The concept of a Storytelling Engine comes from John Seavey's blog, 'Fraggmented', mainly about comics, but sometimes TV shows or films, he looks at the basic premise or status quo used to generate stories for serial adventures. For example Spider Man's classic engine (as reused and kept to in Ultimate Spider man) is "young nerdy guy without much money who's at school and working for a newspaper is also a superhero by night, keeping new york safe from a variety of, mainly animal and science themed super villains". He has posted storytelling engines for a while now, and they make interesting reading, particularly when he analyses why an engine works or doesn't work.
http://fraggmented.blogspot.com/
A major reason 'Heroes' started to go haywire after the first series is it's lack of a storytelling engine. It's much easier to make new stories if you have a clear, established status quo, and many modern comics which go on about changing the status quo forget this. If you're going to change the status quo in a comic, it should be rare and monumental. It should also STAY like that for a decent length of time, unless it's a sort of endgame climax. Harry Potter uproots it's storytelling engine only in the final book leading up to the big finale. Ultimately, if you have a good storytelling engine, you shouldn't need to change the status quo. It will generate thousands of stories. Doctor Who has a brilliant storytelling engine, as does 'The Simpsons'.
I guess my point is that I need to establish certain base rules about the setting and recurring cast. I often find when making comics that, having defined the characters, I can just dump an event on them and the story writes itself .
The cast need to be appealing enough that the player will want to keep coming back to see what happens to them 'this month' and there should be some consistent elements as a backdrop to the adventures. If, at the end of an episode, things go largely back to normal, we can make it so you can play them in any order, though actually there may be more interest in keeping some kind of continuity, encouraging players to play every episode and enjoy the gradual changes.
Thursday, 29 January 2009
Mechanics and Story thoughts
So I'm pretty well set on making an Episodic Adventure Game set in a Geek culture comedy magic realism setting like 'Spaced', 'Scary Go Round', 'Scott Pilgrim', 'Buffy'.
Some thoughts:
ON ITEMS: Okay, let's assume that certain main characters should ALWAYS be carrying certain trademark items. To use an example from real life, I don't leave the house without my bag containing my keys, phone, wallet, iPod and a pencil and paper. This could be made interesting if the item in question is iconic. Where would The Doctor be without his Sonic Screwdriver? In any episode of Doctor Who, we assume the doctor has the screwdriver, and we know that it can be used, loosely, to open doors (unless deadlocked) tamper with machines and detect energy and chemicals.
If a character has to pick up an item to use in a situation, should it vanish next episode? Hmm, how about if they borrow it, next episode it'll be back with the character who owns it, and if they buy/take/find it, it's in their house (if large or with an obtuse function) or inventory (if small and possibly useful on a regular basis) subsequently. Within reason, I mean, I wouldn't expect a character to keep an empty crisp packet they used to solve a puzzle!
I'd prefer to keep it down to as few items as possible. No puzzled in which the character is carrying a pistol and must pick up a rock to break a fragile object, when they could have hit it with the pistol or dropped it and had the same effect!
Perhaps there could be a recurring minigame for using some items, like the lock picking in 'Oblivion' or 'Tribly the Art of Theft'. So we ideally want an iconic, multiuse item for the main recurring protagonist. Other characters may later have to solve the same puzzle without this item and so have to find another way around the problem! That'd be fun!
Characters: It wouldn't be too hard to switch between a cast. I don't want to do this too much and end up confusing like 'Heroes' sometimes becomes, but seeing things from another character's point of view and/or using their abilities to solve a problem may be fun. Let's assume for now that we have a main character (with some distinctive items and abilities), a few other major supporting characters, and then minor characters who play bit parts and stuff, much like a typical sitcom or soap opera. It is possible to have a character with two forms, each with different abilities. This IS a little overdone in games, however, so I'm unsure about using it.
