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that's terrible rode...

the only experience i've had with the police is extreme grumpiness over traffic violation, and absolutely no help when my friend's place got robbed. it wouldn't surprise me that if you made a stink about it, they might do something about the obvious evidence left. i don't know though; when my friend lost a tv, he didn't care enough to bother about it.

If e-mails have been sent out already, it must have gotten lost in my junk mail. Think you could send it again? I'll try and not be so gung-ho with the Empty Folder button.

oh yeah. don herztfeldt is coming through chicago with his most recent shorts, so i'm gonna see his new stuff in october. me excited.

me me me

john_a_campbell OOT hotmail.com

Excellent stuff. It'll probably need some kind of over-arching organization to be a really great article. But onto discussion.

It's important to see how games are part of and separate from the rest of media. You mention Phantasmagoria 2 containing homosexuality about the time romantic comedies had the stereotypical gay friend. What was the last film you saw or book you read that *starred* a racial or sexual minority? That said, games are, at least in America, still treated as a children's play thing by many. The same thing has been happening with comic books and animation; these have been struggling out of "for kid" restrictions for some time, and seem to be making some headway. So there is hope for games. In fact with the media treating games as adult because of puerile crap like BMX XXX and, I think, GTA3, games are probably making it out of there faster than other new media.

Sensible minority representation doesn't make it into video games because the designers don't put any into their games. There's probably two reasons:

1)The audience. When making a video game, especially a game with enough character development to even think about mentioning/suggesting sexuality, you already have a small audience. The risk of alienating your audience is just too much for a designer with a limited potential audience to begin with.

2)The designer. It seems like most designers are white upper-middle class heterosexual males. A significant portion of white upper-middle class heterosexual males have little experience with anyone other than white upper-middle class heterosexual males. Why write what you don't know? If you write what you don't know, you usually end up coughing up some hackneyed stereotype or anti-stereotype from some other medium.

The important thing for us to realize is that in many ways a character being a minority doesn't matter at all. I can't imagine anyone would treat the Longest Journey differently if April was asian. It would just mean that non-asian players would see the main character as a little different from them, something I'm assuming non-white players have been doing for some time.

If games all boasted a full cast of minority characters, then they would be inaccurate. If minority characters' racial or sexual condition did not come into the foreground or affect a lot of their actions, that would be inaccurate as well; we'd have a lot of diverse characters behaving exactly like white upper-middle class heterosexual males. If we have characters whose minority status comes into play as a major plot device, we run the risk of alienating non-minorities, who seem to do the most of the playing. We also run the risk of being seen as telling a story which applies to an entire minority group instead of a particular character or characters.

It seems like minorities of any kind are risky to talk about, unless by means already established as safe by other forms of media. If you're risking a lot with a game already, it seems easiest to leave that alone.

The argument could be made that almost the entire cast of Grim Fandango is hispanic. Just, you know, hispanic skeletons.

All that to say as a white upper-middle class heterosexual male, it's hard for me to think I have anything worth saying about minorities, especially about those with whom I have had very little contact. I have never, to my knowledge, known a lesbian. I, therefore, don't really think about lesbians at all. So, when it comes time for me to write anything, including video games, lesbians just really aren't going to make it in there. I, as a human, feel angered by the marginalization and, I think, misrepresentation of other humans. So maybe that would cause me to write something including such characters, but that would probably only occur if I had personally had enough contact with someone that I cared about a specific person who could be called part of that minority.

Well, I won't be around for a while to respond to anything, I've got to ship my computer to my university.

Yes, post your topic I say. Not in this thread though, or else it will become unweildy. I think DG should take the next discussion.

DG, I think the discussion topics should probably be a bit more narrow and a little more practical. We can recall symbolism, but really games are the worst example of this narrative device. We'd really need to look at literature, and that's probably something we can't cover here.

I can imagine GarageGothic's future-discussion actually making people change the way they approach design. I can also imagine an overly scholarly socio-economic analysis of game designers and the subconscious racial schema that result, which could be ignored by mostly everyone. Eh, maybe it wouldn't be. I can't imagine symbolism examples changing anything, but I could be wrong. Let your conscience be your guide, don't pee on the electric fence, etc.

you are so fired.

Well, whether we get a sticky thread or not, for now passing the discussion leader position will be done by the previous week's discussion, uhh...leader. Maybe leader is too strong a word. "Starter" then. Whatever.

