Theory

[mees]

Here is an essay I wrote today. I was wondering if anyone here would like to make a comment about it!

At the heart of every adventure game, so far, is the lead designer's desire to tell a story. He could have written a novel, but the allure of the game world was too great for him. For one thing, it is said a picture is worth a thousand words, and the game world itself is made out of thousands of textures: in videogames, the visual ecstasy of fantasy is richly sustained, reaching its highest point of development. The cutscenes and aesthetic flourishes, which convey the story, are thus irresistible to the mind of a child, who values his fantasies above all else, and the experience of playing a game alongside these story sequences is complementary. As the child matures, he is often unable to recall the reason he liked Zelda so much: no longer enamored by the fairy tale, he tries in vain to speak of the elegance of combat, the simplicity and sublime excellence of the dungeon design, and the delightfulness of the puzzles.

All of this to say, the fantasies of modern children seem to find their most natural home in videogame worlds, and adventure games, which begin as fantasy and end as little more, are thus games for children. What is wanted in an adventure game is an interesting story. And then comes the inevitable question: "but what about the game?" The game was always the nuisance, the unwanted, but unshakable intruder into the adventure. What was the correct solution? If one focuses too much on making the player perform the exciting action of the story, why not just make another side-scrolling action game? In order to satisfy the conscience of the player, one would have to at least make it as good as Ninja Gaiden, or Final Fight, or Double Dragon and that would take time, money, energy... and this all lies outside of the interest of the designer anyway. So, of course, the answer is not action but strategy. Strategy in its most contemplative and still form: the puzzle. Puzzles can be quietly interwoven into the story, and, with relatively little programming effort, the game can become as interesting as the story!

Unfortunately, this is not the case. Take Myst, for example. Here the story is anemic, and it is as if the developer actually had a curious fetish for obscure nonsense contraptions and wished very dearly that such things existed in real life. The puzzles take the forefront, and the player looks on with, at first, bemusement, and eventually disgust. While the puzzles are more complex than those found in games like ICO (which is a three-dimensional version of the adventure game), they are actually less satisfying, and the player can barely stand to get through a couple of them before looking at the in-game walkthrough or, better yet, forgetting about the game altogether.

The first reason for this is sterility of the game world. The world of Myst is an afterthought and a nightmare of aesthetic design, and thus there is little incentive to see more of it (since most players choose adventure games for the story, this is a big problem). Furthermore, puzzles are usually solved while staring at a single screen, or a small cluster of screens, containing nothing more than a series of levers, brass tubes, esoteric circuitry, or whatever random doodad the developer dreamed up in an afternoon of obsessive compulsive hysteria. Experienced game players will realize that these dreary challenges can be found in far better form elsewhere. For example, even the most complex Myst puzzle seems simple when considering the difficulty of finding the optimal route through a level in Castle of Shikigami III, where the player's interest in the challenge is constantly sustained by action and the pleasure of exercising one's nerves. Here high-level strategy is complemented by high-level action, which is impossible in the adventure game. The sense of mastery one gets from excelling in a shooter is it's own reward, for this challenge stretches across the action-strategy/unconscious-conscious spectrum to achieve greater depth. When playing Myst, one wonders if their time might be better spent dissecting a lawnmower--at least that challenge might be of some utility. And so, Myst is insufferable both for its boring story and its one-dimensional puzzles, which require sustained abstract dreaming, and often end in a nap.

ICO is a better adventure game than Myst, but it cannot escape the label "for children" any more than Myst can escape the label "for very bored children." In ICO, the setting is sublime, and the story has the mysterious weight of a foreign fable. Essentially, the game has very good graphics, and represents what must be one of the most well-realized efforts of the story-enamored designer. The puzzles are exceedingly simple, in the style of Nintendo, and the game world unravels before the player's eyes at a steady pace. Eager to see what is around the corner, the young player will finish the journey in no time. The more experienced player will undoubtedly find some small measure of satisfaction in experiencing the serene castle, and will finally realize that there is little to say about the game beyond this. In the designer's efforts to make the modest story unfold as naturally as possible, Ico finds himself doing little more than hopping around some vaguely suspicious architecture, and each room presents only a slight puzzle that will take a couple of minutes to solve. Similarly, the story is revealed to be quite thin, and the initial gravity it gains from association with excellent production values soon gives way. ICO's high reputation is a testament to the effort of its developer, as it truly does stand out in the history of adventure games. But what is important is the end result: a simple story with puzzles so thin as to be nearly non-existent, and excellent graphics.

