General gaming |
- The End of the Adventure Game Blank Slate
- OP-ED: Emotional Games Require Time and Expertise, Not Photorealism
- The Most Unrelatable Narrators in Gaming
| The End of the Adventure Game Blank Slate Posted: 02 Aug 2012 02:03 PM PDT
Feature 1UP COVER STORY  1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JULY 30 | NARRATIVE IN GAMES The End of the Adventure Game Blank SlateCover Story: Advances in technology allowed for greater stories, but at the cost of player agency.T he earliest video games never focused much on telling stories. Sure, Pac-Man featured some charming interludes and Donkey Kong presented a beginning-to-end narrative, but, outside of whatever poorly written paragraphs existed on their cabinets, video games entered this world as a test of reflexes, not a means of weaving a grand tale. Outside the arcade, though, existed a much greater world of opportunity; hobbyists rich enough to dive into the monstrously expensive world of home computing in the early '80s knew that games could be capable of more -- albeit, without any graphics to speak of. The widely plagiarized Adventure and Infocom's Zork set the standard for story-based games on the fringes of an industry primarily fueled by quarters; these "second-person" adventures transformed the player into the protagonist, and tasked them with goals more complicated than munching dots and shooting down space bugs. Soon, graphics entered the world of gaming with Sierra's Mystery House, which sparked a movement that promised a new kind of storytelling -- one where we could jump into the shoes of a nameless hero, and warp the plot as we saw fit. It's really no surprise that the wildly popular (and now hilariously antiquated) Choose Your Own Adventure book series started around this time. |
| OP-ED: Emotional Games Require Time and Expertise, Not Photorealism Posted: 02 Aug 2012 12:49 PM PDT Technological advances are slowly but surely making it possible for game developers to get closer and closer to graphics which are indistinguishable from the real world -- just look at the recent Unreal Engine 4 or Agni's Philosophy demos to see where we're headed. Setting aside the issue of rising development costs, providing developers with the hardware to handle the games they want to make is undoubtedly a good thing, knowing that even with something like Crysis 3 in the works, we can still have games that look like Dyad or Penny Arcade Episode 3. But are these strides in visual quality a step that is needed to open up new genres and allow certain emotions to be evoked? That's the position taken by 2K Games President Christoph Hartmann who, when asked about veteran game designer Warren Spector's position on games being too centered around violence, told GamesIndustry.biz that he believes the interactivity in games makes it difficult to evoke the same emotions that movies do. |
| The Most Unrelatable Narrators in Gaming Posted: 02 Aug 2012 12:19 PM PDT
Feature 1UP COVER STORY  1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF JULY 30 | NARRATIVE IN GAMES The Most Unrelatable Narrators in GamingCover Story: Main characters that you can't quite click with.T here's nothing quite like being able to really relate to the main character of a game. Having the ability to sympathize and empathize with your avatar does wonders to strengthen your bond with the story and allows you to really immerse yourself in a world. Having worked some pretty awful jobs in the past, I completely understand Manny's 9-5 apathy in Grim Fandango. Likewise, if my wife and kid got offed in a particularly gruesome manner, I'd be as much of a pissed off drunk as Max Payne is. And who doesn't love chasing ghosts, popping pills, and falling in love like Pac-Man? But what about those moments where you really enjoy a game in spite of its main character?  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from 1UP RSS feed To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
