A game that NEVER ends?! My god, man, who would play that?

Errr.. Immortal people ? 

JC, Mohammed, Moses, Khrisna and I have been playing Go on a fractal based board that seems go on endlessly. There is one player who never makes good moves because he is always smoking pot.
I'll never tell who it is though at the risk of offending millions of his fallowers. 

 

410+ hours play time so far and I haven't finished it (penultimate mission is a bitch).

Admittedly I've explored a hell of a lot and played really slowly and done a bit of farming and stuff....but still... 

1) you are forgetting the monthly fee for MMORPG

2) what rpg said

3) WoW is for ppl willing to trade (huge chunk of) real life for a virtual drug. 

One place to find game related texts that aren't just news and reviews is The escapist magazine:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/

They usually have at least something interesting in each issue. 

Oblivion. I've spent about 220 hours in it so far, on one character, and it still absolutely rocks. I may even get around to trying the Mages Guild quests at some point. Game of the Decade for me, at any rate. 

yeah, bear, this is usually pretty good. although warren spector's got an article up there right now about how games don't need to be fun, and I can't really figure out wtf they'd be instead. 

I read it as that what he was trying to communicate is that a) fun is a too vague word to be very usable when trying to talk about the "fun-factor" in games and that it might be beneficial to try to break it down into more specific aspects of exactly what makes the game desireable to play and b) maybe games doesn't have to aspire to be fun (as in entertaining) to be interesting like other forms of art that are consumed for other reasons.

Basically I think a) is just about getting better at describing/thinking about game mechanics and what makes it work or not and when it comes to b) I'm sure there are already games like that but then again it all depends on a) - what you consider as fun, entertaining as opposed to or in combination of being fulfulling in some other way. 

I can't really figure out wtf they'd be instead.
Inspiring, thought-provoking, beautiful, teaching, communicating a statement. Meditative. Some games could try a little bit harder to be important. 

but why 'instead' 

One "short" game with great replay value was Square's evil stepchild, Vagrant Story. The SP is really short, however it had an innovative combat system, great level design, very ominous story, dozens of cool monsters and an item combining/upgrading system (there were smithies/shops throughout the game to upgrade the stuff you found in the dungeon.)

Best of all, during the first playthrough, I'd come upon doors that said "Sealed with the Rood Inverse". I couldn't make heads or tails of it, as it is something from the game's story that you get at the very end. I always thought it might be some kind of artifact, but it isn't. The whole game I went, "what is that thing they keep talking about?" Finally seeing what it really was was SO cool, because it was there all the time. Well, those doors only open in the second play through, after you got the Rood Inverse. Thus some of the most interesting areas (and the top-level smithy) aren't even accessible when you first play it.

I always thought that was so cool. I love that game, and someday I'll find it again. I foolishly sold it. 

and usually pull it out when I'm on a bus or something.

Thank god for the qualifying sentence before that. 

Inspiring, thought-provoking, beautiful, teaching, communicating a statement. Meditative. Some games could try a little bit harder to be important.

So if they're not fun aren't they not games at this point? 

So if they're not fun aren't they not games at this point?

Hardly. That's like saying it wasn't food becuase it didn't taste good. 

Lun,

that's alot o' negations. 

Here's my point.

Games are stuck in the fun-niche. For historical reasons, they are treated as play, or entertainment. Which is all fine, Nintendo is all about the fun and the play and thank god for them.

But there's something else that generally goes amiss. The game as a medium. And when we equate videogames with some mysterious fun-factor, we're not realising what might be possible.

I enjoy a good popcorn-flick. That's the hollywood mainstream-machine at its absolute best. Spiderman, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc. And they're non-stop fun entertainment from first frame to last. They are exhilirating and exciting to watch.

But then there're other kinds of movies. Say, 21 grams. Maria full of grace. And they're great. But they're definitely not fun to watch. They're hard, and sad, and unrelenting. In fact, watching them can make you feel like shit. They make you think, they plant stuff inside of you and have you question yourself and the things around you.

We've also have the kind of film where the story-telling is very central. The Godfather, Seven, Silence of the lambs. They don't make you feel like a iece of crap, but they deal with dark themes, and if they have to tell you something you might disagree with, they will. For the sake of the story and the experience.

You can't say that any one of these genres are better than the other, and a good movie is a good movie when the craft that went into it is solid and well executed.

In games, every genre but the popcorn one has gone virtually un-mined, and that's a shame. I'm 25 years old, I can handle some provocative story-telling, a message not easily digested. Challenge me. 

If I have a burning desire to bring to an audience something of the importance of the politics and tragedy of the highland clearances, what is the most attractive way for me to do that? If I really want to decide what characters to have, what dialogue they should deliver, what dramatic events will occur, wouldn't it be natural to write a script? A screenplay for a movie or radio drama? Or maybe a novel?

But if I try to realize it as a game, then I must - not because of any outdated misconception of what constitutes game design, or what some pundit pontificated on the internet, or a slavish obedience to marketable convention, but by sheer definition - make extensive allowances for the audiences' input. I have to make it interactive. Is interactivity really beneficial to telling the story of the highland clearances? I'm trying to impress intellectually and emotionally upon people an event that destroyed the lives of thousands of impoverished natives, and altered the scottish landscape to this day. Do I really want to try and blend that with concerns of item inventories, physics objects or skill trees?

I guess the question I'm asking here is not "can games contain important topics?" but rather "can important topics be made into games?", which I admit is not quite as to the point. The point I am trying to illustrate is that the qualities of art that make it 'important' may be ultimately incompatible with what makes games 'interactive'.

Now you can respond by saying that the highland clearances wouldn't work as a game because they are clearly not a suitable topic. Well ok, let's look at a topic that clearly is suitable: WWII.

