*Cough* Deus Ex 3 *Sneeze*

Wow, that's some cough you have there, gamer0004. Are you coming down with something?

This is a fallacy, you're comparing a video game to necessity of life- You CAN'T compare them..



No! you are incorrect, you've basically refered to the materials.. I could argue that cardboard makes an boardgame a boardgame.. but it doesn't. Its the technique and the systems- else you're just moving a bunch of tokens around and not really doing anything.

Bound Paper does not make a book a book, its consists of so many things depending on if you are writing fiction, or non-fiction or an essay, it still requires a system for writing them.

A Movie is a composite, remember its Drama, Music and Literature. Video games can take this to the next level but the defining part of the game is its gameplay system.. without it you've essentially destroyed what made it a game. Drama, Music and Literature for a game must syncronize/harmonize together if its to be effective.. so therefore a game must also do the same but maintain the most important aspect which is gameplay- so they must all become a part of the gameplay as opposed to being seperate. Game contents are developed seperate always- they must come together.. this defines how good a developer is.. its not the content that matters but how well the game was put together as a composite of these things.. which many confuse as Immersion. Seamless composition could be better to describe that- but then we're getting a bit technical so best just say how seamless a game is put together that determines its quality.



Empire: Total War is going to innovate by making the RTW style gameplay now completely Multiplayer as well as Single Player (so meaning you can play the Turnbased campaign online with your friends for the FIRST time in the series!!!) it also has naval battles which look like nothing total war has tried before but inherited from many classic sailing games- just innovated to work with the total war system of gameplay. IMO they have innovated it and I'm entirely positive we're looking at a GOTY contender just based on how many improvements they've made over past installments of the series- it is truly a game of epic proportions and excelent value (because I paid only $40 for it off steam ).

GTA:SA did in fact innovate that series by implementing an RPG system into the game which was removed in GTA4 (and many argue was lacking this system.. which Saints Row 2 ended up pushing even further.. IMO missed oportunity.)

Super Mario Bros did in fact innovate, Super Mario 2 was different from 1, Super Mario 3 was different from 2 and 1 (but not by much compared to 1), Super Mario World was an innovation over Super Mario 3 (included Yoshi and some pretty awesome gameplay mechanics), Yoshi's Island was IMO the most Innovative of all and still stands as possibly the best Mario game of all time!.

Gothic 2 did Innovate, it beat Bethesda's Radiant AI by several years and has all the same features it did, it also did things that Bethesda soft eventually "Ripped Off" from the franchise (such as having a huge open explorable world and non-linear story.)

Your examples were poorly chosen.

Games NEED to innovate at least something else they run the risk of becoming CLONES.. and CLONES are bad in this industry.. they rarely make much money except in the case of rabbid fanbois that will buy anything that is similar to something else that was already innovative. (BioShock for example ) - This is why I hate the term "Spiritual Successor" because it creates a false impression of the game and relies of the former game's success to make a buck. The game doesn't stand on its own merits if it does that.



I'm actually going to argue against this.. why? because there are such things as Non-linear movies.. its just Hollywood doesn't no how to make them. Basically we see this happen when films contain "alternate" scenes or endings that change the way the story works. In the case of Kingdom of Heaven you are given 2 versions to the story that you can pick, 1. which is very shorter than the other and plays more like an action film 2. is VERY LONG (3 Hours) and contains much character building that wasn't in the original film and also contains a different ending- though similar to the original- this is possibly why I LOVE riddley scott because he does always consider these options and puts them into his DVDs. Honestly with the way DVD and BR technologies work you could essentially replicate the same Gameplay of a Game just as a Movie.. we call these "Interactive Movies" - See best examples of The Tex Murphy Series, The X Files Game, Blade Runner (Game), even the Final Fantasy series and yes MGS4 fits in here too but only because its more movie than game.

Those Interactive Movies are Ambigious- you can't tell the difference between a game and a movie.. the thing that sets them apart from MGS4 (Which is a POS of a game) is that you DO actually use the film element as gameplay- the whole idea is being able to CHANGE how the film works. These games are often shown from 3rd person during cutscenes and shown in First or 3rd person during action scenes (where by you interact with the game world to trigger the next cutscene.)- of course this isn't necessary since we could accomplish the same thing by simply selecting different options like a choose your own adventure style novel. (see even Literature has incorporated gameplay into itself ) These novels only ever fail because they're either poorly written into the gameplay or that its just too f'ing hard to trun to page 300 and then back to 15 only to have a GAME OVER screen- this is why Video Games EXIST!

Can you see what I mean.

Unless Gothic 2 came out before 1994, I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you.

tell me the game you are refering to then. I suspect you mean Daggerfall? because you should know that Daggerfall used Fast Travel- it wasn't open. It was big and nonlinear though.