Note on characterisation:
Characterisation between episodes CANNOT be effected by player choices, otherwise episodes will contradict themselves. If you were allowed to make character X act like a complete jerk, kill everybody in town and then next episode he was back to his sunny happy self and everybody was alive again, it'd be a bit weird! While I want to allow the player some flexibility on how they solve a problem and what they say, to make it more interactive and add replay value, all the options should be 'in character'. This actually furthers the appeal of playing as different characters in different segments and episodes, because perhaps as the main character you can't punch that annoying NPC because he wouldn't dream of doing it, but playing as a less scrupulous character, you can because that's in character for them!
This makes it somewhat like a JRPG, and yes, I'm going to reference Final Fantasy VIII again, because I think it's an example of excellent characterisation in a game. You play Squall, a surly teenage boy. When given dialogue choices, they're often just the jist like 'accept' or 'refuse' and Squall will translate this into his way of speaking, so 'accept' becomes, '...fine' and 'refuse' his trademark '...whatever'. Sometimes though, weirdly, and I assume this may be the translator's mistake, not the game's, you may get the options in his wording ie '...fine' or '...whatever'. I think the dialogue should be consistent. Keeping answers in the character's voice is probably a better way, because you know how they'll word it. All the choices given should be in-character.
Some thoughts:
ON ITEMS: Okay, let's assume that certain main characters should ALWAYS be carrying certain trademark items. To use an example from real life, I don't leave the house without my bag containing my keys, phone, wallet, iPod and a pencil and paper. This could be made interesting if the item in question is iconic. Where would The Doctor be without his Sonic Screwdriver? In any episode of Doctor Who, we assume the doctor has the screwdriver, and we know that it can be used, loosely, to open doors (unless deadlocked) tamper with machines and detect energy and chemicals.
If a character has to pick up an item to use in a situation, should it vanish next episode? Hmm, how about if they borrow it, next episode it'll be back with the character who owns it, and if they buy/take/find it, it's in their house (if large or with an obtuse function) or inventory (if small and possibly useful on a regular basis) subsequently. Within reason, I mean, I wouldn't expect a character to keep an empty crisp packet they used to solve a puzzle!
I'd prefer to keep it down to as few items as possible. No puzzled in which the character is carrying a pistol and must pick up a rock to break a fragile object, when they could have hit it with the pistol or dropped it and had the same effect!
Perhaps there could be a recurring minigame for using some items, like the lock picking in 'Oblivion' or 'Tribly the Art of Theft'. So we ideally want an iconic, multiuse item for the main recurring protagonist. Other characters may later have to solve the same puzzle without this item and so have to find another way around the problem! That'd be fun!
Characters: It wouldn't be too hard to switch between a cast. I don't want to do this too much and end up confusing like 'Heroes' sometimes becomes, but seeing things from another character's point of view and/or using their abilities to solve a problem may be fun. Let's assume for now that we have a main character (with some distinctive items and abilities), a few other major supporting characters, and then minor characters who play bit parts and stuff, much like a typical sitcom or soap opera. It is possible to have a character with two forms, each with different abilities. This IS a little overdone in games, however, so I'm unsure about using it.
Note on characterisation:
Characterisation between episodes CANNOT be effected by player choices, otherwise episodes will contradict themselves. If you were allowed to make character X act like a complete jerk, kill everybody in town and then next episode he was back to his sunny happy self and everybody was alive again, it'd be a bit weird! While I want to allow the player some flexibility on how they solve a problem and what they say, to make it more interactive and add replay value, all the options should be 'in character'. This actually furthers the appeal of playing as different characters in different segments and episodes, because perhaps as the main character you can't punch that annoying NPC because he wouldn't dream of doing it, but playing as a less scrupulous character, you can because that's in character for them!