All that to say, I choose you GarageGothic, to pose something interesting for us to ponder, maybe something from this discussion that you want debated, maybe something entirely from your brain. Have fun and such. Just do it sometime in the next couple days, I say.

GarageGothic:
Future topics for discussion will certainly be more specific. This first thread was my way of polling for different topics to hit. After next week's, I'll probably pass the question posing to someone else who will pass it to someone else, that way these discussions don't rely on a particular board member for existence.

Another thing that rubs me the wrong way in adventure games is that if the main character isn't an empty shell of a character, then the "personality" of the main character must be investigative. I am not an investigative person, most people aren't. If someone handed me a note that said, "Meet me in the park at 9pm," I sure as heck wouldn't go to the park and meet the person. If I thought there might be some kind of conspiracy somewhere, I really honestly wouldn't care. The average protaganist, if s/he has any motivation, usually has to be a detective-like character: an investigative reporter, archaeologist, police officer, or just insatiably curious for no good reason. I always wondered what would happen in an adventure game if the protaganist refused to be investigative.

I have noticed awkward phrases and grammatical mistakes in non-native English speakers' games. I have also noticed them in native English speakers' games. English speakers, especially those darn Americans(*cough*), seem to have a pretty loose grip on their own language, in general.  For instance, my gut reaction to making the plural word "speakers" possesive, was to add an apostrophe after the "s." I didn't have a reason, and it might not be correct. Should I have put that comma after possesive? I know if I was speaking, I would pause after the word possesive, but there probably shouldn't be a comma there. Should I say "If I were speaking"? Where the heck should that question mark go? Should there be a comma or period before the quotation mark?

All these and more are questions I cannot answer for certain, and I'm a native English speaker. I would probably crack open one of my grammar books if they came up while I was writing a story or script. Well, anyways, all that to say little nit-picky grammar stuff can be solved by picking up a book. There's probably a place online.

The annoying stuff is the silly awkward phrases that might crop up. I think anyone writing a game in a different language should get a native speaker to go through it and make it more natural where it needs changing. I think I found myself giggling inadvertently at different points in Pleurghburg, SOL, and The Uncertainty Machine. I think those are all by non-native speakers, and mostly serious games. It does detract a bit from the atmosphere, but not to "WHAT YOU SAY?" extremes. It has bothered me, but probably because I am about to get my undergraduate degree in writing. Most awkwardness could probably get caught by a simple run-through.

If you ever need somebody to go through your game, I definitely volunteer. Update your site sometime, by the way.

Game Theory Discussion

Well, Mittens is over, so I'm taking it upon myself to get this discussion thing going. Some of you may vaguely recall a post about this a few weeks ago, and today it begins.

This weeks spine-tingling question: What is wrong with adventure games?

I think this a good healthy question to ask, especially among adventure game designers. So, go ahead, let it out. What grates on your conscience daily, gets underneath your fingernails, and scratches on the proverbial blackboard of your mind?

Ground rules:
Post one thing that you think is flawed about the adventure game genre as a whole, or at least how the adventure game is usually designed. Don't worry if it's a basic component of adventure games, be as critical as you like.
If someone has posted something you disagree with or think MUST have clarification in order to make sense, then make one cogent post addressing that poster. To this the original poster can of course respond, but try not to draw out a conversation, because it could result in multiple confusing conversations occurring at the same time in the thread.

Example:

Puzzles

Puzzles, as they are implemented in most adventure games, can, I think, detract from the experience of a game.

I think the most painful flaw in design is, whether or not it is the designer's intention, the narrative of the game seems to be used as the means by which the player reaches the puzzles. In other words, the puzzles don't lend relevance to the narrative, but the narrative lends relevance to the puzzles. The adventure game can sometimes be tetris, but with context. This is fine sometimes, tetris with context can be fun. But when a game is attempting to have fleshed-out characters and a developed storyline(something the adventure game genre in particular allows for), the puzzles can take away from that.

1. The inclusion of "boot-strapping" scenes, or mundane activity can, I think, increase immersion. The character you are playing actually has to walk over there and talk to that guy, and then walk way over there. There are puzzles which amount to boot-strapping, especially near the beginning of games. You have to find Jake McUrks keys in Pleurghburg, or fix the elevator in The Uncertainty Machine. I recall distinctly, and it might just be me here, saying, "Why am I doing this?" Why don't we get up and find Jake's shoes and socks, and why don't we help Susan fix her electric toothbrush? The point I'm nearly making is that puzzle-making is a selective process, and not everything can be a puzzle, despite the bit of boot-strapping that must make it into adventure games. What we choose to be a puzzle is important, and we should have a good reason for choosing what we do. When a puzzle is completed that neither reveals character nor furthers the plot, the narrative remains disconnected from the puzzle aspects of the game.