Fast Travel was entirely optional. You can easily choose to manually traverse the terrain, it would just take a long time due to it's immensity. The game I was actually referring to was TES: Arena.

well the truth in that is you could do that but it was all random generated. Gothic 2 wasn't randomly generated neither was Gothic 1, they could be the reasons as to why Bethesda changed scope- because we all know that Diablo 1 and 2 proved random generation was still completely feasible technology to use in an RPG. I honestly hope it remains in Diablo 3 (so long as its nothing like Hellgate London's Random gen- which was basically the same level over and over with not a single noticable change. I've compared it to Fallout 3's dungeons before in that the games feel completely identical and many game magazines have pointed that out that the games do get similar in those areas.)

Also should be noted that all the Fallouts used fast travel as well. (hence the complaints about it are un-justifyable- granted that the fast traveling in Fallout 1 2 and Tactics were superior to that in Oblivion and Daggerfall.)

That is a fallacy, I can compare them. I didn't, but I can. You could claim that I shouldn't, but if you claim that I can't you are wrong. Aren't you the one arguing that language should be used correctly?

What I did compare was a game (of any sort) to life. I did so by comparing the things necessary for life to the thing necessary for a game. At no point did I compare a game to the things necessary to life, that would have screwed over the entire comparison.


I could, but I wouldn't. A book that consists entirely of blank pages is still a book, a piece of cardboard, in itself, is not a boardgame. What makes a game a game is gameplay, what makes a book a book is bound paper. Which brings us to:

No. You seem to be confusing a book with writing. There a books with no words at all. Even when there are words they need not have a system beyond repeating the word, "Fuck," over and over again. (That's actually a fairly famous book, though the author's name escapes me.)

Confusing a book with writing is like confusing a game with interactive storytelling. Books can contain writing, just as a game can contain interactive storytelling, but I have feeling you would object if I were to say that interactive storytelling is what makes a game a game.


No. A movie can be a composite including Drama, Music and Litererature. Can be, not is. A game can likewise be such a thing. There is a difference betwen what something can be and what it is.

Consider a movie without music, is it still a movie? The answer is a resounding, "Yes," as I'm sure you are aware. There is no requirement for movie makers to include music in their works. The same can be said of literature (though we should all fear the all improv movie) and, unfortunately, drama (as has been demonstrated many, many times.)


So you are fully capable of realizing that what makes a game a game is the thing without which it would not be a game, but you refuse to admit that what makes a book a book is the thing without which it is not a book (and with which it is a book.)

This somewhat confuses me.

But gameplay IS writing. It IS what would be referred to as Design (though I have argued before that what defines design is rather blurry.. so lets just call it Human Arrangement of Ideas instead ) What makes a video game is CODE... what makes a board game is cardboard.. these are just the devices we use as the medium to our ideas.. its our IDEAS that define the game, movie, novel, music, art ect ect... The ability to create something and the skills required TO create something. -- that is why it makes them creative industries. Else you'd be a manufacture.



That comparison makes no sense then. You're referring to composition but your example isn't exactly relative. I realize you're trying to prioritize the order in which games are made but I don't exactly understand the comparison. Also it could be argued that your definition of Life isn't the same as everyone else's just as the definition of Immersion could be argued to be wrong too.. but that would lead us off topic.



lol you totally just proved my point about Immersion. It's not needed (I totally realize what I did just then, I forced a bias onto film saying that it HAD to have something.. I realize that was a bullshit argument but you managed to actually turn that in favor of my original argument lol.) I defined immersion as Music, Story and Graphics- they are both creative media.. You can argue for instance that a drama play doesn't need props.. you can argue that music doesn't need a story or lyrics.. These things are just decoration- value... they aren't the core of the product.. but if we don't tie it all together then the decoration over shines what the actual thing is-- in the case of games you get things like MGS4 that are so god damn ambiguous that you have no idea if its a Movie or a Game- perfect example of where the immersion took over and destroyed the game. My argument was always to ignore the immersion and FOCUS on making a good game as opposed to anything other than a game.

Anyway I'll give you the benefit that I was wrong about that possibly due to my bias against film vs video games... or possibly because I was thinking of many arguments at once. I'm at work now so please don't hesitate to point out flaws in my arguments so that I can straighten anything out. It's a good discussion and I feel perhaps something that should be discussed more often.

I think you are still missing my point. My point is that necessity does not imply priority. (And that you had a double standard where games were treated one way and books and movies another.)

What makes a game is gameplay (regardless of whether that is provided by code or a rulebook) thus gameplay is necessary for the creation of a game. Does that mean the priority of the game designer should be gameplay? Not necessarily.

If gameplay had priority it would mean at least one of two very different things (first in order, first in importance) either way gameplay doesn't necessarily have priority. It needs to be addressed at some point, but it need not be first. It needs to be done, but that doesn't make it most important.