This makes it somewhat like a JRPG, and yes, I'm going to reference Final Fantasy VIII again, because I think it's an example of excellent characterisation in a game. You play Squall, a surly teenage boy. When given dialogue choices, they're often just the jist like 'accept' or 'refuse' and Squall will translate this into his way of speaking, so 'accept' becomes, '...fine' and 'refuse' his trademark '...whatever'. Sometimes though, weirdly, and I assume this may be the translator's mistake, not the game's, you may get the options in his wording ie '...fine' or '...whatever'. I think the dialogue should be consistent. Keeping answers in the character's voice is probably a better way, because you know how they'll word it. All the choices given should be in-character.
Episodes in gaming
Is episodic/modular gaming the future?
Short games for lower prices which come out regularly like episodes of a TV show seem to be appearing. Half Life 2 is using this technique, along with the Adventure Games by 'Telltale', such as 'Sam and Max' and 'Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People' (best title ever).
Up until now, we have thought of games as being like films. They are long and even when part of a series, come out generally at a rate of less than once release per year. Series which run past three installments tend to accumulate scorn from reviewers. But hang on, you wouldn't scorn a TV show that runs past four episodes, would you? TV shows may well run for 12 episodes per season for about four seasons. Doctor Who has about 12 episodes per season and has been running (with a 19 year gap just where my childhood was, thanks a LOT! Grr!) since the 60's!
So why not release small games as episodes which are all part of a running storyarc (season) for download and a small price as Telltale do, then when a season is complete, you can buy the whole season of games on a single DVD or 'full download' at a slight discount on the price of buying them individually.
People may well pay the higher price to get the games as they come out. It's like with comics, I pay the £2.50 for an issue of Runaways every month, while with other comics, I may wait for the trade paperback and buy a year's worth for about a tenner.
If you have a distribution system like 'Steam', downloading the latest installment could be really easy. Hey, wait! You could even subscribe, like a podcast, and your computer would automatically download the new episodes when they came out and pay the subscription fee, then notify you it was ready to play.
This not only changes the way we buy and play games, but perhaps the way we make them.
If we assume a game is episodic, we can make it like a comic series, sitcom, soap opera or ongoing drama, with recurring characters and perhaps locations.
Things that wouldn't perhaps work so well with episodes:
-RPGs where you level up. Though the 'Neverwinter Nights' games are sort of released episodically and allow you to import your character from a previous game and some are stories which deliberately follow on to allow this, such as 'Shadow of Undrentide'>'Hordes of the Underdark' and NWN2 Original Campaign> 'Mask of the Betrayer', which assume the same character and continue at a starting level around the character's ending level, this can be a game balance nightmare. The more linear and predictable the item and skill accumulation is, the easier this would become. NWN's Dungeons and Dragons based ruleset comes in handy here because balance is worked out with 'Encounter Levels' and 'Recommended loot per level' tables.
-Sandbox games. Episodic gaming works much better in linear games, because we can predict better what level, ability and storyline points a character has reached at the end of an area if the area is scripted to give x items, experience and exposition.
Short games for lower prices which come out regularly like episodes of a TV show seem to be appearing. Half Life 2 is using this technique, along with the Adventure Games by 'Telltale', such as 'Sam and Max' and 'Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People' (best title ever).
Up until now, we have thought of games as being like films. They are long and even when part of a series, come out generally at a rate of less than once release per year. Series which run past three installments tend to accumulate scorn from reviewers. But hang on, you wouldn't scorn a TV show that runs past four episodes, would you? TV shows may well run for 12 episodes per season for about four seasons. Doctor Who has about 12 episodes per season and has been running (with a 19 year gap just where my childhood was, thanks a LOT! Grr!) since the 60's!
So why not release small games as episodes which are all part of a running storyarc (season) for download and a small price as Telltale do, then when a season is complete, you can buy the whole season of games on a single DVD or 'full download' at a slight discount on the price of buying them individually.
People may well pay the higher price to get the games as they come out. It's like with comics, I pay the £2.50 for an issue of Runaways every month, while with other comics, I may wait for the trade paperback and buy a year's worth for about a tenner.