Myst shows us that, as the complexity of the game increases, so must the complexity of the game world, the developer's fantasy. If the game world and story events are underdeveloped, the puzzles will seem ugly and out of place, and their relation to the story will be tenuous. ICO shows us that a technically proficient game world requires an enormous amount of work, and the more complex the story, the greater the breadth of the mechanics implied thereby, and the more sophisticated the supporting machinery must be. After all, ICO stands as one of the most impressive technical achievements on the PlayStation 2, and its story is practically a bedtime tale. And the inverse of this rule leads us to the conclusion: if one wants to make an adventure game with more interesting mechanics, which might actually hold the attention of an experienced player, one must increase the complexity of the game world dramatically! For any labyrinthine Myst-esque logic puzzle of to actually be compelling, it needs to be decompressed and distributed across a large expanse of equally interesting game world--because the sort of strategy that can be found in an adventure game can be found, in more dynamic and interesting form, in many other genres. People play adventure games for the story, to see new and interesting things!

And so, to the developer, all of these complications seem, at one point or another, rather beside the point. After all, the game isn't the point, the story is! He wonders why he can't be rid of the game entirely, why he has to choose between a sickly game and a shackled story. The player could just guide the character around, plodding here and there, enjoying the feel of the analog stick against his thumb, until the cutscene takes over, setting the player on a new tract, wider than film, narrower than game. But this is nonsense, and Zelda's spell looms large, reminding him of the unity of game and story, the mutual greatness! His mind descends into childhood musings.

If we go a little further than that, it is plain to see that stories really have little place in the world of games, that there is always an uncomfortable friction of one against the other as they wrestle, claw, and bite trying to be free, to bound away in opposite directions. In the case of the adventure videogame, the game is subject to the story and thus always comes up weak and malnourished. And besides, what great storyteller would work at a game studio anyway...

[icycalm]

It fails on so many levels I don't even know where to begin. It even invents new levels in which to fail on.

At the heart of every adventure game, so far, is the lead designer's desire to tell a story.

Fail. At the heart of every adventure game is the lead designer's desire to create a series of (semi)-logical puzzles for the player to solve.

He could have written a novel, but the allure of the game world was too great for him.

Fail. He could most certainly NOT have written a novel, because if he could he obviously would have.

For one thing, it is said a picture is worth a thousand words, and the game world itself is made out of thousands of textures: in videogames, the visual ecstasy of fantasy is richly sustained, reaching its highest point of development.

Fail. Read some Baudrillard. Video games represent the zero degree of fantasy -- that is what the Virtual is all about: the end of fantasy.

The cutscenes and aesthetic flourishes, which convey the story, are thus irresistible to the mind of a child, who values his fantasies above all else, and the experience of playing a game alongside these story sequences is complementary.

Fail. The experience of playing a game cannot be complementary to the experience of playing a game. You are either playing a game or you are not.

As the child matures, he is often unable to recall the reason he liked Zelda so much: no longer enamored by the fairy tale, he tries in vain to speak of the elegance of combat, the simplicity and sublime excellence of the dungeon design, and the delightfulness of the puzzles.

Fail. WTF does Zelda have to do with adventure games? Zelda is a series of action games for christ's sake!

I could go on like this for every single fucking sentence. Your essay is the most execrable piece of game-related writing I have had the misfortune of reading. I'd take even IGN reviews over this stupid shit. It fails even in the title, since you do not even attempt to approach any problems in adventure games. You hardly even bother to mention any proper adventure games for christ's sake! -- most probably because you have no idea what these are.

[icycalm]

One more thing. I didn't touch on your main point, because, frankly, you are not allowed to have one. Therefore it doesn't really matter whether you were "right" or "wrong", and this has nothing to do with the fact that your main point and the essay's title have nothing to do with each other. It's basically the same thing that a mathematics teacher would tell you if you had tried to solve a problem by making a series of steps, each of which was clearly wrong, while you somehow managed to arrive at the correct answer -- either by copying some other student or by sheer blind luck. Such a "solution" is even worse than a solution which arrives at the wrong answer, because in the latter case you can at least see that your solution is wrong and therefore go back and attempt to correct it. Nietzsche talks of this somewhere: "There is no better way to harm a cause than by defending it with false arguments." And of course, since every single step you made was wrong, when you try to solve some OTHER problem, you will bungle it as surely as you bungled the first one, and perhaps then you will not have the benefit of copying someone else's answer, or as lucky to stumble upon it by sheer chance.

[icycalm]

The amount of bullshitting going on in the sentence below is epic. Truly epic! I don't think even Tim Rogers could shove more bullshit inside a single fucking sentence!

ICO is a better adventure game than Myst, but it cannot escape the label "for children" any more than Myst can escape the label "for very bored children."

ICO is a wonderful ACTION game, and Myst a wonderful ADVENTURE game. By mislabeling them and comparing them you are completely misleading the reader, and shitting on both masterpieces at the same time. You are practically shitting on two completely different genres of videogames! Entire genres! And then, on top of all that, you proceed to insult the people who enjoyed these masterpieces by calling them children.

Someone needs to give you some prize for excellence in bullshiting. Truly incomparable stuff.

[Bradford]

It's basically the same thing that a mathematics teacher would tell you if you had tried to solve a problem by making a series of steps, each of which was clearly wrong, while you somehow managed to arrive at the correct answer . . . .