It can be the priority, but it doesn't need to be. (That is my argument at least.)

I brought up books because they have completely separated necessity from almost every other part of development. Specifically, they have separated necessity from every part that it can be separated from. (That is, everything not directly related to the binding and the paper.) So on the one hand you have what makes a book a book, and on the other hand you have everything else. Everything else gets priority. The necessary part, the part that makes a book a book, is placed either last or nearly last in both importance and order.

Will it ever be possible to separate gameplay from everything else thus allowing developers to concentrate on everything else the way authors do while a core of gameplay makers concentrate on pure gameplay the way book producers concentrate on bound paper? I couldn't tell you. I don't even know if conversation simulation will reach the point that you can say anything and get a sequitur response in character.

The reason for bringing up books was that which is necessary can be separated from almost all other concerns. The result has been that people could largely ignore the necessary part and make something else their priority. People have largely chosen to concentrate on the unnecessary (though there are pop up books, and books where you can see through parts of some of the pages, and other specialty books where the nature of the bound paper is a priority.)

Does that mean this model should be used for games? No. What it does mean is that there is a tangible example where what something can be is largely more important than what it must be. The creator's priority is the unnecessary parts.

Don't think that just because something (like, say, gameplay) is necessary to a creation means that it must be the creator's priority.

-

If anyone was wondering, I am well aware that I am longwinded.

Actually this is interesting- The way Authors work with Illustrators. Do novels need pictures- specifically do they need covers?
some could argue no.. others yes. Ultimately the bible does pretty damn well seeing as it has NO pictures- the second you put pictures with it (and I have one of these) it turns to shit, why? most likely because the Author was dead nearly 1800 years before this person was even born- Illustration and Text have to work together if they are going to be effective, same applies with games. The fact is what happens if we have too much illustration and not enough text? then it essentially becomes a comic book.. same is if we have too much Graphics, Art, Story, Music and Drama compared to gameplay in video games then it becomes an interactive movie rather than a game..

Ideally we're in the industry of making games- hence my point. If I wanted to make interactive films then hell yes I'd support the opposite ends of your arugments.. But I want to make games, this is why I find what you are suggesting (immersion is more important..?) to be against what I feel is best for my projects and potential products.

You know its funny since this is a very similar debate the academics have over the legitimacy of Graphic Novels (or Comic Books) as Art.

You know, it might be useful to clarify exactly which definition of 'Immersion' you're using here, Mr CP: your "highly specific game dev version" or the "general mouth-breathing game playing public version".

Because if it's the latter, it can be applied fairly evenly to the gestalt of gameplay, graphics, audio, story and whatever...so your argument then makes no real sense, whereas if it's the former, and can only be applied to 'completely and utterly convincing all-senses-covered virtual world', then given that such a thing is impossible...your argument makes no real sense.

Thus, let us assume for the sake of argument that nobody here is actively saying that the most important aspect of any game, ever, is that it comes with a convincing all-senses-covered virtual world. We assume this because it is blindingly fucking obvious.

Therefore we can assume by elimination that we're debating whether "an equisitely honed combination of gameplay, story, audio, graphics and whathaveyous that serve make a game so involving that you're utterly hooked, and will lose hours following the game through to its conclusion" is the most important aspect of games. And the answer is of course YES, for games that are potentially capable of gripping a person in such a manner (the storyline and character development of tetris is lacking, for example...but then that was never something tetris intended to display).

So now we're actually debating over which element of that gestalt is the priority. You say gameplay is the priority, chris says it's the necessity (which is entirely different from priority). Chris is correct: without ANY gameplay, it is not a game. So gameplay is ESSENTIAL.

But that doesn't mean it has to be good. Indeed, depending on the kind of game you're making, it might be really quite far down on the list of priorities. You can happily make successful, gripping games that have shockingly bad gameplay as long as all the other factors work really well with each other and with the gameplay. It's the combination of all these that adds up to a given 'potentially immersive' game's actual 'immersion' (public definition, obv).

And a final thing to remember: what you like (or think, or want, or make) does not equal 'what is good'. The same can be said of what I like (or think, or want, or make), and so on. There is no universal definition of 'good', we just work on general consensus for any given time. And in light of that, it might be worth noting that no matter what you may think about it, MGS4 was still surprisingly popular.

Actually that is untrue. At the moment, "good" is a synonym for "The Nameless Mod Beta". When we release the game, this definition will change slightly, but not significantly, to "The Nameless Mod".

Now you know.

(Or to be serious: I agree with everything you've said.)

The sad thing is, I considered putting something along those lines myself, just to save you the bother.

Damnit, I have become that predictable.

Time to ditch the megalomania act then. Gotta think of another shtick.