soren121

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fnoo It's about the dialog with the player; the psychology in the game's design, what the design both overtly and covertly has to say about the nature of the relationship between game and player, and the game's focus on and exploration of the player's tactile interaction with the gameworld.

fnoo Most simply, the game makes the player feel brilliant and subversive for doing what the game wanted all along. It's almost always several steps ahead of the player, conceptually, and it constantly uses that buffer to educate the player.

fnoo The reason that Super Mario Bros. was so important isn't so much in its technology or the new concepts that it introduced or even in its extreme extrapolation of an objective-based game narrative -- though that's all important too. Its real importance was in its didactic game design. Every beat of the game teaches you how to play. It's a brilliant piece of psychology from start to end.

gkruis So true. I've never thought about that before, but it's more learning the rhythm of the game than problem solving. You couldn't even go backward in the original. The later Marios were fun, but the 3D world gave so much agency, so much space to the player. I don't think I liked that as much.

fnoo Starting with Super Mario World, the series lost all urgency and became a playground to hop into and out of, and fiddle with things. And okay, there's room for games like that. Say, Minecraft. I just feel that in a case like this it's putting too much on the player's shoulders, assuming that the player will naturally be motivated to do everything set out for the player to do simply because that's the player's role in respect to the game.

fnoo And that concept there -- the conflicted role of the player in a game's design, narrative, and message -- that's precisely what Half-Life 2 explores, both thematically and mechanically. It's some really astute postmodern discussion, that to my view elevates the game to literature. HL2 is more than state-of-the-art; it's a statement as to the current form of the art. And frankly nothing has changed much in the last seven years.

beverlynoelle Bummer! I love the DS Cooking Mama games!

fnoo Yeah, I haven't really looked too closely about this. Forgot it existed, actually. I recall how weird it was when the game was announced.

beverlynoelle Yay BioWare! (I, uh, work for BioWare. BIASED!)

fnoo How Canadian of you.

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gkruis What do you think about the Sims or Second Life?

fnoo That's sort of another thing. I suppose The Sims has a layer of satirical commentary on middle-class social interaction, but the theme doesn't really tie in with the mechanics or play narrative. Based on the player's actual interaction, it's a game about meticulously constructing a habitat for lab specimens -- with no actual object aside from observation and self-satisfaction. Which I guess partially does vent out into the game's themes, but. Well.

fnoo And Second Life is basically just IRC or a MUD, plus a very flaky 3D engine. Here is my personal space, an extension of my ego. Pretty please, come and look at it and talk to me. There's no real game element; it's more of an awkward social application. Though there are the obvious parallels with the Sims, and at least in this case the player has a central role rather than just an observational one.

fnoo What both games lack is the focus, discipline, and perspective to examine specific issues in an illuminating way. They more or less set themselves up as blank canvases. That's not in itself a bad thing. Minecraft is a blank canvas, sort of and more or less, but it's a complete and tactile experience rather than just a theoretical one. Objectives arise organically through intuition and the act of playing, based on the fundamental premise.

gkruis I loved the Sims when I was younger, but I think it was both two real or not real enough. By which I mean, imagination factored in on basic level, but wasn't allowed to run free, but it was also a cartoon. Labrats, but labrats you knew couldn't feel if you boarded them up in a house and let them piss on the floor.

gkruis I had the same experience with that game as I did when playing Oregon Trail 10 years before, which was projecting family and friends into a situation in which I had control. Watching my brother die of cholera had its particular rewards if I was upset with him, similarly imagining a life in which I was married - bizarre as it was - was pleasing in a vicarious sort of way.

fnoo Yeah, the controls were more complicated and uncompromising than they needed to be -- and the tutorial section was just awful. It was useless for actually explaining the controls. I adored what the game was doing expressively, so I made do with the mechanics and some of the level design. It wasn't until the second to last level that I figured out how the wall run worked -- and that's probably the second most important move in the game.

fnoo All they needed to do was strip down the controls to two or three buttons, make them a little less strict, and throw in a decent tutorial. As it is, I can see why so many people felt put off. It's a shame, as the game has so much to say.