Monthly Archive for April, 2008

BioWare Founders See Narrative As More Than Just Story

Published
on April 26, 2008
in News
. 0 Comments

Another interesting interview with BioWare folk sprang up this week, this time with the two doctors who founded the well-known studio, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk.

Muzyka and Zeschuk see multiple narratives within every game. “The story, VO, and the character interactions for us is an important one, but it’s not the only one,” said Muzyka in the interview.

“There’s also you as explorer, exploring new areas with that sense of awe and excitement,” he continued. “Or you and combat as you as a combatant and progressing your abilities. Or developing your skills assuming your personal identity, growing your character, or interacting with other players in your online guild or community.”

Both Muzyka and Zeschuk are incredibly smart industry veterans with opinions worth listening to. In this interview, they comment on dealing with Fox, their upcoming MMO, Nintendo, film and, most interestingly, narrative and storytelling.

“It’s not narrative in the game that’s the thing,” said Muzyka, discussing games as a medium for art. “I think it’s the emotion, that whatever play experience you’re having, whether social interaction or gameplay interaction, or in the game having combat, it’s the emotion you’re feeling that makes you feel connected to it.

“That’s why art resonates,” he continued, “as you start feeling something for the characters or the experience.”

BioWare Writers Discuss Their Craft

Published
on April 20, 2008
in News
. 0 Comments

BioWare writers Mike Laidlaw and Drew Karpyshyn discussed dialog, working with user-created characters, and world-building in an interesting interview with CVG.

“Getting to the same level of quality as film is good,” says Laidlaw, “but just trying to make a film isn’t the right direction. Interactivity gives us something no other medium has.”

Karpyshyn agrees: “We’re finding that the technology is finally reaching the point where it’s starting to feel very realistic - we can actually have interactive conversation where you talk with people rather than them just talking at you.

“I like to use the analogy that we’re at the point where Hollywood was in the early ’30s where they’re just starting to add sound, they’re starting to get the technology locked in place. It’s all about our skill set, coming up with our own conventions, our own language of telling stories, something film has developed over the last century.”

Not surprisingly, writing an open-ended narrative is extremely tough. “Fortunately at BioWare,” said Karpyshyn, “we’ve kinda got used to it, but that’s why it requires a full team of four or five writers for one of our games.”

There’s a lot of fascinating tidbits in here. The BioWare writers reveal how they create characters, from the protagonists to the quirky barkeep, and how they develop their appearance alongside their dialog.

One of the most interesting things they reveal is that the team spent nine months planning out the details of the “Mass Effect” galaxy before deciding on characters or plot. Hopefully that means the sequel will get here sooner.

Saber CEO Matthew Karch Adds to Debate On Story In Game Design

Published
on April 16, 2008
in News
. 0 Comments

Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch, just done with last year’s time-bending shooter “TimeShift,” had some interesting comments about the role of story in game design in an interview with 1UP.

The conversation began at the “Future of Story in Game Design” panel at the Game Developer’s Conference in February. At that panel, Karch argued against Silicon Knights’ Denis Dyack, saying that story should serve the gameplay and was relatively trivial.

Dyack expanded on his original arguments in a recent interview with 1UP’s Philip Kollar, and Karch asked to do the same. “My attitude about story is that it’s important, but how important depends upon what the player is doing,” said Karch in this latest interview.

Karch clarified that the importance of story depends on the game’s genre. In first-person shooters, “story is important to give the player motivation and to immerse him in the game world, but I don’t think it’s the most important aspect of the game. If you have a great story but the shooting feels lousy, the animation is bad, and the AI is average, no one is really going to care.”

“Fallout 3″ is an example of a shooter where story will be essential, said Karch, while “Gears of War” and “Call of Duty 4″ are less dependent. “Look at ‘Call of Duty 4,’” he added. “It’s a great game, but do you really care about the story? I didn’t. No one else did, but it didn’t matter.”

Unlike Karch, I was into the stories of “Call of Duty 4″ and “Gears of War,” and was disappointed that the “Gears” story was so cursory and incomplete. I think that, if a game wants the player to invest himself in its world, story is always important. If the narrative is ridiculous or nonexistent, then it’s much more difficult to become immersed, no matter how good the mechanics are.

Continue reading ‘Saber CEO Matthew Karch Adds to Debate On Story In Game Design’

PREVIEW: BioWare Fine-Tunes ‘Mass Effect’ for PC Release

Published
on April 13, 2008
in Preview
. 0 Comments

Although the PC port of “Mass Effect” was recently pushed back to May 28, it’s still worth getting excited about, especially if you have yet to play through the game. BioWare promises to offer a polished version of the role-playing game originally released on the Xbox 360 last November.