If you have a distribution system like 'Steam', downloading the latest installment could be really easy. Hey, wait! You could even subscribe, like a podcast, and your computer would automatically download the new episodes when they came out and pay the subscription fee, then notify you it was ready to play.
This not only changes the way we buy and play games, but perhaps the way we make them.
If we assume a game is episodic, we can make it like a comic series, sitcom, soap opera or ongoing drama, with recurring characters and perhaps locations.
Things that wouldn't perhaps work so well with episodes:
-RPGs where you level up. Though the 'Neverwinter Nights' games are sort of released episodically and allow you to import your character from a previous game and some are stories which deliberately follow on to allow this, such as 'Shadow of Undrentide'>'Hordes of the Underdark' and NWN2 Original Campaign> 'Mask of the Betrayer', which assume the same character and continue at a starting level around the character's ending level, this can be a game balance nightmare. The more linear and predictable the item and skill accumulation is, the easier this would become. NWN's Dungeons and Dragons based ruleset comes in handy here because balance is worked out with 'Encounter Levels' and 'Recommended loot per level' tables.
-Sandbox games. Episodic gaming works much better in linear games, because we can predict better what level, ability and storyline points a character has reached at the end of an area if the area is scripted to give x items, experience and exposition.
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
AI based games
Having looked at Radiant AI and the game 'Façade' , it comes to mind that it's likely in the future that a game could be made which is completely open ended, like Oblivion, but with no linear aspect at all. Characters would interact with each other, with the environment and with you the player. They'd interact all over the game world, even where your character wasn't, living out lives based not on pre-scripted behaviour, but based on an ability to make complex choices, taking into account:
Bodily functions, basic desires (rest, food, comfort, procreation) Social constructs and restrictions, long term goals and personal morals and feelings.
I was disappointed, the first time I played 'The Sims' by how stupid they were. If left to their AI, they simply didn't seem to be able to cope. Within minutes they were skipping work and getting fired, peeing on the floor, waking each other up with loud noises... It was frustrating, because I wanted to watch them learn and adapt to each other and start running a home as best they could based on their personality traits.
If you could get complex enough AI, you would be able to do fascinating things. Simulation of relationships between family members and friends, interaction of tribes and social groups, realistic battle simulations etc. Perhaps a character, on gaining power, would become an evil overlord, and then people would rise up against them for the greater good. The player would be able to fight with the revolution or maybe try to get hired by the overlord as a bodyguard, or try to earn their trust and assasinate them. I doubt AI will get that complex for many years yet.
As a comic artist, I'm used to thinking of my characters as real people. I can easily know what the character would do or say in a situation, be it social or combat. Should an NPC always follow orders to the letter? I don't really think they should. I think they should behave with consistent internal logic to that character. NPCs with personality and common sense would be a real asset in a lot of games. At the moment, we can see the effect of a sandbox physics pack in 'Garry's Mod' where you can put things together and see what happens. What about a sandbox AI simulator where you could put a bunch of people in a house, say a smarmy lawyer, a gruff marine and a sensitive artist together in a house and watch them interact. Then you could drop in some guns and surround the house with zombies and see how they interact.
Suppose each character has stats sliders, but they're personality stats, like this:
Introversion (contemplative) - Extroversion (active)
Intuition (works on internal guessing) - Sensing (Works on external cues)
Thinking (Objective) - Feeling (subjective)
Judging (Measures things by numbers/facts) - Percieving (Judges things by what looks right)
That's just using basic Jungian archetypes. Imagine if we throw in a choice of a character's social status and morality. You would find characters start to act very differently from each other. An intuitive extrovert may immediately grab a gun and start blasting zombies, while an introverted senser may start to look around for another option, such as 'is there anything I can use to make a barricade?'.
As well as a useful thing for simulations (such as predicting what might happen if a disaster happened in a major city) you could use it to make highly immersive games, where firing a gun in public creates a realistic reaction (some people try to run, others hide, others ask what you're doing, some may even attack and try to get the gun off you). Rather than a universal reaction like, 'All citizens run away, all cops attack'.
