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. 

Okay, also, another implicit message of any game is how the simulation is set up. Most games simulate some sort of reality. Built into that is the assumption that the world works the way the game designer thinks it works. Look at sim-city, or civilization, for example. There are tons of math formulas behind those games, and they are all built out of the political and sociological beliefs of the designers.

So one question is, can we remove that and make the game world operate the way the PLAYER thinks the world works instead of the designer?

Another question is, can we expose that implicit assumption that the designer's world-view is correct, and make the player question in an artistic way (rather than in a "this game sucks" way) that aspect of the medium? Many players claim to want realism, but what they often seem to want is a world that agrees with their desires of how the world should work, based heavily on war movies they've seen.

Looping back to the artistic intent of the director, I see the game mechanics and rules of the simulation as being in the same artist-controlled, audience-consumed, category as the script of a movie. If you think about it, a movie is just a game someone else is playing. And what happens to them doesn't just depend on the desires of the character, but also on the "rules of the game" defined by the writer and director. Imagine any Die Hard, True Lies, etc. movie if the characters in it had to follow the rules of OUR world instead of theirs -- they good guys probably wouldn't have survived very long. 

Good stuff metl. Current mode: digesting. 

I would be more than happy if games werent necessarily more than fun, but just removed everything int here aimed at pleasing 14 yr old teenage boys.

Like having the hero spout cheesy macho lines every now and then which kills the atmosphere, like having the 'dark' factor of a pg-m rated hollywood 'horror' flick.

I know why they're doing it, but removal of it would improve most games for me.

Also, fuck the story. Like any good popcorn flick, it's not about the story. And since games have some of the worst stories that even Uew Boll wouldnt adapt, why spend so much of the player's time on story ? 

Also, fuck the story. Like any good popcorn flick, it's not about the story. . And since games have some of the worst stories that even Uew Boll wouldnt adapt . . .

Nitin,

Any chance you'll be having an Andy Sidaris film festival weekend soon? Julie Strain, yummm . . . 

some of us here seem to think that a game is still a game without some mechanic that you enjoy playing in, and that having fun with said mechanic and unrolling a provocative deep emotional story in said game are mutually exclusive.

If you're not playing anything it's not a fucking game. It's a movie you have to click on occasionally. The very nature of requiring interaction implies that there needs to be some reason we're enjoying it, or we're not doing it. If you want to be emotionally provoked by a movie you just watch the damn thing; it's a story. If the deep meaningful ones weren't enjoyable for some reason, would you still be watching them? "Man, this movie bores the shit out of me and the editing makes me want to vomit, but golly is it ever a sad story I need to enrich myself by absorbing."

It's called entertainment for a reason. One way or another you're going to enjoy it. 

One way or another you're going to enjoy it.

Or else! 

Films and video-games are referred to as entertainment simply as a broad term because the vast majority of the output is fairly lightweight material designed simply to please and give enjoyment, rather than be provocative. That doesn't mean there aren't works where the terms 'entertaining', 'enjoyable' or 'fun' don't readily apply. There have been numerous examples given already to illustrate this point, one more would be something like Full Metal Jacket, which, by most people's definition of the word, wouldn't be classed as 'enjoyable', but it was certainly interesting, enlightening and thought-provoking, and for those reasons it was worth watching, even if it wasn't 'fun' to view. So with regards to cinema, I think people will be prepared to see works even if they aren't enjoyable. The viewer may not be having 'fun' throughout the 2 hours running time, but they receive other benefits that make the viewing of the film valuable.

Whether it's the same for video games is another matter. As you alluded to, an interactive medium requires more effort on the participant's part, so if that expenditure is no longer fun or rewarding, it's hard to continue the energy investment that would prolong the interaction. With passive activities like watching a film, the viewer doesn't really have to do anything, so continued viewing is that much easier if the material they're spectating isn't, or ceases to be, enjoyable.