Saving Private Ryan brought home to people, especially young people, the overwhelming horror and sacrifice involved in the Normandy landing. More than one of the spate of WWII games post-Q3 contained maps deliberately emulating this event. Did they - could they - ever have the same impact as the movie? And I'm not talking about graphics level.
Matt Damon spoke about how he and the other actors observing Spielberg at work estimated that he was making an average of one decision every eleven seconds. Note the word "decision". Everything that transpired onscreen during that sequence was a decision. When Tom Hanks rolled that radioman over for the third time to discover his face had become a gruesome crater, that was a decision. There was no interactivity there, no alternative non-linear gameplay available, no quickload. Even if such a compelling image were added to a WWII game, could it have the same impact? Because in a game like CoD or RtCW, at the end of the day you're not there to bear witness to a talented director's realisation of a historical milestone. You're there to shoot nazis and capture strategy nodes. I'm not at all convinced that the two things are reconcileable the way Specter seems to desire.

I'm not saying that games that are more than fun aren't possible, just that I personally can't imagine how a game could be made where fun wasn't the primary goal. Just because I can't imagine it doesn't mean it isn't possible, and I look forward to someone proving it is. But so far the arguments amount to nothing more than wishful thinking.

Lots of people spend lots of time playing games. They're lots of fun, but wouldn't it be great if they were more than just fun, if they were culturally significant? I spend lots of time drinking sugar-free cola. It tastes nice and quenches my thirst but...well, wouldn't it be great if sugar-free cola could be more than just tasty, if it could be culturally significant? More important?
Just because it would be a satisfying ideal to fulfil doesn't mean it's actually possible. I'm not unsympathetic to the wish for games to be more important, but I've yet to hear any actual proposal as to what that would be like.

That's like saying it wasn't food becuase it didn't taste good.

Yes food does not have to be enjoyable to be nourishing. But it still has to be edible. 

This is a wonderful discussion youse guys are having -- I only hope there are a lot of the companies' higher-ups having the same one, seeing as how a massive industry such as game production certainly warrants it. It would be awesome if such gaming experiences as those being described here actually made it to production, ones that provide (and demand) a much greater scope of emotional and intellectual response from the "player". Oh spooooge. 

that evoke strong feelings and make you think but it sure is a challenge of big proportions.

And surely the interactivty in games must offer at least as many possbilities as limitations?(and in no way make it impossible to deal with important topics without getting boring)

The one thing that's obvious is that you have to think differently and deal with the medium you're working with instead of trying to emulate movies or other established forms of expression. I think the biggest hurdle is simply that it's relatively new ground so you have to figure it all out yourself. 

I think the biggest hurdle is simply that it's relatively new ground so you have to figure it all out yourself.

That may well be true. But so far what's been said is "I think it should be done, and everyone else should figure it out" instead of "I believe it can be done, and this is how I've figured it out." So as I say, no more than wishful thinking. 

This is some I'd like to tackle and maybe someday will even attempt but I don't think this is something just thinking and discussing will come up with a solution to, I think you have to build protopyes and experiment and well basically it's something you'd have to spend a lot of time on before getting anywhere wich is also why there's so little progress being made because hardly any devs in the industry can afford to spend that kind of time on something that might result in some cool wghile outside of the industry there are hardly any with the knowledge/resources to work on it. 

Ignore me, l'm just testing out posting here with the DS browser...

Looks like it works ok.
I can't log in though for some reason. I'm not sure if it supports cookies. 

I had just forgotten my password.
Looks like it works fine. ^_^ 

The one thing that's obvious is that you have to think differently and deal with the medium you're working with instead of trying to emulate movies or other established forms of expression.

That's what I was going to say. Games can't recreate the exact techniques of great movies and end up being great games. Games are essentially interactive, and most attempts to make cinematic games involve reducing that interactivity with gameplay-on-rails and lots of sit-there-and-watch-this-cinematic moments (the opening level of Medal of Honor: Rising Sun for example)

Instead, games should be pushing the interactivity angle, and the imaginary category of high-brow games (which don't really exist, but could exist if people made them) need to use that primary fact of player-determined outcomes as the lever that does the heavy artistic lifting.

There are obstacles. Games are an entertainment medium, players have expectations of entertainment, and at the very least, the game needs to be compelling enough to keep people playing when it ISN'T fun. We know people play games that aren't fun -- they get hooked by a frustrating puzzle game becuase they can't give up on a challenge, they get invested in a MMORPG character, or .

But there are more obstacles. By creating a system of rewards for outcomes, games impose their own value system which will trump the player's own value system while the player is in-game. See GTA games, for example. The player is not going to make losing choices just to satisfy their real-life morals, becuase it's just a game and it's all make-believe. Of course, the game's value system could itself be the artistic message.

Or, the game could easily not have any win/lose conditions, making it more of a simulation or sandbox game. However, this idea is problematic, becuase without any explicit rewards, there are still implicit rewards, such as "if i do X the game gets boring, if i do Y the game is fun, so i'll tend to do Y" -- the GTA mode where you don't care about missions but just run around freely is a good example. There's no real reward system built into murder and meyhem, but if you obey the "law" you'll find the game shallow and boring.

Of course, there are also games where the player always loses, and this itself can be exploited for artistic messages. Imagine Robotron but with the player as a mass murderer and the bad guys as police officers. We know the game can be fun becuase robotron is fun, but guess what? Robotron always ends with the player losing (dying.) Same for a game like "Global Thermonuclear War" from the movie Wargames. This could be "fun" if your goal is to survive as long as possible, but the final outcome is always the same, and this could presumably carry a message about the futility of nuclear war.