NSFW Best Thread Ever [No SJW-related posts allowed]

[Roguey]

What the fuck, no branching dialogue? Warren Spector is a fucking idiot, no wonder he went to do Mickey Mouse shit.

He had/has an axe to grind against dialogue systems. From my previous link:

No one has yet devised and/or implemented an artful, compelling, interesting, or believable conversation system in a computer RPG. That includes everything I've done and everything you've done. No one has come up with a system that -doesn't draw you out of the game world and remind you that you're just manipulating pixels on a screen. In the absence of anything better, let's look at some of the approaches that we've tried in the past.

First, there are branching-tree/keyword systems. If you've played just about any computer RPG of the last 15 years, you're familiar with these. Any Ultima game and, more recently, Fallout will introduce you to the concept, if you're unfamiliar with it (Figure 5). In this system, players read or listen to a bit of dialogue "spoken" by an NPC and are then offered a number of response options (or are given the opportunity to type in whatever they want). Picking one of these options or typing in a likely keyword sends the NPC into another speech. Making a selection typically prevents the player from getting the information he or she would have gotten by picking another of the available response options. Eventually, the NPC runs out of things to say along a particular branch and the conversation ends, leaving the player either to start the whole conversation over and make different response option choices in an attempt to elicit additional information from the NPC, or to go talk to someone else.

The problem is that clicking through a bunch of conversation options doesn't feel much like a conversation - an interrogation, perhaps, but not a conversation. Additionally, keywords and branching trees turn the conversations themselves into puzzles. Can you guess which branch the designer wanted you to go down? The opportunity and, more often, the necessity of talking to each NPC multiple times to be sure you ferreted out the critical nugget of information or set the one necessary conversation flag is a pain and drains conversations of their emotional impact.
...
Perhaps the best thing that can be said about conversation in computer gaming is that players have grown accustomed to inelegant, unrealistic, basically unbelievable systems and cardboard cut-out NPCs. Until someone comes up with something better, you can always fall back on convention, a fact that Doug and the System Shock team didn't consider very seriously. Players "get" branching-tree/keyword systems - they're so familiar with them that they -don't even think about them much anymore. And that's about the best that you can hope for - that conversation --won't drag players out of your carefully crafted alternate world too badly. I await the day when voice recognition, natural language processors, basic knowledge databases, and speech synthesis become realistic options.

Thirteen years later: welp,

 

[Infinitron]

I wonder what he thought of Alpha Protocol. The ultimate Spectorian game?

 

[dnf]

I think Warren is just like that other developers that deal with Cleve. Full of bullshit

 

[Jarpie]

What the fuck, no branching dialogue? Warren Spector is a fucking idiot, no wonder he went to do Mickey Mouse shit.

He had/has an axe to grind against dialogue systems. From my previous link:

No one has yet devised and/or implemented an artful, compelling, interesting, or believable conversation system in a computer RPG. That includes everything I've done and everything you've done. No one has come up with a system that -doesn't draw you out of the game world and remind you that you're just manipulating pixels on a screen. In the absence of anything better, let's look at some of the approaches that we've tried in the past.

First, there are branching-tree/keyword systems. If you've played just about any computer RPG of the last 15 years, you're familiar with these. Any Ultima game and, more recently, Fallout will introduce you to the concept, if you're unfamiliar with it (Figure 5). In this system, players read or listen to a bit of dialogue "spoken" by an NPC and are then offered a number of response options (or are given the opportunity to type in whatever they want). Picking one of these options or typing in a likely keyword sends the NPC into another speech. Making a selection typically prevents the player from getting the information he or she would have gotten by picking another of the available response options. Eventually, the NPC runs out of things to say along a particular branch and the conversation ends, leaving the player either to start the whole conversation over and make different response option choices in an attempt to elicit additional information from the NPC, or to go talk to someone else.

