After reading and watch Nick Montfort’s article and video on interactive fiction, I started to see a similarity between interactive games and the role-playing games that I play today. Obviously before computers or video devices, people could only play role-playing games in either text based books or oral games. These two forms however were very limited in either the imagination of the person the player was playing with, or the story/plot of the book the game was based in. Furthermore, players could cheat by reading ahead in books, or would have trouble keeping up with what was going on in an oral game if any of the other players were also having trouble. These limits were overcome with the creation of the personal computer, which allowed texts to be created in endless possibilities. However, with the lack of anything visual being visible on the computers, the text became even more important to the whole experience of the role-playing game. While books could have drawings and in oral games you could draw pictures, in text based interactive fiction games the player had to picture the entire world based on the worlds that were given to him. This made text based interactive fiction the first step towards today’s modern role-playing games, in that it forced the player to picture the entire world in their heads, it kept them from cheating by reading ahead in the books, and allowed for players to play by themselves. These abilities transformed the role-playing experience for many players, and allowed the genre to become more and more open ended. The less structure a game has, the greater a player’s ability is over his or her choices in the game. This in turn, leads to the production and creation of many possible styles of game play and story paths on which a character can follow. With the rise of better graphics and video capabilities on computers, it was only a matter of time before the visual components of the gaming world replaced the dominance of textual components. This underlying foundation in the role-playing genre of games can still be seen today in games such as Skyrim. In which the player after doing the introduction is free to go do whatever and talk to whomever they wish to, with only a slight overall story arc guiding them—just like the text based interactive fictions of old. While a game’s world is no longer described in words alone, thanks to the advancements in video games, the influence of open ended play that developed under the texted based interactive fiction is still the foundation that modern role-playing games use.
Author Archives: mshort4
Games vs Stories: The “Epic Game”
In class today, we discussed the differences between what stories tend to tell and what games tend to tell in their narrative. As Lizzie Ehrreic posted in her post about Gonzalo’s article, he fails to truly see that games are able to tell narrative stories just as well as any written work. Her use of the Pokémon games and their comparison to simple children’s books is one great example of how Gonzalo seems to overlook the abilities of videogames.
Another major flaw that I believe Gonzalo fails to see is the rise of the “Epic Game”, which is the videogame version of the Epic Poem. With the rise of the great trilogy game series of the past few years—Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Gears of War , Mass Effect, and the soon to be completed Assassin’s Creed—a new type narrative ability has begun to appear in the videogame world. These games tell the story of one character or a group of characters as they face challenges and face complex problems, some of which mirror modern social and political problems and issues. These games using the same formula of the Epic Poems—throwing the reader/player into the “middle” of the story with flashbacks showing you what happened before, and then coming to a climatic ending that brings resolution to the journey with an overarching message of some type—give the players the chance to experience the tales of old epic poems in a new and fresh way.
I personally see this new form of the epic poem, in “epic games,” a great way to teach and involve people in a story that tries to tackle the political and social issues that we face today. I don’t think it is coincidental that these games have been the games that have dominated the gaming awards and ratings industry for every year that they have come out. Could these games be the future of storytelling? What better way for stories to be told than to live them yourself, to breath and walk in the very steps that the character or characters you are learning about are. Storytelling has evolved over the past centuries for oral, to written, and now virtual. While written stories are still the main medium in which we express our moral lessons and narratives, I believe that it will only be a matter of time before videogames become the main means in which we pass down the stories that summarize the times and tribulations we have in our world.
Sexuality in Games is Changing?: Sexual Theme Elvolution in the Mass Effect Series
Disclaimer:
To begin, I would like to state that I am sorry for posting five videos, but it is hard to show what I will be talking about without using all five. The game series Mass Effect is based around the choices you make, and is pretty free in letting you make those choices. Thus, actions taken in these videos are only several of many possibilities that can occur in these games, but they are as graphic as they will ever get. Also, if you don’t want to watch them, you don’t have to, as they are “sexual” in nature. So enjoy the commentary and the videos. I highly suggest the games, they are fantastic.
Cheers,
Matthew Short
Actual Post:
As discussed in class, chapter 15 (Titllation) of How to do things with Videogames by Ian Bogost , sex and sexual themes are becoming a very strong force within the gaming culture. One of the genres of games at the forefront of this battle over sexuality is the RPG genre, and the ever-growing “epic story” branch of the genre. A game series that I have been addicted to since it first came out is the Mass Effect series, which just concluded with its third installment, released over spring break (so you can imagine that I did nothing more than waste hours of my life playing it, haha). In the game series there are over 3000 variables (if loading data from the first game to the last) that have a profound impact on gameplay and story as you play the game. While there is currently a debate going on right now about the game—the ending of the game has sparked a huge fight between developers and gamers that has cause the whole meaning of “games as art” into question again—the first round of controversy that Mass Effect causedhas been the “sex” scenes it shows throughout.