2. The other way puzzles take away from games can be warped logic where it doesn't fit. This is expounded quite well in this old man murray article. The Longest Journey comes to my mind, where you need a key to get in a fuse box, so you put bread down on a metal grate so a bird flies off, and pull up this chain which releases a rubber ducky, and eventually you put three or four unrelated items together to gain something that somehow makes a contraption that will retrieve the key that is inexplicably laying on a subway track. It is all very disconcerting and takes you out of the narrative into The Incredible Machine(the video game from years back). Even working this out without a walkthrough, I was left thinking "WHAT!?" but my adventure gamer instincts helped me to try everything, despite it making sense. I went to a walkthrough after that puzzle.

Okay, the example is my contribution to discussion. Someone would reply saying,

Bionic Bill: You are full of poopy, and nobody likes you.

If you want to add to someone's point, that's allowed too.
And I'll probably change general rules if things go terribly this time. PM me with better ways to run discussion. I'm not a mod, so I can't do anything about people breaking the rules, except calling their mother.

Next week: Prescription! What do we need to do to improve the adventure game?

http://www.lucasarts.com/press/releases/81.html

concise, blunt, and no word of explanation. interesting to see right after reading the history of warcraft adventures on gamespot, thanks to eric's thread.

I suspect Nellie!

...and before anyone else can get to it, I suspect myself as well. I never did like that me.

I recommend Jackie Chan's Who Am I? It's pretty average Jackie Chan except for this extended rooftop fight scene near the end that has knocked my socks off several times. I'm going to have to go find it now, it's been a few years.

And to sort of keep this post on topic, I am mostly a student majoring in writing. I do web design in order to eat, and I might be doing some VHS to DVD transfer next year. Not particularly exciting. I do hope to make video games one day, but that could very well change. Especially since I have yet to produce a complete game. I could end up in film, or maybe graphic novels. Or plain old writing. Or something entirely different. Moo.

I like this guy. He's silly.

This should be an official Photoshop Phriday this friday. We could get some crazy slick backgrounds with which to decorate our desktops.

As you said, Pleurghburg was a great game with little or no character development at all. So, I think, a game can certainly be good and not elicit some kind of emotional response from the player. The best ones tend to get you emotional somehow. I remember being horrified when Glottis went over the waterfall in GF.

Maybe good games are made even better by the icing-on-the-cake of genuinely high quality character development. Or maybe a terrible game could be made into a good one just by being written well. Maybe there's some kind of discernable difference between the strictly "game" aspect of a video game and the "story" aspect of it. And the best ones are great in both aspects.

Not to be down on Pleurghburg or anything, but imagine the same game with some kind of emotional context done well, where Jake McUrk isn't just the name of the player character, but also a discernable human being with individual motivations. If the character grew to be endeared by the player, and then was in some kind of dire peril, the perilousness would certainly increase for the player. Well, anyways. Blah blah blah and such.

I didn't think I was separating between the two. Poor writing all around! Huzzah!

Most games vaguely attempt at some kind of implied emotive response. You're supposed to at least dislike the bad guy, and like the good guy. It's just very rarely done well. I think the same applies to most media, just moreso with games.

I'm gonna have to agree with Las. It seems like games in general get shafted in terms of writing quality. Emotive response should come pretty naturally from interactive narrative, so long as the characters are even slightly beyond two dimensional or stereotypical.

I think GinnyW was saying something about non-linearity messing with the creator's point in making the story. Non-linearity in many ways, I think, could be the point. The player choosing reveals something about his/herself. The problem is, of course, that the player may have a different personality than the avatar(if you get this distinction), and that ends in general weirdness. But that's a different discussion.

Back to writing, I had all of two articles up on adventuredevelopers.com before they went down--they detailed my thoughts on the subject, and then gave a smidgen of advice. Meh.

It seems to me that game designers need to study literature in addition to video games. Sometimes, I think we get stuck in gaming tradition, and if we stepped back and looked at what we were doing, we would realize some of the insane ruts genre video games have gotten into.

Anyways, right, yes, better writing, that's what we need.