Bodily functions, basic desires (rest, food, comfort, procreation) Social constructs and restrictions, long term goals and personal morals and feelings.
I was disappointed, the first time I played 'The Sims' by how stupid they were. If left to their AI, they simply didn't seem to be able to cope. Within minutes they were skipping work and getting fired, peeing on the floor, waking each other up with loud noises... It was frustrating, because I wanted to watch them learn and adapt to each other and start running a home as best they could based on their personality traits.
If you could get complex enough AI, you would be able to do fascinating things. Simulation of relationships between family members and friends, interaction of tribes and social groups, realistic battle simulations etc. Perhaps a character, on gaining power, would become an evil overlord, and then people would rise up against them for the greater good. The player would be able to fight with the revolution or maybe try to get hired by the overlord as a bodyguard, or try to earn their trust and assasinate them. I doubt AI will get that complex for many years yet.
As a comic artist, I'm used to thinking of my characters as real people. I can easily know what the character would do or say in a situation, be it social or combat. Should an NPC always follow orders to the letter? I don't really think they should. I think they should behave with consistent internal logic to that character. NPCs with personality and common sense would be a real asset in a lot of games. At the moment, we can see the effect of a sandbox physics pack in 'Garry's Mod' where you can put things together and see what happens. What about a sandbox AI simulator where you could put a bunch of people in a house, say a smarmy lawyer, a gruff marine and a sensitive artist together in a house and watch them interact. Then you could drop in some guns and surround the house with zombies and see how they interact.
Suppose each character has stats sliders, but they're personality stats, like this:
Introversion (contemplative) - Extroversion (active)
Intuition (works on internal guessing) - Sensing (Works on external cues)
Thinking (Objective) - Feeling (subjective)
Judging (Measures things by numbers/facts) - Percieving (Judges things by what looks right)
That's just using basic Jungian archetypes. Imagine if we throw in a choice of a character's social status and morality. You would find characters start to act very differently from each other. An intuitive extrovert may immediately grab a gun and start blasting zombies, while an introverted senser may start to look around for another option, such as 'is there anything I can use to make a barricade?'.
As well as a useful thing for simulations (such as predicting what might happen if a disaster happened in a major city) you could use it to make highly immersive games, where firing a gun in public creates a realistic reaction (some people try to run, others hide, others ask what you're doing, some may even attack and try to get the gun off you). Rather than a universal reaction like, 'All citizens run away, all cops attack'.
An interesting article
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3913/the_designers_notebook_numbers_.php
Just read this article on Gamasutra about simulating complex character development.
It kind of reminds me of when I was looking into Radiant AI, the AI used in 'Oblivion'. In the finished version of the game, characters were programmed with a set list of things they needed to do. This is actually highly simplified from the original version of the game. The designers found that characters came out extremely chaotic and unpredictable with the original, more advanced, AI. An example included town guards. Their job is to patrol towns to make sure people aren't breaking the rules. One of the guards became hungry (because all NPCs, even in the new version of the AI, must eat something every so often) and went to get some food. The other guards, noticing he'd abandoned his post, a crime, went after him to arrest the errant guard. In the absence of any guards, the townspeople ran amok, looting and killing! Presumably they were programmed to follow rules if they were in a situation where not doing so would result in trouble.
This video shows how the old AI was:
Just read this article on Gamasutra about simulating complex character development.
It kind of reminds me of when I was looking into Radiant AI, the AI used in 'Oblivion'. In the finished version of the game, characters were programmed with a set list of things they needed to do. This is actually highly simplified from the original version of the game. The designers found that characters came out extremely chaotic and unpredictable with the original, more advanced, AI. An example included town guards. Their job is to patrol towns to make sure people aren't breaking the rules. One of the guards became hungry (because all NPCs, even in the new version of the AI, must eat something every so often) and went to get some food. The other guards, noticing he'd abandoned his post, a crime, went after him to arrest the errant guard. In the absence of any guards, the townspeople ran amok, looting and killing! Presumably they were programmed to follow rules if they were in a situation where not doing so would result in trouble.