The first two videos are from Mass Effect (2007), with one having the player have sex with a female human and the other with a female alien (as a side note, the female alien’s whole race is female and they all look like her). Now when this game came out, as Bogost mentions, there was uproar over the second sex scene (the one involving the female alien). While both scenes show a surprising amount of nudity for a video game, they still follow the basic rules that one would expect for a PG-13 movie. Nudity is only shown for very few seconds and does not include frontal nudity. At the time, this was ground breaking, and caused uproar from the more conservative branches of the videogame culture. However, at the time, you could not have any homosexual relations in the game, and you could only have “sex” with the alien (which looks like a human female) only if you were male. This is despite the fact that there were major male alien characters in the game, and the player could be female.
We then come to the second game, Mass Effect 2 (2010), where I chose a scene with a different female human from the one in the first game. What I find interesting in this scene is that if you compare it to the first two from the first game, this is somewhat more conservative. The developer of the series, Bioware, seems to have been more conservative regarding what they allowed to be shown in the games during sex scenes. This might have been a response to the backlash they got for including the scenes in the first game; however, in Mass Effect 2, they add more aliens with which a character could have a “sex” scene (this included male aliens for female characters). So, if this was a response to the backlash, then why have more possibilities? In my opinion, it is that times and culture had changed since the first game came out. While one could argue that this was a reversal in how sex was portrayed in video games, the fact the player was given more options and the actual “sex” scene is longer and more provocative seems otherwise. While homosexual relations were still not allowed in this game, the leaning towards a more “liberal” outlook on sex in games seemed, to me at least, beginning to take hold in video game culture around the time of this game’s release.
Finally we arrive at the last two videos, one of a scene with the female human from the first game, and the other with a male player and a male human. Both of these videos are from the last game in the series, Mass Effect 3 (2012), which is the epic conclusion to the trilogy. I would like to start by comparing the first video from Mass Effect to the first video in this section. They both feature the same characters, and, as far as I can tell, with many of the same choices having been chosen throughout the game. Howeve, each has a difference in its sex scenes. Although we’re talking about two different games, this demonstrates how just a few years can change what is accepted in the game culture when it comes to sex. We moved from flashes of nudity here and there, to outright “undy tumbling” in the last game. That is a major shift, it shows us what is tolerated by us as a culture; however, the real proof in the argument is in what is shown/suggested in the second video from this game. Mass Effect 3 was the first widely publicized and world-renown game to allow and show homosexual relations in it. While the previous games in the series originally had plans in them to allow it (files can be found in the data to suggest it) they were never implemented in complete form. My reasoning is that we and the videogame culture were not ready for such a display. We needed maturing. We needed to be built up with normal to slightly alien sex scenes, to more and more “alien” (aliens that don’t look like blue women) sex scenes, and finally to the endless possibilities that can happen in the final game. By the time we reached the third game this year we were ready, because we had matured enough to see every side of the coin when it came to “sexual” relations.
In the end, what I am trying to show in this seeker post is that the Mass Effect series is not only ground breaking regarding its ability to make characters come alive and make one feel and experience every “relationship” he or she may have, but that it is a series that has helped us as a videogaming culture grow in what content we accept. In 2007, it would have been financial suicide to put homosexual relations into the game, as there would have been a major push back from the conservative side of the spectrum. Now we are ready, and Mass Effect 3 has opened the gateway to what I see as a new “norm” for sexual relations in video games. While all three had M (PG-13/R) ratings, I would not be surprised if in another few years games showing the exact same thing got T (PG/PG-13) ratings instead. Our culture is changing in what it will accept, and Mass Effect captured that change in sexual aspect perfectly.
Positive Fictiton?
In Chapter 2 of Jesper Juul book, A Casual Revolution, he describes four traits that differ between “hardcore” and “casual” games. The fields of fiction preference, game knowledge, time investment, and attitude towards difficulty are all on the opposite sides of the spectrum, in theory at least, when comparing the two types of games. For “casual” games Juul states that their preference or setting in fiction is positive. He uses the example of Wii Sports for his argument, where he mentions that the cover and setting of the game are everyday events that seem to be more about having a good time and having fun. This is in contrast to the “hardcore” game he compares it to, Gears of War, which is set in a ruined world where the player is just trying to survive in the on-slot of hundreds of enemies trying to kill him.