BioWare has yet to say if the PC release will include any additional content, but the gameplay is being improved. Combat will take on PC shooter controls, and your two cohorts will be managed with a reformatted heads-up display, revealed just last week. In addition to better organizing party management, this HUD allows you to issue separate move orders to your party members.

'Mass Effect' PC HUD

Inventory management, which was a pain in the ass on the Xbox 360 version of “Mass Effect,” should be much more fluid in the PC release. Items that were once lumped into a long list will be sorted by type and grade.

BioWare is also improving the game’s already impressive graphics for the PC release, says 1UP’s Jeremy Parish. Textures look more detailed, colors more vibrant. Character animations may need improving, according to 1UP’s preview.

Performance-wise, “the development team wants the game to run smoothly, even on a lower-powered system,” writes Parish, “although they won’t say precisely what they consider ‘lower-powered.’” Because the game will be installed, load times are much reduced (although I’m somewhat frightened by how much hard disk space the extensive dialog will take up).

I’m glad BioWare chose to focus on gameplay for the PC release of “Mass Effect.” The original was a great game bogged down by a clunky interface and party control, both of which should work much better with a PC. This more polished version of one of last year’s best games should hold us over until the promised “Mass Effect 2.”

EDIT: The PC version of “Mass Effect” will also include the “Bring Down the Sky” DLC and its 90 minutes of additional gameplay for free, reports Shacknews. There’s one more reason everyone who bought the Xbox 360 release should have held out: Xbox users had to pay 400 Microsoft Points, just over $5, for the content.

REVIEW: ‘Call of Duty 4′ and the Zenith of Scripted Events

Published
on April 8, 2008
in Review
. 0 Comments

Ten years ago, “Half-Life” changed the way video games told stories.

Rather than introducing the player to Gordon Freeman and Black Mesa with an opening cinematic or text, the game let you play through a heavily scripted opening sequence on an unforgettable tram ride past toxic waste and robots, the intercom buzzing very revealing announcements in the background.

Scripted events worked wonderfully for “Half-Life,” turning the game into a cinematic, immersive experience, but games today have found new methods to do that. Scripted sequences still exist, but they are amorphous and hidden or written spontaneously and influenced by player action.

Infinity Ward, makers of “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare,” didn’t get the memo. What they created is a game which tells its story through incredibly complex scripted sequences that pan out with a movie-like choreography. (For this review, I’d like to look at the game’s narrative merits, rather than its very impressive graphical or multiplayer ones.)

Each level includes uncountable preprogrammed events. Helicopters and jet fighters fly overhead on cue. Tanks roll past your position. An enemy will crash into the tower you occupy. They’re very cinematic, but they repeat each and every time you play through “Call of Duty 4″ with a monotonous, robot-like precision that actually detracts from the game’s life.

Continue reading ‘REVIEW: ‘Call of Duty 4′ and the Zenith of Scripted Events’

Storytelling in Collectible Card Games at Man Bytes Blog

Published
on April 3, 2008
in Analysis
. 0 Comments

Storytelling blogger Corvus at Man Bytes Blog is devoting his time this week to looking at the potential for story in collectible card games. They’re not the medium you’d usually turn to for a good yarn, but, as Corvus points out, a dedicated player can construct a narrative from a good game of Magic: The Gathering.

Corvus’ post yesterday raised the issue. “While CCGs ought to be an ideal storytelling medium, utilizing strictly gameplay mechanics to convey story, they aren’t presented or structured in such a way as to generally encourage this type of use,” he concludes.

“Perhaps it’s the need to invest a large amount of personal resources, both financially in acquiring cards and mentally in memorizing card-specific rules, that overrides their ability to transport the players to another storyworld without the added benefit of animated series and digital versions that take place within a virtual landscape,” Corvus added.

Magic, says Corvus, offered a traditionally hardcore game of rules and stats for a niche of gamers put off by a trend in roleplaying games towards character development and story. “Magic contained all the flavor of AD&D and none of the pesky plotline nonsense that was suddenly infecting the RPG world,” he adds.

Corvus’ second post looks at why card games like Magic don’t work as storytelling mediums. And his conclusion?

While any set of game mechanics can be treated as a narrative, there’s a tipping point at which the mechanics are so vast that the audience receives very limited returns for their application of narrative consistency. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a thing. Clearly, Magic has proven itself to be a phenomenon with strong cultural appeal and it has outlasted many of the pretenders to its throne. I cannot even fathom the Herculean task of maintaining game balance within such a vast system for 15 years.

Corvus offers an interesting perspective on an interactive medium that does not work for telling a story. I’ve never been into collectible card games, for the same reasons as Corvus. It seems that were they to become simpler and with more room for creativity outside of the rules, in the manner of roleplaying games like D&D, card games offer narratives just as valid.