This video shows how the old AI was:
Tuesday, 27 January 2009
Little Big Planet
Little Big Planet is an interesting game. Some notes:
1. Use of natural materials. The levels are build from fabric, wood and similar. This is interesting. It gives the impression that the levels have been 'built' rather than being a collection of data. This makes the game accessible to technophobes because it's built in the language of reality. People may not understand units and polygons, but they do understand stickers, wooden blocks and string. By turning elements of a video game into metaphors from reality, you make a game that's easy to understand.
2. Stephen Fry. Comforting, familiar voice, associated with culture, comedy and literature. This, again, distances the game from the view of 'pow pow zap! Video game!" and makes it a more open experience for the non-gamer. It also makes the game feel tied to British humour, such as 'The Hitchhiker's Guide', immediately setting a tone of fun and whimsy.
3. Customisation. People love to collect and customise things. I remember in Year 10 of high school, we'd get these big silver folders for Design lessons. It was par for the course that you decorated your DT folder with stickers and drew on it with permanent markers. I used to look at my older sister's thinking "that's so cool!" it had pictures of the members of 'Blur' on it, and messages left by her friends. I couldn't wait to get my own! We were all so excited when we got to year 10 ourselves and were handed our big silver folders to customise. People like to make their mark and express their personality, so making a game all about that is a good idea.
4. Simplicity. When I was a kid, games were simple. My Master System had two buttons. Sonic the Hedgehog only used one! It seems like since then, games have become more and more complex, suffering often from 'feature creep', where games designers think 'hey, let's throw an unskippable racing minigame into this RPG! That's a good idea!' Simplicity isn't a bad thing and shouldn't be feared. Simple games are great, I can play them with my non-Gamer friends and even my Dad! (Mum is just a lost cause). The Wii is good for this, but it's nice to see the PS getting in on the action.
Little Big Planet is a game in which you kind of make your own game. It's like being given a big tub of Lego. First you can build the stuff on the reference sheets that come with the lego, but you're likely to, after a while, want to build your own creations. The game gives the player exactly the tools to do this, then to show what you've made and let other people join in with the play.
Even one player games can be shared experiences. Cosplay (dressing up as game characters, yes, I have done this myself), fanfiction (...okay, yes, I may have written some fanfic in my teens...), fanart (...yes. I'm a total geek, of course I have) and fan games (...I've never actually completed a fangame, but I have dabbled in these waters) are all ways of interacting with the game and with the community. People discuss favourite characters and story points, tell stories about them, boast about achievements and the game becomes something shared. LBP taps into the idea of the gamer as part of a worldwide community and a sort of collective conciousness.
1. Use of natural materials. The levels are build from fabric, wood and similar. This is interesting. It gives the impression that the levels have been 'built' rather than being a collection of data. This makes the game accessible to technophobes because it's built in the language of reality. People may not understand units and polygons, but they do understand stickers, wooden blocks and string. By turning elements of a video game into metaphors from reality, you make a game that's easy to understand.
2. Stephen Fry. Comforting, familiar voice, associated with culture, comedy and literature. This, again, distances the game from the view of 'pow pow zap! Video game!" and makes it a more open experience for the non-gamer. It also makes the game feel tied to British humour, such as 'The Hitchhiker's Guide', immediately setting a tone of fun and whimsy.
3. Customisation. People love to collect and customise things. I remember in Year 10 of high school, we'd get these big silver folders for Design lessons. It was par for the course that you decorated your DT folder with stickers and drew on it with permanent markers. I used to look at my older sister's thinking "that's so cool!" it had pictures of the members of 'Blur' on it, and messages left by her friends. I couldn't wait to get my own! We were all so excited when we got to year 10 ourselves and were handed our big silver folders to customise. People like to make their mark and express their personality, so making a game all about that is a good idea.