The problem is that clicking through a bunch of conversation options doesn't feel much like a conversation - an interrogation, perhaps, but not a conversation. Additionally, keywords and branching trees turn the conversations themselves into puzzles. Can you guess which branch the designer wanted you to go down? The opportunity and, more often, the necessity of talking to each NPC multiple times to be sure you ferreted out the critical nugget of information or set the one necessary conversation flag is a pain and drains conversations of their emotional impact.
...
Perhaps the best thing that can be said about conversation in computer gaming is that players have grown accustomed to inelegant, unrealistic, basically unbelievable systems and cardboard cut-out NPCs. Until someone comes up with something better, you can always fall back on convention, a fact that Doug and the System Shock team didn't consider very seriously. Players "get" branching-tree/keyword systems - they're so familiar with them that they -don't even think about them much anymore. And that's about the best that you can hope for - that conversation --won't drag players out of your carefully crafted alternate world too badly. I await the day when voice recognition, natural language processors, basic knowledge databases, and speech synthesis become realistic options.

Thirteen years later: welp,

That is so much full of bullshit, voice recognition? Fuck you Spector. He probably loves Mass Effect and dialogue wheel.

 

[Angthoron]

I wonder what he thought of Alpha Protocol. The ultimate Spectorian game?

Mike Thornton, the Full Spector Warrior?

 

[Gerrard]

PREPARE FOR RETARDO

Why we need to kill gameplay to make better games

Haha, oh fuck it's Chmielarz again.

Guy is a lost cause.

 

[hoverdog]

too much vodka, not enough potato.

 

[Shadenuat]

Monster Girl Quest cosplay

Monster Girl

Waiting for third part to see world full of naked winged girls!

--aahem. You never seen me post this.

 

[Gragt]

I suffered through it but mostly to see what retarded monster would appear next.

 

[Excidium]

Aren't the monster girls just a bunch of retarded lolis with appendages? What a shitty "game".

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Finally we get the mod we were all waiting for. Mortal Kombain introduce 1-on-1 fighting in Farming Simulator 2013.

Enjoy the violence!

 

[evdk]

Man, fuck Sabaton.

 

[DraQ]

PREPARE FOR RETARDO

Why we need to kill gameplay to make better games

​

​

We love video games for being video games, right? At least that’s what I thought all my life. But after a reboot of my designer brain happened, I was stunned with the discovery that it might not necessarily be true.
I mean, I still like video games when they are video games. It’s just that I love them when they are not.
Let’s do a little experiment.
Listed below, there are five well known action-adventure games. Think about your favorite, most memorable moments from the single player part of each, then click on the + spoiler button and see if I have managed to guess any of these moments.

BIOSHOCK
First ten minutes. Entering Rapture. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeNtHY8Igf0
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2
No Russian. You take part in an airport massacre of hundreds of civilians. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-9_82sEzbE
GRAND THEFT AUTO 3+
Driving around, listening to the radio.
RED DEAD REDEMPTION
Riding into Mexico, accompanied by a moody song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oWKCp102ic
UNCHARTED 3
The desert section. Dehydrated, tired Drake walks in circles in the desert’s heat and cold for two days. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f4YJV9U_RA

What do all these moments have in common?
They are game-free. They are gameplay-less.
That’s right. You heard me.
If we understand gameplay as something that a challenge is a crucial part of, then none of these moments features any gameplay. You just walk, or swim, or ride a horse, but that’s it. You cannot die. You don’t make choices that have any long term consequences. No skill is involved.
There is no gameplay.
In other words, certain things worth remembering from certain video games are not what these video games are all about.
That’s fucked up.
But also great.
Because it means we still don’t understand video games. And if love them so much already,imagine what will happen when one day we will actually understand them.
There’s more.
If you read discussions like Most Jaw-dropping Scenery or Sequence in a Game you can see that the things that people remember from their favorite games are:

• Beautiful places
• One off events like a helicopter boss fight or escaping a house on fire
• Gameplay-less experiences like exploration or short interactive dramas

And, on the other hand, in threads like that no one ever talks about the regular gameplay. No one mentions combat zones, jumping sequences, or enemy variety.
In other words, game experiences we love to share with others are usually not about the regular second to second gameplay. Our brains don’t consider it worth remembering, and the only thing we usually have to say for it – especially months or years after we finish the game – is that “the gameplay was cool”.

