges. First you are stating that the plot in many games is "X must be defeated to save Y" and go on to show that they are not comparable to books because books had a further depth beyond their plot.

Let me help you out here.
Narnia's plot: "The Ice Queen must be defeated to save Narnia", "The evil invaders must be defeated to save Narnia" etc.
Animal Farm: "The farmer must be defeated to save the animals of the farm."
And so on for most books.

The plot in games is no different fom that of most books or movies these days. Dead Space arguably has a little more depth then "Defeat evil space aliens to save yourself" just as Heavy Rain is a little more emotionally involving then "Defeat serial killer to save kid".

In the same way, Red Dead Redemption is not only the story about a guy killing bad guys to save his family, but Marsden's journey is also an allegory about not being able to keep up with the advance of time and in Marsden's journey we see reflected how the Wild West eventually ended. Just like that, I've given RDR the same treatment you gave the Narnia books and suddenly it means something.
Or how about Metal Gear Solid 2, which has "Defeat bad guys to save NY" as the plot. But the entire game is a meta-discussion on how gaming sequels are constructed and player demands/anticipation on sequels.

I could do this for a few other games and books, but the bottom line is: Your thesis is misconstructed.

 

[tahrey]

Go on, do Gran Turismo, *insert (extreme) sport title here*, Tetris, WoW (pre-cataclysm), etc...

 

[jdogtwodolla]

Games are still young (not even a hundred yet). I'm sure plenty of us were told a Defeat this, to save this story when we were young. When games grow older I'm sure they will have more robust core values.

 

[badgersprite]

Because nearly any game with any kind of plot has combat as its central mechanic, to the point where we can hardly picture making a game without combat. Even games without combat, or without it as a central premise, still generally have a pivotal villain/rescue plot that typically boils down to some kind of fight. Even adventure games, eg Guybrush vs LeChuck.

To be perfectly fair, though, the vast majority of movies with any kind of action in them fall into this same plot too. If not initially, then climactically.

Die Hard: defeat terrorists, save building.
Terminator: defeat Terminator, save Sarah Connor.
LOTR: defeat Sauron, save middle earth.
Star Wars IV: Defeat Death Star, save planet.
Star Wars V: defeat Vader, save friends.
Star Wars VI: defeat Death Star & Emperor, save galaxy
Aliens: defeat Aliens, save self and little girl
Nearly every horror movie: defeat monster/serial killer/zombies/evil thing, save self
Commando: defeat terrorists, save daughter
'80s Sports movies: defeat evil team, save team of underprivileged kids
The Fifth Element: defeat evil space orb of evil, save everything.

So, yeah, you can see where most games draw inspiration from. You can't tell me this isn't also the standard plot of superhero comics and cartoons, or that other action packed stuff we watched as kids like TMNT, Transformers, Power Rangers, etc.

Video games are just very much stuck in that space, at least in the West. People think gameplay = combat and not much else, and that results in these kinds of stories. It probably won't be that way forever.

 

[J-dog42]

I do see where you are coming from and I think that the formula could be shaken up a bit, but at the same time I don't want a AAA game that asks me to collect the milk from the corner store and bring it home without dropping it.

There has to be a goal in video games that you work towards and the "save this" idea is probably one of the best and easiest to implement.

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

True, but i don't think a game has to be an "out there"/crazy concept to overcome the hurdle. I mean, as I've said, look at Fallout 3? You can't boil that down to the basic.

Yes you can.

Fallout 3: "Your dad runs away, you must find him and learn why."

Every story or narrative ever created can be boiled down to over-simplified basics without much difficulty.

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

Because if you boil it down enough, there are very few plots.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3632074/Everything-ever-written-boiled-down-to-seven-plots.html

hehe, the article is wrong.

I for one have invented several different plots that do not follow any of these stereotypes without stretching the interpretation of them to an unreasonable degree.

Yay, apparently i'm a creative bastard! XD

 

[Jordi]

Because if you boil it down enough, there are very few plots.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3632074/Everything-ever-written-boiled-down-to-seven-plots.html

Cut it down further as the plots have to be made interactive for a game and you lose more.

Another (more positive?) way to look at it would be: The human mind is so creative that we can make millions of stories, (over a variety of media), out of these seven basics.

Thanks for this link! I think something like that whenever I see an article or topic lamenting the creativity of story writers because almost everything can be fitted/pigeonholed into some overly broad category/summary.
I also really like the viewpoint in your last paragraph.

 

[Cogwheel]

How about Planescape: Torment, then?

Yes, you kinda try to save yourself. You incidentally fight (unless you're feeling diplomatic) some things along the way. But it really doesn't fit that formula.