That's essentially the same thing that I was about to say, which is that mees' argument is not valid. Please note that I use the term 'valid' only in its technical sense, not as a vague term of disparagement. 'Valid' simply means a proposition that is a logical consequence of its premises.

A useful exercise for mees might be to cut through all of the flowery language and attempt to outline his argument in the form of premises followed by a conclusion, i.e.:
1. a
2. b
3. c.
4. Therefore, d.

I think he will find not only that there is a lot of extraneous material in his essay that fails to contribute to the conclusion, but also that the argument is very structurally lacking in terms of premises necessary to arrive at the conclusion.

On the other hand, maybe mees feels strongly that he is correct, despite icy's commentary - my suggestion would also be a far more efficient way to discuss the argument than by reference to the text of the essay...

[Worm]

A bit telling, perhaps, that "very bored children" can solve Myst's puzzles whereas you need a walkthrough...?

Jibes aside, I think this paragraph shows an inkling of what you should be attempting:

Take Myst, for example. Here the story is anemic, and it is as if the developer actually had a curious fetish for obscure nonsense contraptions and wished very dearly that such things existed in real life. The puzzles take the forefront, and the player looks on with, at first, bemusement, and eventually disgust. While the puzzles are more complex than those found in games like ICO (which is a three-dimensional version of the adventure game), they are actually less satisfying, and the player can barely stand to get through a couple of them before looking at the in-game walkthrough or, better yet, forgetting about the game altogether.

As icycalm said, the comparison is terrible, but there's a glimmer of purpose in there: a case against adventure games that doesn't show a "problem" with them, but outlines the reasons you think they're not worth playing. If you rewrite this article with that in mind, then we can talk about whether the reasons are inconsistent, ignorant, insightful, or whatever. Though, if you refuse to budge on the idea that adventure games are defined by their stories, I don't think you'll make much progress.

[mees]

Well, at least this proves one thing: there's a good reason why I find it hard to design an adventure game.

[mees]

Okay, attempting to take Bradford's approach:

Here are the observations that lead me to write this essay:

1. It seems to me like adventure games are made when a designer wants to tell a story, and for some reason feels the need to make it into a videogame. Regardless of whether or not that is a nonsensical aim, I think that that is the aim of the designer. There are many reasons why he would choose to tell his story cutscenes and dialogue trees in a game: the feeling that fiction books are rarely read, or the sense that stories in games are generally thought to be better than they really are, etc.

1a. So, the intention is to tell a story, and the game comes as an afterthought in the mind of the designer.

2. When considering the game itself, complications arise partly because the developer is not actually interested in making a game. That is to say, he is not interested in mechanics and would rather just get the "Zelda effect," where a simple story is lent special weight in the player's mind because it involves characters, settings, etc that the player has been playing as. The greatness of the story is most important in his mind.

3. When the developer sets about making the game, he can end up at either end of the spectrum:

(1) The game that has complex puzzles. If the story and game world is not complex enough, these puzzles will seem out of place and too abstract.

(2) The game that has simple puzzles, which allow the player to get on with the story as quickly as possible, and are not even meant to be much of a challenge.

4. Following (1), the more complex the puzzles, the more interesting and detailed the game world has to be to sustain the player's interest in these puzzles (especially since these kind of puzzles can be found in other genres where the "reward" isn't a story sequence). (2) Just leaves the player unsatisfied with the game.

5. Conclusion: The problem with adventure games is that complexity of game implies complexity of game world and story, and most developers aren't up to the task of making the two match up. Besides, we are just talking about raw puzzles here. If one wanted to go beyond just puzzles, and add more depth, more mechanics, it quickly becomes apparent how ill-matched games and cutscenes/diologue options, etc are.

[icycalm]

Go find out which kinds of games are called adventure games and then come back. Seriously, this shit is not funny anymore -- it's getting annoying. WTF shut up about Zelda already -- I've already told you it's an ACTION game! Adventure games have ZERO action -- by definition!

[mees]

I know what adventure games are: Myst, Monkey Island, Full Throttle, The Longest Journey, Grim Fandango, etc.

Is Dreamfall not an adventure game just because it has two or three action sequences?

And I know Zelda is not an adventure game. I could use any number of games to talk about the same point: that in a child's mind the game the story takes on special significance because of the game.

[icycalm]

Are you trying to get banned, dude? You know what adventure games are but you keep harping on about Zelda only to annoy me?

I know what adventure games are: Myst, Monkey Island, Full Throttle, The Longest Journey, Grim Fandango, etc.

Is Dreamfall not an adventure game just because it has two or three action sequences?

I've never played Dreamfall. Full Throttle has one or two action sequences too, so it is an adventure game with one or two action sequences. You need a philosopher to solve this problem for you for fuck's sakes?

And I know Zelda is not an adventure game. I could use any number of games to talk about the same point:

Then fucking use them, moron.

that in a child's mind the game the story takes on special significance because of the game.

Why would anyone care WTF goes on in a child's mind? Why not discuss what goes on in a madman's mind as well? Or a rat's, for that matter?

Fuck's sake.