​

Is there an explanation?
I think so, and I also think you’ve heard that one before. It’s just weird that not many people do anything with it.
I think than when we’re focused on overcoming a challenge – we try to kill an attacker or win a race – we go into savage beast’s survival mode and shut ourselves down for any “higher class” emotions. Our vision gets extremely narrow, and we’re no longer multi-tasking. Beating the challenge becomes the only thing that matters.
The best example is QTEs. You either engage in them emotionally or win them, but you cannot do both at the same time.
Does it mean that if you want a deeply emotional game, you should drop regular gameplay, with all its core combat loops, gameplay mechanics and other voodoo?
Yes.
Any proof for that hypothesis?
The Walking Dead, for example.
Yeah, sure, it features “real gameplay” in the form of “survival moments” (fire a gun at a zombie) or light puzzle solving (pick up a key lying next to a chest to open the chest), but we all know these are just a fig leaf. Remove them and you would still get goose bumps just the same.
But if we remove the challenge and trial and error gameplay from video games, can we even still call them video games?
Who cares? Do you play games to pass the time or to create memories?
P.S. There will be a follow up post. Meanwhile, please read this on NeoGAF.
P.P.S. And here’s the follow up post!

The most memorable moments in games focusing on story, with only shit, shallow gameplay complementing it are pre-set/scripted story components?

Colour me surprised.

Also, the memorability of an experience is tied to what happens before and after the experience. For example, would Kadeshi contact in Homeworld be as memorable without set up before (non - interactive, but complemented by the gameplay and the game generally not kidding around when anouncing imminent rape) and rape after? I don't think so.

Another thing is gradation of failure. If success/failure is binary, then it has little impact on game narrative. If the result of even tiniest fuck up is death, then the game generates a story of perfection - a hero who never failed because if he had, he wouldn't be a hero. Such a narration is boring, and unrelatable, adding forced scripted failures is jarring and artificial, it doesn't fix anything.
If the hero can fail in myriad of non-obvious, pretty much inevitable, often delayed ways that allow to continue, then we get a much more relatable "story" that can tell much more.

Lastly, there is thing that lies the closest to the crux of the problem that caused this article to be written.
Any emotional or intellectual engagement in game that isn't either purely primal fight/flight, pure abstract problem solving or some combination of those two is going to require meaning. Something to relate to.

As long as games will attempt to convey meaning exclusively through (inherently non-interactive) assets, rather than behaviour, the problems with gameplay being bad for engagement will persist.

Assets may be used to hook us up, we don't have real AI, after all, but the more free form mechanics with complexity and far reaching consequences that acts and reacts convincingly, the more high-brow emoshunal or intellectual engagement the games will produce without turning into fucking movies.

It applies to hiking simulators as well, albeit more subtly - a world with tight mechanical overlying structure of perils and internal logic governing its behaviour makes more interesting hiking sim than just a collection of pretty places, it will make reaching particular pretty places more satisfying as well, especially when coupled with deciphering and manipulating its internal logic.

And on that note

Ever since I read Warren Spector's Remodeling RPGs for the New Millenium I've really wanted to read the article he cited at the beginning ("It's ROLE-playing, Stupid!"). Fortune has smiled on me:

So much rage this can induce. It's everything for which I hoped.

Actually ...it's pretty good.

I don't agree with everything, for example stats are important because they allow differentiating the characters in terms of capabilities, rolls (if implemented well) are important, because they force contingency plans even when confronted with dumb perils with little capacity to use your doubtlessly impressive AI algorithms.

I don't agree with huge gameworlds being bad, because there are ways around the problems - procedural generation, designing locations or location logic (what constraints and rules should a believable location follow) instead of designing scenarios, leaving scenarios to interplay of player actions and mechanics (something Spector says himself a bit later), and those ways are potentially more interesting than tight, limited environments can be.


