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Birding Like It’s 1899: Inside a Blockbuster American West Video Game

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Re: Birding Like It’s 1899: Inside a Blockbuster American West Video Game

#61

Post by setr »

learc83 wrote: post #54
mjfl wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the difference for Dwarf Fortress is the learning curve, I think the difference is that Dwarf Fortress is better designed and it is designed in such a way that it's goal is to produce "stories" that Tarn and Zach have explicitly written. I think for No Man's Sky, they had a much more vague idea of what they wanted the user to experience, and thus the experience is more vague, and less interesting.

That's a good point. That is a big difference with Dwarf Fortress. It's definitely a masterpiece of game design. To donavanm's point that you need writers to create engaging content, as you've pointed out Dwarf Fortress has writers--they're just operating on a different level. But I still think the learning curve is a big part of it. Just look at how many "Get started with Dwarf Fortress" tutorials are out there.

I'm pretty sure the learning curve is more a result of DF's total lack of interest in reducing the learning curve, than any kind of necessary function of it. Obviously the complexity of the game leads to complexity of the interaction, but 10% of DF's learning curve is its nonsensical UI, probably another 30% is the fact that it has no tutorial or manual of its own, 20% is all the additional tooling surrounding it, which should be but isn't native to the game. And if my percentage allocation means anything, then only 40% of the game's current learning curve is essential (that is, unavoidable given the game's complexity).

I'm also not sure its fair to consider DF's writing as similar to donavanm's -- they're not operating at a different level so much as a totally different task. donavanm's writer as I understand it is trying to lead the player through a story, whereas DF's trying to produce a story through the player. The former produces an overarching theme, plot, characters, etc. The latter produces pieces that could fit in a story (or stories), and hope it will occur as an emergent phenomena of play.

It's like writing a protocol versus using one; you could say both are doing software engineering, but they're very, very different kinds of software engineering, and require totally different thinking.

Notably, story-component-writing probably also scales pretty well (the engine develops it out), while story-writing does not. Which of course is true of procedural games in general. You get the engine and the pieces right, and you've got exponentially many scenarios to explore (the problem is that, if you do it wrong, you have exponentially many scenarios that you don't want/care to explore ~~ No Man's Sky)

Re: Birding Like It’s 1899: Inside a Blockbuster American West Video Game

#62

Post by setr »

donavanm wrote: post #52
setr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See dwarf fortress for a counter-example. I’m of the opinion that story-writing is a red-herring in video games; an attempt to apply “tricks” from other mediums, by disregarding the “interactivity” of video games. A story can be sufficiently created by means of the player’s operations , if the simulation is sufficiently complex and built to support it. Another example is competitive fps games like CoD/Halo/Quake — th…

As the sibling said Most people dont see dwarf fortress as the same “open world explore & build” genre. And the arena style FPS was called out explicitely as an interesting, but different, type of game. “No story” doesnt mean no fun. But when people say “I want to go and build and explore” they usually, unintentionally, miss the draw of a well done story component. There are plenty of interviewers with producers of g…

I think the issue is that you’re thinking of open world rpgs, which have trended towards very heavy-handed story telling. Mostly because they derive from dnd 3+.

But you also have dnd/adnd to derive from, which put much less effort into story telling, and more into setting/emergent stories. Roguelikes, dungeon crawlers, etc offer very, very thin stories wrapping the gameplay (dcss for example boils down to: you want to steal the orb of zot, and its on the 15th floor of this dungeon). Minecraft also gained most of its popularity before it too added a very thin story on top.

But the main thing to realize is that most games don’t have very compelling or interesting stories; at most approaching a marvel film. Yet the succeed regardless.

And even warcraft (I’m assuming WoW), I’d bet good money that 90% of its players don’t have any idea what the plot is, except at the most superficial level.

I think its mostly that the open world genre happened to really only have RPG’s currently available and well funded (I cant even think of any major ones atm beyond bethesda, witcher and bioshock); but there are plenty of games that put zero to little efforts into any kind of story, that it’s not at all obvious to me that its required in open world games.

I’d like to see some of these interviews you’re referencing, if you have links handy.

Re: Birding Like It’s 1899: Inside a Blockbuster American West Video Game

#63

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

barrkel wrote: post #24
headcanon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure we'll get there eventually, its just much more difficult to write for. Even in Westworld, the interactions were semi-scripted, with packaged "quests" along the way. Some games come close though, the Witcher 3 includes choice-based gameplay with real consequences that last thoughout the game. However the developers still had to explicitly write each scenario as it unfolded.

Deus Ex had choices with real consequences lasting throughout the game too, fwiw.

The entire Deus Ex series is excellent.

Well, there was "Invisible War" I suppose, but we don't talk about that one.

Re: Birding Like It’s 1899: Inside a Blockbuster American West Video Game

#65

Post by neuronic »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #31
pavel_lishin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in my day, we had to enjoy the great outdoors uphill both ways!

We did. People used to spend more time outside, more time walking. Older novels seem to mention animals and plants modern people wouldn't recognize. And of course there just existed more nature. We are destroying our environment and are losing many species. It's getting harder and harder to just enjoy a carefree joke about it...

I often think a lot about this, incidentally when taking long walks when not playing video games in my free time, and continue to arrive at the same conclusion: humans are merely evolution's self-brewed extinction event. A couple of severely consequential, yet random mutations led to an overtly destructive species.

Keep in mind that evolution is just the name for the mechanism that allows DNA to continue self-preservation by means of replication and recombination, allowing it to persevere in altering conditions.

So in a (sad?) way it is merely natural that many species die off as a consequence of our actions, as it was when the Permian-Triassic extinction hit. After all they are the result of our biology. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try everything to prevent extinctions and counter-act climate change. We do know that permanent loss of life is absolutely a possibility on this planet.

