Game Theory: Why the arts and old people are completely full of shit.

[Ganonator]

I had the unfortunate opportunity of getting placed in DigiPen's 'The Art of Storytelling' English class this semester. At first, I was interested in joining, but going to the first class made me realize how completely full of shit most people are.

Our professor was an English master from the Phillipeans. For some reason, he was specifically chosen for this spot. I think he's just some guy that is into the 'classics'.

Anyway, the course requires us to read about 8 texts, and write papers on them to see if they would make a good video game. One of the students asked the teacher if we could use jargon like 'First Person Shooter', and the teacher looked baffled, said he'd never ever played a game before, and would require a lot more information than that. A little piece of me died that moment.

I'm torn between this concept that great games can be based off of books. It's such a different art form than film (i understand that it's connected, but i mean the classics). There is no way you are going to have a game based on Romeo and Juliet, Gone With the Wind, or Crime and Punishment. In the least likely event, I can see any book made into an RPG that had some battle or contact, but it misses the point. Film can be based on any book by direct translation. Games require content where the player makes decisions, where books and film just don't have that aspect.

I am just curious, where do you think games will go in the future? The 'classics' most games are based off of now aren't books, but instead great games of our past - Fuck.. it's been 20 years since LoZ came out, but there was a game BASED on situations from it released 3 days ago. And it shared the same name.

Oh yea, and old people are full of shit. Don't trust anybody over 40 who claims they are an expert at something they've never done before.

[Rainman]

It's kind of weird, but the ultimate video games goal has been for me to progress toward emulating movies. Essentially placing the player into the movie. I guess I gotta question whether that is true. There are a lot of translational issues when making movies into games. (to say nothing of books to games)

Goldeneye went really well and that was mainly because of how decidedly unlike the movie it was. It took great liberties in the plot in order to give gamers to kind of levels they wanted to play. I guess that's the primary thing you have to remember when translating such a thing. The ultimate goal isn't emulation, but to make a game people want to play.

Half-life 2 has been one of the games that has brought game making really close to my playing in a movie fantasy to reality. I haven't finished yet but it seems to be easily translatable to the big screen. It has a good plot and plenty of action. In the game it seems highly story driven like a movie, but I still have the control the I as a gamer require.

[Jigglysaint]

I assume you are limited to today's technology?

If you had the option to write an NES game, or maybe even an Atari game based on a movie, it might work since you wouldn't need to have as much detail, and you can concentrate on the core of the stories.

This sounds like a great challenge, not only to create a game, but to write it in such a way that your teacher can understand. A good video game creator doesn't assume that the player has played 100 games before, they make it so it's easy to learn, and yet fun to play.

[mikeron]

Not the "Game Theory" I was expecting. I suppose you could turn a book into a game in the sense that the player is given certain objectives to move the story forward, be they character or plot driven. That's essentially how Goldeneye was, in a loose way. As for that classics, I think The Aeneid would make a great game, as would The Táin.

[DarkDragoonX]

It's kind of weird, but the ultimate video games goal has been for me to progress toward emulating movies.

For me, the ultimate goal of video games has been to emulate true choices and consequences. When every choice you make has a consequence, direct or indirect, on your character and the world around him/her, THAT is when games will truly reach their peak.

That's not to say that movie-like games don't have their place. Half-Life 2, and Resident Evil 4, are both astounding games that really make you feel like you're playing through an action movie. But still, games can do so much MORE. Planescape: Torment and the Fallout games are far better than any linear action game could ever hope to be.

EDIT: Inadvertant semicolon.

EDIT 2: Inadvertant Semicolon would be a great name for a rock band, don't you think?

[automatic]

Last year we had a guest speaker at school who used to work for Atari. I can't remember his name now, but he had some cool things to say about the gaming industry. What stuck out most was his talk about what his own current project is. He claimed he had a group of people doing R&D on a dynamic story/plot system. His goal was to make a cinematic, story-driven game that is different every single time you play it, depending on your actions. He said instead of having a concrete story and plot, it would be a database of sorts of plot points, story elements, and character types. The game engine would attempt to string together a coherent story and plot (beginning, middle, and end) based on player actions and whether or not the components available through those actions were compatible with the developing story arc.

I thought it sounded kind of cool, but I don't really see how it would be feasible without the advent of some pretty sophisticated AI... I mean, how would dialogue and such be handled? An infinite database of possible conversations?

In a game where you can do "anything," yet still be bound by the rules of the game, you would need an AI to respond to whatever decisions or actions you make in an appropriate way to keep game running smoothly. It would have to be pretty sophisticated, too, if it were to hadle any irrational or random behavior.

So, I guess that's where I think the future of gaming is going. Or what it needs, anyway. A combination of advances in VR and AI.

[zfreak2004]

I dunno. I sort of have an idea that I might want to write stories for RPGs, so I'm taking some creative writing stuff this semester to sort of explore the idea.

I don't know that I like the idea of making the classics into video games but all the same, the need to be looked at for inspiration and ideas about what makes a great story.