4. Simplicity. When I was a kid, games were simple. My Master System had two buttons. Sonic the Hedgehog only used one! It seems like since then, games have become more and more complex, suffering often from 'feature creep', where games designers think 'hey, let's throw an unskippable racing minigame into this RPG! That's a good idea!' Simplicity isn't a bad thing and shouldn't be feared. Simple games are great, I can play them with my non-Gamer friends and even my Dad! (Mum is just a lost cause). The Wii is good for this, but it's nice to see the PS getting in on the action.
Little Big Planet is a game in which you kind of make your own game. It's like being given a big tub of Lego. First you can build the stuff on the reference sheets that come with the lego, but you're likely to, after a while, want to build your own creations. The game gives the player exactly the tools to do this, then to show what you've made and let other people join in with the play.
Even one player games can be shared experiences. Cosplay (dressing up as game characters, yes, I have done this myself), fanfiction (...okay, yes, I may have written some fanfic in my teens...), fanart (...yes. I'm a total geek, of course I have) and fan games (...I've never actually completed a fangame, but I have dabbled in these waters) are all ways of interacting with the game and with the community. People discuss favourite characters and story points, tell stories about them, boast about achievements and the game becomes something shared. LBP taps into the idea of the gamer as part of a worldwide community and a sort of collective conciousness.
Sunday, 25 January 2009
Setting games in the here and now
Games seem to have a distinct reluctance to use present-day settings.
I find this slightly strange really. Think about how many movies there are which are set very clearly in the time at which they were filmed. Now think about games. Hm, okay, we have 'Grand Theft Auto', er...
Admittedly most games don't involve huge amounts of mundane everyday detail, which is what tends to make the setting clear. So if a game is like 'Mercenaries' and set in a warzone, it's quite hard to tell. Still, most games are set in fantasy lands, in the past, the future or an alternate past or future (or even an alternate present!).
If you consider that the lifespan of a game is often shorter than the lifespan of a film, due to quickly evolving technology, and that people don't mind if a film is clearly set when it was made, it makes you wonder really. It generally takes about ten years for something to begin to feel like it's not up-to-date fashion, dialect and technology wise as far as setting and dialogue go. Do we play ten year old games much? Not that often, really. What ten year old games do I play? The odd 'Final Fantasy' on the PSX when feeling nostalgic, maybe a little 'Master of Orion II', 'Baldur's Gate 2', perhaps. So of all the thousands and thousands of games that have come out and I've played, very few I still play now.
The only games which frequently go out of their way to be up to the minute and are very aware they will date are sports games.
Why not assume people mostly won't be playing my games in 5 years time, and the few who are probably won't care if it's dated? After all, I would still watch a ten or twenty year old film and enjoy the film, understanding that it is set in the time in which it was made. Maybe not every film from that period would be worth watching, but the good ones stand up to this day.
Something I heard said of 'Wallace and Gromit' is that "If you want to make something universal, make it very specific". Wallace and Gromit are clearly situated in Lancashire (Preston, in fact, though they never say they are, look at the backgrounds, the fact that Nick Park is from Preston and that in a short it was shown that Wallace supports Preston NE Football club!) in a nostalgic and rose-tinted 1950s-ish time. Does this mean that people who have never been to the North of England can't relate to them or find them funny? Aparently not.
Games seem reluctant, generally, to use a setting that's simply a realistic representation of the place in which they were made. I can't think of a game that takes place in contemporary britain. Well, maybe one or two may have some representation of central London, now I think about it. London isn't really the same as typical suburban England though.
