Systems versus Stories

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-06-22-systems-vs-stories

Video games are the perfect entry for the poor-man's film maker, or poor-man's writer now. See David Cage or Hamburger Derpler.

All games considered classics corroborate that statement, with few exceptions like PS:T or TLJ. But these exceptions aren't trying to ape cinema, because they're written by people with mostly game designer background, not people with an AFI film school background.

...and then came Thi4f. All hopes immediately shattered.

The game as an immersive sim is dead. Long live the dumbfuckery!

 

Well the article has it right that systems are more important than stories in a video game.

(Unless you're Warren Spector, of course.)

I hope that kind of assessment becomes more widespread among games journalists and developers alike.

 

It should be self evident. A system is the very essence of what a game is.

 

What I don't get is why so many designers these days tend to avoid the use of systems period. A great example is Thief 4 - in it, you can only lean at pre-defined spots in the world instead of anywhere. Why? It's not really clear, though I suspect it has something to do with the animations involved - making it "more cinematic" or "more immersive" to show Garret's hands wrapped around the corner of a wall or a ledge. Yet this decision actually requires more work from the level designers to implement due to having to mark every wall as "leanable", and it reduces immersion because the player has substantially limited capabilities that the game unreasonably restricts for no reason other than to make presentation a little prettier.

The fact is that often making interesting systems and mechanics is easier to do than scripting everything by hand, tightly controlling exactly what the player can do, etc. Furthermore it's much more rewarding and feels more natural for players to have full control over their game experience at all times rather than being told exactly what to do and how to do it, and being punished for deviating in the slightest. Failure states and success states should come from mastery of mechanics and systems, not from following directions to the letter, with the extent of your success a product of how uncreative you are.

There's a place for those teams of hundreds or thousands, but it's in creating content intelligently. A great example of this is the Assassin's Creed series of games. Say what you will, but these games are mostly mechanics-driven and have some smart level and game design. However, the sheer quantity of art assets, the quality of the presentation in cutscenes, and so on all speak to the game's huge budget and the sheer amount of work put into it. It doesn't have to be a 100% scripted, completely linear experience that sacrifices its game mechanics for looking pretty. Obviously the games have their share of issues but none of them are a result of cinematic flair overriding gameplay.

 

Doesn't it have to do with console limitations? I seem to recall the recent Sneaky Bastards' preview (or was it another preview?) mention they didn't make all walls climbable because of the consoles' RAM limit or something.

 

Or, as they also said, you can design levels so this isn't a problem. And no, I don't think being able to lean or not at a given spot will save much memory, unless the consoles are pressed so far to their limits that even the few kilobytes saving that code in memory requires actually makes a difference. If so, then I think I could do with sacrificing a little bit of memory in the graphics - the fact that visuals actually override advancements in gameplay shows just how fucking stupid the producers and designers on this game really are.

Reminds me of Mass Effect 3 and how you can't holster or take out your gun whenever you want because the consoles can't fit the two different game states in memory at once... all because the devs had to make things prettier (and the game still doesn't look that great). Ridiculous.

 

That most "game designers" aren't good enough to design good mechanics, isn't much of a surprise, really. It's always been a pretty unique and rare ability, just judging by all the games released in the past three decades.

Which makes it even more of a shame that many of the really talented designers, who used to make good games, are now involved with popamole AAA projects. Like Doug Church, for example.

 

The problem with this shit is the guy thinks AAA isn't basically gonna poison any game design, which it does. The games can't be loseable, they can't require practice, you can't have to read a manual to play, they have to appeal to both 11 year olds that need a video babysitter and 40 year old buzzed guys that want to relax after work. What AAA can do is put really expensive assets on expensive engines. Which is why moviegames "work" for the AAA system.

And AAA is not about low risk money making, the way a guy with a hot dog cart is trying to make money. It is a financial phenomenon about digesting huge investment.

 

Well Doug basically has a niche cult following so it isn't much of a surprise everyone's asking him to give their game a look.

 

This is true to an extent. There is a place for such expensive, bloated games - because when they hit, they hit hard and make tons of money for those involved. That's great, and I don't think anyone is objecting to the fact that triple-A games exist. The problem is when you have most major studios only chasing the big payday, the golden goose, to the exclusion of everything else. When you win, you win big. When you fail, a thousand people lose their jobs, except the people who ordered that game be made in the first place. That's a stupid, stupid way to run a business, because it takes for granted everything from producing a company culture, to an established and experienced work force that knows its craft well.

Even the biggest film studios know you need to have a diverse stable of features every year, from your romantic comedies, to your big budget action flicks, to your low-key dramas, to your yearly Oscar bait. It's like the games industry tries to combine all of those things into one and usually fails miserably, if not necessarily financially then in terms of the experiences it produces. The smartest way for a business to expand, especially once market saturation has been reached, is to diversify its range of products, and this is something which very few traditional games companies seem to understand.

Not everyone wants big-budget AAA games, and I think the rise of casual/smartphone gaming, free-to-play MMOs, small-budget indie games and other similar markets completely separate from the big traditional studios, and their subsequent inability to succeed in these fields, shows how little they truly understand what they're doing.

 

In its highest form, game story is what happens when the player is interacting with the system.

 

Strong agree. The best story in a game for me was the ones I used to make up playing Civilization II as a child.

 

Games are the kind of entertainment with unique strength of letting the player co-author stories.

The only way to let player do that to any meaningful degree is systems.

Static, predefined stories only work well as historical background, and still benefit from being explored interactively.

 

Lack of system is the reason I can't stomach quests.

 

I don't think I can really agree. Not because I think most game designers can design good mechanics (obviously), but because many games that succeeded because they let players interact with their systems were hardly good systemically. Merely rich.

Of course good systems are highly desirable but sheer quantity of interlocking systems is more important than quality of any individual one.

Case in point: Deus Ex.

None of Deus Ex's systems is particularily stellar. Combat is clunky, stealth is derpy, AI is none too bright, breaking in is rudimentary, while hacking is poor and has critical flaw of making you non-target as long as you're logged in.
Together they still form a great bundle of awesome.

Well, even pretty dismal quests can be salvaged if they are minimally scripted and give room for player using systems to achieve their goals.
This is an actual case of less is more.

 

Gaming Systems > Gaming Stories