This image of causal games being positive seemed correct to me. Sure games such as Angry Birds is a little violent, I mean you are blowing up pigs by throwing exploding birds at them, but it was a comical and cartoon like game that obviously was not real. However, when playing the games we had assigned this week I noticed that one of the games, The Torture Game 2, did not seem to fit, in any shape or manner, Juul’s claim of “casual” games being positive in nature. In this game you torture and kill someone using a wide variety of weapons and tools. There is no point system, no true goal—other than maybe just trying to keep the person alive as long as you can while doing horrible things to him—and it is definitely not a very heartwarming game.
If, Juul claims, “casual” games are supposed to be positive and “hardcore” games are supposed to be negative, then where do games as disturbing as The Torture Game 2 fall in the spectrum? For a game like that is far from being a positive and lighthearted game. I personally do not agree with Juul’s claim on the fiction difference between the two types of games. While Gears of War may be darker in nature than a game like Angry Birds, I still see it as a more positive setting game than a negative setting game due to the underlying theme of the game. While the combat may be gory, the story and plot have you moving forward towards freeing earth and “saving the day”, as it were, instead of mindlessly torturing someone for no reason.
In the end I would argue that most games, whether “casual” or “hardcore”, are in the middle of the fiction spectrum. They both have negative and positive characteristics in them, making it more or less the player who determines which side of the scale a particular game leans towards on the fiction scale for both types of games.
Pragmatism over Idealism
After reading and discussing the articles by Johnson and Sample and listening to the audio of Daisey’s interview on This American Life in class today; I was given the impression that while we admit the conditions of the Foxconn factory are dismal they are still better off than most of the people that live and work in China. This seems sensible and logical if we look at the situation from a as a whole, however it is impossible to do so.
We all have, use and benefit from the devices that factories, like Foxconn, make and distribute. As fellow classmate and friend Kole Reddig mentions in his post about the assigned readings, “…Johnson, Sample, Daisey, and Phone Story don’t mention the enormous benefit that consumers of smartphones experience.” This absence from the assigned readings illustrates an obvious bias towards viewpoint that what Foxconn does is evil.
I do not believe Foxconn is evil, but I also don’t believe it is fair for us to compare on part of the process of creating a smart phone to another. We cannot compare the people who design and sell the phones as Reddig states in his comment, “The people who design smartphones, write the software for smartphones, and market smartphones certainly have happier stories than the workers at Foxconn.” While I agree with what Kole is stating here, we cannot compare one section of the “phone story” with another. Of course the people who live here in the U.S., who design, write the software, and sell the phones are going to be happier than those that make the device. The factory conditions and regulations are completely different in China than the U.S. However, when we look at just Chinese conditions the Foxconn factory is actually pretty nice.
So while I am not for the conditions they might work in, Foxconn is a step in the right direction for China. They may not meet our standards yet, but if they continue on the path they are on they will someday. In the end, we cannnot compare the different “chapters” in a “phone story” to one another. They are all really separate and individual stories that should be observed and criticized under the regulations and conditions that surround them. I may not like how my phone is made, but I realize that no action I take here in the U.S. is going to change the laws that govern how badly the workers are treated in a factory in another country.
Seeker: Game Makers/Icons
As we discussed in class and read in Stephen Kline’s Origins of an Industry the creators of the modern gaming world have had a huge impact on our lives. These people and their inventions (games or platform systems) have shaped the entertainment world around us for over 40 years. As the technology behind these inventions advances, these people have always been at the forefront, leading us towards the next great leap in the industry.
This reminded me of a show that G4 use to show several years back called Game Makers/Icons. The show comprised of 30 minute long episodes that discussed the games, characters, people, and platforms on which the gaming world is founded on. The original show, called Icons, ran from 2002 till 2006 with a total of five seasons. The show was originally called Icons but in the final season all the previous episodes were renamed under the title Game Makers. The title Icons was still used for all the new episodes in the last season.
The most interesting aspect about the show was the many topics it covered including the rise and fall of Atari and Sega, the stories behind creation of the system mascots –Mario (Nintendo), Sonic (Sega), and Crash Bandicoot (Sony) –and of course the stories of the people who made the games and systems that we love. While the show might no longer air on G4, you can still read about the episodes on their website.