I don't agree with criticism of keywords - yes, they may be lousy way of simulating conversation, but they are an excellent way of selectively obtaining information in-character.

Finally if 1998 Spector knew what 2012 Spector does, he would probably recant that bit about games not giving player clear goals.

 

[Kane]

so, just that i get this straight:

he lists 5 of the most popamole and shit games ever made and claims these games are the most memorable, pricesely because they are shit and therefore everything else must be shit too.

ULTRA GODLESS COMMUNISM

i guess the reboot of his triple a brain is related to hardware damage.

 

[DraQ]

Sample bias.

 

[Kane]

Sample bias.

you know i was thinking if this is some brilliant sarcasm or if you're for real. either way this gave me the shits.

 

[dnf]

This is what happens with developers that participate in turds such as Gears of War or Bulletstorm...

Whether They Love or Hate Story in Videogames, Gamers Agree: Games Are Boring


God of War and Twisted Metal developer David Jaffe recently caused a small controversy by calling narrative and gameplay two great tastes that don't mix, like "chocolate and tuna fish". His recommendation is that developers ought not bother with a big story in their games unless the game's core feature is that it tells a story, like Heavy Rain or the entire genre of interactive fiction.

Naturally, the topic is a controversial one, and internet commenters argued both for and against Jaffe. I noticed an interesting trend, though, that even those who argued against Jaffe seemed to be acutely aware that modern videogame gameplay is repetitive, onerous, and not in itself interesting. From the comments section of the above article and others:

Oh right. Games shouldn't tell anything resembling "linear" stories. Guess we should throw KOTOR out then huh? What a waste right? Because it's not just randomized fetch quests like you get in most MMO's that aren't connected to the main story in any meaningful way.

Is that what gamers want? If so could you please hold this pistol for me? Ok now shoot me in the temple please?

---------------------------

SO basically this guy wants all games to be go there and kill x many ala WoW?

---------------------------

[heavy sarcasm] Mass Effect 3 would be great if it was just like Call of Duty, don't you think? [...] They would all be so much better without a gripping storyline to push the game forward. Yea, I just want a little objective marker on my radar that always says "Go Here"...​

The recurring theme here is that both players for and against Jaffe are quick to point out how tedious and uninteresting gameplay is. Gameplay alone, as it stands today, is not memorable, worthwhile, interesting, or fun. Not for the popular blockbuster games of today. If you were to strip the story away from these AAA blockbuster titles, there would be nothing left except "Go here, kill X of Y, and bring me the MacGuffin." I certainly can't argue with that!

What I can and will argue with is the conclusion that, because the gameplay is tedious, the best solution is to dress up these bland games with fanciful stories. I can see how, with a limited frame of reference, this solution seems reasonable. Imagine that you lived in a world where every game was a re-theme of Monopoly. You would rightfully insist that all gameplay is boring and tedious, consisting of endless dice-rolls and meaningless piece-moving. Your favorite games would be those mutant forms of Monopoly which you found most appealing - Cthulhu Monopoly, Steampunk Monopoly, Monopoly: Knights of the Old Republic. You might write blog articles about the importance of forms of Monopoly which had characters you cared about, or praise an indie monopoly printing which replaced the central metaphor of "money and capitalism" with one of "the meaning of life given the inevitability of death." And so on.

​

Finally, a Monopoly variant with real emotions! Now games are art!​

However, we live in a world where not every game has to have the same mechanics and the same, limited dynamics. It is possible to make a game that is, in itself, fun to play. We don't have to spend our whole lives playing Monopoly, because there's also poker, football, fencing, Pictionary, chess, water polo, and paintball. The alternative to Mass Effect isn't Call of Duty - it's making a single-player FPS where the player has something more interesting to do for once than hide behind boxes and trade bullets with stooges.