Many of the comics I've been looking at for inspiration on gamer/alt/geek culture are very clearly set in everyday urban or suburban life.
http://www.scarygoround.com/
Scary Go Round is set in the present day, and, in fact, practically in real time. The characters celebrate christmas and new year at those times of year, and their ages aren't frozen in time. The setting is present day Lancashire (though the specific town is fictional), reflected in the fashion, speech and technology of their surroundings. This makes the surreal happenings, like robots and ghosts, more engaging, because they are juxtaposed against a mundane setting.
http://www.scottpilgrim.com/
Scott Pilgrim, similarly, is set in modern day Canada, and even in a specific, real city, Toronto. Many of the locations used are real places. The fashion, like SGR, reflects contemporary urban indie fashion. Again, surrealism is used. In Scott Pilgrim, video game logic is applied to the real world quite often. Energy drinks give +1 to 'will' and Scott gets showered with small change for defeating enemies, as well as being able to 'counter reverse' punches and level up.
So, setting a game in a clear representation of present day England, then adding surreal elements, may lead to a more distinctive look and feel and an engaging story.
I find this slightly strange really. Think about how many movies there are which are set very clearly in the time at which they were filmed. Now think about games. Hm, okay, we have 'Grand Theft Auto', er...
Admittedly most games don't involve huge amounts of mundane everyday detail, which is what tends to make the setting clear. So if a game is like 'Mercenaries' and set in a warzone, it's quite hard to tell. Still, most games are set in fantasy lands, in the past, the future or an alternate past or future (or even an alternate present!).
If you consider that the lifespan of a game is often shorter than the lifespan of a film, due to quickly evolving technology, and that people don't mind if a film is clearly set when it was made, it makes you wonder really. It generally takes about ten years for something to begin to feel like it's not up-to-date fashion, dialect and technology wise as far as setting and dialogue go. Do we play ten year old games much? Not that often, really. What ten year old games do I play? The odd 'Final Fantasy' on the PSX when feeling nostalgic, maybe a little 'Master of Orion II', 'Baldur's Gate 2', perhaps. So of all the thousands and thousands of games that have come out and I've played, very few I still play now.
The only games which frequently go out of their way to be up to the minute and are very aware they will date are sports games.
Why not assume people mostly won't be playing my games in 5 years time, and the few who are probably won't care if it's dated? After all, I would still watch a ten or twenty year old film and enjoy the film, understanding that it is set in the time in which it was made. Maybe not every film from that period would be worth watching, but the good ones stand up to this day.
Something I heard said of 'Wallace and Gromit' is that "If you want to make something universal, make it very specific". Wallace and Gromit are clearly situated in Lancashire (Preston, in fact, though they never say they are, look at the backgrounds, the fact that Nick Park is from Preston and that in a short it was shown that Wallace supports Preston NE Football club!) in a nostalgic and rose-tinted 1950s-ish time. Does this mean that people who have never been to the North of England can't relate to them or find them funny? Aparently not.
Games seem reluctant, generally, to use a setting that's simply a realistic representation of the place in which they were made. I can't think of a game that takes place in contemporary britain. Well, maybe one or two may have some representation of central London, now I think about it. London isn't really the same as typical suburban England though.
Many of the comics I've been looking at for inspiration on gamer/alt/geek culture are very clearly set in everyday urban or suburban life.
http://www.scarygoround.com/
Scary Go Round is set in the present day, and, in fact, practically in real time. The characters celebrate christmas and new year at those times of year, and their ages aren't frozen in time. The setting is present day Lancashire (though the specific town is fictional), reflected in the fashion, speech and technology of their surroundings. This makes the surreal happenings, like robots and ghosts, more engaging, because they are juxtaposed against a mundane setting.
http://www.scottpilgrim.com/
Scott Pilgrim, similarly, is set in modern day Canada, and even in a specific, real city, Toronto. Many of the locations used are real places. The fashion, like SGR, reflects contemporary urban indie fashion. Again, surrealism is used. In Scott Pilgrim, video game logic is applied to the real world quite often. Energy drinks give +1 to 'will' and Scott gets showered with small change for defeating enemies, as well as being able to 'counter reverse' punches and level up.
So, setting a game in a clear representation of present day England, then adding surreal elements, may lead to a more distinctive look and feel and an engaging story.
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