While we might cause Earth to become more akin to Venus with our behaviour, the apparent evolutionary disaster might also pay off for DNA by allowing it to become interplanetary.

Re: Birding Like It’s 1899: Inside a Blockbuster American West Video Game

#66

Post by pdpi »

setr wrote: post #43
donavanm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out some of the critiques for games like No Mans Sky. The short of it is that procedural “story” doesnt really work. You still need writers for engaging content, and that doesnt scale. If you remove written story you get something closer to a tower defense/tactics/arena shooter/grinding genre, which is “fine” but substantially different than most open worlds people envision.

See dwarf fortress for a counter-example. I’m of the opinion that story-writing is a red-herring in video games; an attempt to apply “tricks” from other mediums, by disregarding the “interactivity” of video games. A story can be sufficiently created by means of the player’s operations , if the simulation is sufficiently complex and built to support it. Another example is competitive fps games like CoD/Halo/Quake — th…

> I’m of the opinion that story-writing is a red-herring in video games; an attempt to apply “tricks” from other mediums, by disregarding the “interactivity” of video games.

I’d offer Braid and Bioshock as clear counter examples, where a significant part of the emotional punch of the storytelling comes from the interaction. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons too.

Much like “build your own story” as a genre can’t be judged from the failings of NMS, it’s just as true that games as a conventional storytelling medium as a whole shouldn’t be judged based on the “make it cinematic” approach that a lot of studios aim for.

Re: Birding Like It’s 1899: Inside a Blockbuster American West Video Game

#67

Post by patient_zero »

learc83 wrote: post #46
setr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See dwarf fortress for a counter-example. I’m of the opinion that story-writing is a red-herring in video games; an attempt to apply “tricks” from other mediums, by disregarding the “interactivity” of video games. A story can be sufficiently created by means of the player’s operations , if the simulation is sufficiently complex and built to support it. Another example is competitive fps games like CoD/Halo/Quake — th…

Dwarf Fortress is a different kind of game from No Man's Sky or The Witcher 3. It has a huge learning curve and takes a lot of effort to play. For every amazing story that people crafted there are hundreds, maybe thousands of failed game attempts. That's fine and purely procedurally generated games can be amazing (I'm working on one myself), but they are a different type of game play, and often attract a different ki…

Ah, Dwarf fortress. I loved hearing the stories generated from it and resolved to learn to play it, but that resolve quickly faltered in the face of the interface and learning curve. Sometimes I think to myself "I should try again", but I believe that it (along with Eve) is a game I truly enjoy reading about rather than playing myself.

Re: Birding Like It’s 1899: Inside a Blockbuster American West Video Game

#68

Post by patient_zero »

setr wrote: post #62
donavanm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the sibling said Most people dont see dwarf fortress as the same “open world explore & build” genre. And the arena style FPS was called out explicitely as an interesting, but different, type of game. “No story” doesnt mean no fun. But when people say “I want to go and build and explore” they usually, unintentionally, miss the draw of a well done story component. There are plenty of interviewers with producers of g…

I think the issue is that you’re thinking of open world rpgs , which have trended towards very heavy-handed story telling. Mostly because they derive from dnd 3+. But you also have dnd/adnd to derive from, which put much less effort into story telling, and more into setting/emergent stories. Roguelikes, dungeon crawlers, etc offer very, very thin stories wrapping the gameplay (dcss for example boils down to: you want…

Indeed, as a once-heavy Warcraft and WoW player I can confirm that Blizzards story writing is to be actively ignored, even mocked. Great games, terrible writing.

Re: Birding Like It’s 1899: Inside a Blockbuster American West Video Game

#69

Post by jhbadger »

setr wrote: post #61
learc83 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point. That is a big difference with Dwarf Fortress. It's definitely a masterpiece of game design. To donavanm's point that you need writers to create engaging content, as you've pointed out Dwarf Fortress has writers--they're just operating on a different level. But I still think the learning curve is a big part of it. Just look at how many "Get started with Dwarf Fortress" tutorials are out there.

I'm pretty sure the learning curve is more a result of DF's total lack of interest in reducing the learning curve, than any kind of necessary function of it. Obviously the complexity of the game leads to complexity of the interaction, but 10% of DF's learning curve is its nonsensical UI, probably another 30% is the fact that it has no tutorial or manual of its own, 20% is all the additional tooling surrounding it, wh…

And while it isn't anywhere near as deep as DF, the mass attraction of Minecraft shows that procedural generated worlds where there are no real goals can be very attractive and approachable, even to children.

Re: Birding Like It’s 1899: Inside a Blockbuster American West Video Game

#70

Post by patient_zero »

Buttons840 wrote: post #26
jcl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me a bit of Jeff Vogel's blog post about the first Red Dead Redemption: "What was more surprising, though in retrospect it should not have been, was how instantly attached my eight year old daughter became to the game the moment she caught an unlucky glimpse of me playing it. Of course, it makes perfect sense. This is a game where you own a horse, ride your horse, take your horse out into the brush, find wild…

Rockstar should consider breaking their games down into sub games. They could build a G rated game about caring for wild horses and sell it for kids; they'd only have to remove content. In the full RDR2 game my daughter might have fun caring for horses, but she might also witness a random murder, pick up new words I'd rather her not repeat, witness a rape, who knows. I haven't actually played RDR2 but all of those th…

Heck, all they'd have to do is release the toolkit à la Bethesda. Allowing players to mod the game is the best thing that shop ever did. Skyrim has an avid following with player-made mods still trickling out to this day, and it was released 7-8 years ago.
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