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Disorganized thoughts on videogames, and on narratives in creative media
So here I am, sitting here, enjoying these games that have strong storylines, and I am telling you, they are just as well written as piece of great literature.
Okay, perhaps "written" is not the right word. "Scripted" might be more accurate. Either way, their narrative quality is just as good as that which you'd find in well-regarded novels and plays.
Sure, videogames on average don't have the narrative quality of great literature. But novels overall on average don't have as good narrative quality as great videogames either. I mean, if you wanna pick and choose...
No, the telos of videogames is not interactivity itself. The interactivity is just a means to an end. This includes visual novels too -- a kinetic novel (a visual novel that has no consequential choices that result in different outcomes) is a perfectly legitimate thing, as its purpose is to tell a story.
Now if you wanna complain about "walking simulators" and VNs and such not really being "games", fine. You can pick another term that you want. It doesn't matter. It's just a name.
What matters is that I get some sort of transformative experience through it. By the end of it, I'm a different person, I've seen the world through someone else's eyes, even if those are the eyes of a fictional character in a fictional world.
In this respect, there's little difference -- at the level of the very core narrative experience -- between a videogame, a novel, a TV show, a movie, or such. It's about the journey that one takes, and how that changes oneself.
One thing I find a little interesting is gamers frequently ragging on games that don't offer them enough "choice". I don't usually find myself looking for "choice" in videogames. Interactivity? Yes. "Choice" affecting the storyline? Not necessarily. I prefer a JRPG doing the leveling up and stat gains for me rather than having to go to the trouble of micromanaging them myself. Given multiple playable characters, I find that choice interesting, but I frequently stop after playing just one -- and yet this doesn't prevent me from having an extremely fulfilling experience playing that one character (see how I consider Ys Origin one of the best games of all time despite only having ever played Yunica's route -- and that's all I need to play to know that because Yunica's story is that awesome, to be honest). In a VN, if offered a choice of routes, I decide on the one that I prefer to be canon, and that's my headcanon...well, it would be, if I'd actually gotten through any VNs. Well specifically VNs with routes that I actually enjoyed.
This doesn't mean I like simply being told where to go and what to do next. In fact that's specifically why I don't like (the experiences that I have had with) MMORPGs. All I did was get lists of quests, and all that was interesting to me after a while was to see how efficiently I could stack them together. I can only stare at the cutest of cute character designs for so long before the actual structure of my gameplay experience becomes painfully obvious.
But if a game immerses me well, it gives me a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning to what I'm doing. And so even if my journey is technically scripted, I become the person "sitting in the front seat", seeing those moment-to-moment decisions unfold before my eyes, rather than watching the story unfold from afar as a distant observer with no emotional investment in the events.
(And yeah it's easier for videogames to put me in that "front seat" thanks to the interactivity element.)
Okay, perhaps "written" is not the right word. "Scripted" might be more accurate. Either way, their narrative quality is just as good as that which you'd find in well-regarded novels and plays.
Sure, videogames on average don't have the narrative quality of great literature. But novels overall on average don't have as good narrative quality as great videogames either. I mean, if you wanna pick and choose...
No, the telos of videogames is not interactivity itself. The interactivity is just a means to an end. This includes visual novels too -- a kinetic novel (a visual novel that has no consequential choices that result in different outcomes) is a perfectly legitimate thing, as its purpose is to tell a story.
Now if you wanna complain about "walking simulators" and VNs and such not really being "games", fine. You can pick another term that you want. It doesn't matter. It's just a name.
What matters is that I get some sort of transformative experience through it. By the end of it, I'm a different person, I've seen the world through someone else's eyes, even if those are the eyes of a fictional character in a fictional world.
In this respect, there's little difference -- at the level of the very core narrative experience -- between a videogame, a novel, a TV show, a movie, or such. It's about the journey that one takes, and how that changes oneself.