After considering it briefly, I thought of one example of a game sequence which doesn't conform to my definition of fun, yet I still consider a worthwhile, even beneficial addition to the piece. The dream sequences in Max Payne 2 (I'll ignore those in the original game, since their design was so abysmal they clearly negatively impacted on the game), while containing only a modicum of player input that entitles them still to be considered interactive, managed to serve useful purposes such as establishing atmosphere, developing characters through exploring motivations and mental state, changing the game's pace by deviating from the often repetitive action of the game's standard gameplay mechanics, and furthering the plot. The obvious question is 'could they have been an even more positive element of the game had they been more "fun"?' For a sequence to be fun in an action game like MP2, I think there needs to be some mechanic which demands skill and has an element of challenge. However, such an approach means requiring the player to recognise, learn and master these skills, which obviously requires some mental investment and distracts from non-skill related aspects of the game, such as the more narrative-oriented elements mentioned above that the dream sequences focus on. This is one area where the goals of 'fun' and narrative development conflict, and an instance where I think the dream sequence's approach of very limited interaction (the task of merely running through corridors observing what's going on around you) works quite well at preserving the game elements in skeletal form while also bolstering more ambitious goals such as those that Spector is arguing for. 

Another example that illustrates a potential conflict between developing enjoyable game mechanics and furthering goals such as plot, subtexts and thought-provoking concepts is Deus Ex, which I feel made some major strides in achieving the sort of things that Spector wants to see, but also occasionally allowed the pursuit of enjoyable gameplay to get in the way of the exposition of these arguably deeper elements. At the start of the game you are bombarded with information on the goals of the game, the different approaches you can take, and the tools which you can use to pursue them. You then have to grapple with the game's required skills (stealth, shooting, conversation trees, hacking etc) and try and learn them to a degree that permits further progress in the game. At the same time you are presented with a vast amount of data on the game's characters, their motivations, the game's locations, organisations, plot subtexts etc etc. If it was a film, handling this narrative related info would be straightforward enough, but tasked with learning the core game skills at the same time it becomes overwhelming, and neither side - the gameplay 'fun' or the plots/characters/subtexts/themes - gets appreciated fully.

This primarily applies to the start of the game, however, as I think overall the game does an excellent job of elevating the status of gaming in relation to its treatment of more sophisticated themes, while also providing fun gameplay mechanics. The pace of the title helps, as the exploratory nature of most levels allows you peaceful time to digest what's being presented to you and ponder it. I also think the fact that you're asked to think about your character's development (as it relates to game influencing skill attributes, rather than his emotional development as it pertains to the plot) encourages a more thoughtful demeanour in the player as well, which in turn encourages consideration of narrative elements. This is much like System Shock 2, in which I would often find myself stopping at those stations to upgrade my abilities, while at the same time reading email logs and thinking about the plot; ie the gameplay design and story ended up being almost symbiotic at times. Bioshock seems like it may be similar, in that you will be required to genetically alter your body to survive, thus dehumanising yourself and consequently being forced to consider the game's intended commentary on broader themes, such as the length's people go to in extremes, the role of technology in society and the points at which one's humanity begin and end. To sum up, while there are clear potential conflicts, particularly in the learning phase of a game, or inherent in faster paced action games, I think if you can achieve that kind of synchronicity between gameplay mechanics and these 'higher goals' that Spector speaks of you genuinely can achieve a satisfactory balance between fun and the more mature, demanding aspects of art that may be engaging but not necessarily enjoyable in the sense we commonly think of when considering video-games. 

[deleted spam from taiwan] 

Someone posted my email without asking my permission and now i'm getting spammed. Admins haven't gotten back to me yet. I need some admin to remove my posted email from the "jobs and mappers wanted" board asap. Also, i'v had to abandon 5 accounts already from spam contaminatation. If can't stop the spam, this one will have to abandoned too. Thanks ahead...

as 

If I knew you are so scarry about spams, I would have tried to help you to find mappers for your mod development.
I anyway, I'm very sorry for the conveniences you are facing today. 

And now to something completely different.
Earlier this year I posted some photos from the Zitadelle Spandau in Berlin, Germany. I watched Sin City yesterday and just had to edit one of the photos in that style. Thought I'd post it here too. :)
http://spirit.enjoys.it/photos/IMG_1849_sincity2.jpg