For one, I won't buy/play a game without a good story. If there's no cocaine pellet after pushing the button, there's no incentive for this rat to push the button again.​

This quote is most illuminating because, aside from the comical implication that a copy of David Copperfield would be like a kilo of pure Colombian blow, the commenter also unknowingly emphasizes the emptiness, simplicity, and tedium of AAA studio gameplay: a button press, a unit of busywork to be performed so the player can get his reward. Why this guy doesn't save himself $60 and a lot of effort and just watch all the Mass Effect cutscenes on youtube is beyond me, but then again, the rising popularity of internet "Let's Plays" suggests that people are doing exactly that.

​

Just pushing the button for the next reward? Or is something more going on here?​

The problem is clear: the games that developers are making today, the systems of rules and values and challenges that the player is able to interact with, are dull as rocks. Videogame developers aren't using interactivity to deliver fun - they're using the interactivity to establish a series of time-consuming hurdles for players to jump through so that they can get their next snippet of story or their next level-up.

If the game you've made is so tedious that it would not be worth playing without the periodic reward of story, you need to rework your game. Similarly, if you have a story that is so thrilling as to be worth trudging through an hour of meat-grinder gameplay to catch a five-minute glimpse of it, maybe you should discard the game entirely and just make yourself a movie. Or if you're Bioware, just make one of those Japanese choose-your-own-adventure books that ends with a sex scene.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Ah David Jaffe, the man whose statements are so aggressively retarded, they make IGN look like a font of nuanced and insightful critique. I tried reading the linked speech, but I couldn't get past the part where he thanked the audience for giving his mother an "old lady orgasm", as I started vomiting too forcefully to continue.

Good points in the quoted article discussing his speech and the response though. This:

"If the game you've made is so tedious that it would not be worth playing without the periodic reward of story, you need to rework your game."

is a pretty nice summary of the problem.

 

[RK47]

For one, I won't buy/play a game without a good story. If there's no cocaine pellet after pushing the button, there's no incentive for this rat to push the button again.

This quote is most illuminating because, aside from the comical implication that a copy of David Copperfield would be like a kilo of pure Colombian blow, the commenter also unknowingly emphasizes the emptiness, simplicity, and tedium of AAA studio gameplay: a button press, a unit of busywork to be performed so the player can get his reward. Why this guy doesn't save himself $60 and a lot of effort and just watch all the Mass Effect cutscenes on youtube is beyond me, but then again, the rising popularity of internet "Let's Plays" suggests that people are doing exactly that.

Riveting stuff.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The Mortal Kombain led me to this







That kind of video kills me every time . More in the related list, if anyone's interested.

 

[Excidium]

Browsing those montage videos you end up on one that is actually serious, takes a while to notice it.

 

[Infinitron]

Ah David Jaffe, the man whose statements are so aggressively retarded, they make IGN look like a font of nuanced and insightful critique. I tried reading the linked speech, but I couldn't get past the part where he thanked the audience for giving his mother an "old lady orgasm", as I started vomiting too forcefully to continue.

Good points in the quoted article discussing his speech and the response though. This:

"If the game you've made is so tedious that it would not be worth playing without the periodic reward of story, you need to rework your game."

is a pretty nice summary of the problem.

We had a Codex thread about that speech: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/jaffe-devs-are-storyfags-and-liars.69365/

 

[Luzur]

Man, fuck Sabaton.

well they are Swedes singing about mostly Swedish stuff (in their new album)so its not that you are required to like them.

move along now.

 

[evdk]

Man, fuck Sabaton.

well they are Swedes singing about mostly Swedish stuff (in their new album)so its not that you are required to like them.

move along now.

The music is shitty and repetitive, never mind the lyrics (although those are not great either at least it's not about dragons). If they were singing about glorious pillage committed by the Hussite raids it would not change my opinion one bit.

 

[Luzur]

Man, fuck Sabaton.

well they are Swedes singing about mostly Swedish stuff (in their new album)so its not that you are required to like them.

move along now.

The music is shitty and repetitive, never mind the lyrics (although those are not great either at least it's not about dragons). If they were singing about glorious pillage committed by the Hussite raids it would not change my opinion one bit.

90% of the whole rock genre sounds the same to me, all the way back to the middle 90's.

the 80's where okay though.