One thing I find a little interesting is gamers frequently ragging on games that don't offer them enough "choice". I don't usually find myself looking for "choice" in videogames. Interactivity? Yes. "Choice" affecting the storyline? Not necessarily. I prefer a JRPG doing the leveling up and stat gains for me rather than having to go to the trouble of micromanaging them myself. Given multiple playable characters, I find that choice interesting, but I frequently stop after playing just one -- and yet this doesn't prevent me from having an extremely fulfilling experience playing that one character (see how I consider Ys Origin one of the best games of all time despite only having ever played Yunica's route -- and that's all I need to play to know that because Yunica's story is that awesome, to be honest). In a VN, if offered a choice of routes, I decide on the one that I prefer to be canon, and that's my headcanon...well, it would be, if I'd actually gotten through any VNs. Well specifically VNs with routes that I actually enjoyed.
This doesn't mean I like simply being told where to go and what to do next. In fact that's specifically why I don't like (the experiences that I have had with) MMORPGs. All I did was get lists of quests, and all that was interesting to me after a while was to see how efficiently I could stack them together. I can only stare at the cutest of cute character designs for so long before the actual structure of my gameplay experience becomes painfully obvious.
But if a game immerses me well, it gives me a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning to what I'm doing. And so even if my journey is technically scripted, I become the person "sitting in the front seat", seeing those moment-to-moment decisions unfold before my eyes, rather than watching the story unfold from afar as a distant observer with no emotional investment in the events.
(And yeah it's easier for videogames to put me in that "front seat" thanks to the interactivity element.)
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Comments
One could perhaps call them "pure games", so to speak. Pure here merely meaning that the narrative content is relatively weak but it's about a focus on the mechanics.
The Steam page has three trailers, actually.
The first one didn't contain any gameplay, but showed up like a movie trailer.
The second one was all gameplay footage. Not much commentary though.
The third one was actually describing the gameplay.
For some reason, I feel comfortable concluding that I have a very vague interest in the game but no interest in buying it, because the premise/series doesn't annoy me (unlike, say, Call of Duty or Neptunia), but I already have a huge backlog and this doesn't look like the most attractive option.
Also don't really like the first-person perspective, or the weapon-bobbing.
I am not saying these are unusual reasons. I am just observing them, that's all. I am just a little curious I didn't really care much for more information on the gameplay.
I mean, whatever I'd do in the game would be motivated by what the game has to offer anyway. If it gave me a compelling plot/setting/context, I might be willing to do otherwise boring things. But if it lacks them, it'd take some major getting bored on my part to get to exploring the gameplay.
One possible exception is if the gameplay is strongly pick-up-and-play and can be done in short bursts. One consistent theme of my "procrastination games" -- Solitaire, Minesweeper, Spelunky, TF2, 100% OJ -- is that they can be played like that.
I'm also very, very used to the mechanics of the original. And it's that strong familiarity that allows it to be pick-up-and-play for me. I've made at least 5,000 or so attempts.
As for how I play the game, I usually play it as a high-risk "try to outrun everything and take all sorts of crazy risks unless they're boring" thing. Attempts usually last at most a few minutes before a YASD occurs. So everything is fast-paced, fresh, wild, action-packed, and adrenaline-rush fun, with some interesting thinking puzzles to punctuate them.
Do keep in mind that freeware version has a number of mechanical differences. For example, shopkeepers are far easier to kill in the freeware version. Needless to say, I never buy anything from them.
Occasionally I do make it past the Black Market, and I seem to subconsciously start playing more conservatively, and these "actual score runs" that include wrecking the City of Gold and getting the Olmec Head to wreck house for me (since I've run out of bombs) generally take me upwards of half an hour. 45 minutes is possible, even. Incidentally, this part of the run -- while technically played better and seeing more of the content and able to generate a record of my victory if I do succeed -- is more tedious and somewhat less enjoyable than the first part.
Occasionally the game crashes in strange ways...which is arguably even more fun, only because it's stupid and unexpected in an amusingly chaotic fashion.
And in that sense, memorable YASDs are pretty much just as fun as formally winning the game. Like that one time I got crushed to death by a gold block in the City of Gold that I'd left in the "frozen area" of the level, above me. I screenshot that and that was totally worth it.
Not that any of this is a bad thing. Just noticing it that's all.
This is because it is fiction, and whatever I desire can come true in a fictional world -- in the world of fiction.
This is a privilege not afforded to us in the real world. We have to accept the real world as it is. But not so in fiction. In the world of fiction, we can create something from nothing.