The internets is already beating the horse to death

http://www.worth1000.com/contest.asp?contest_id=23840&display=photoshop&page=1#entries

Edit: I'm pretty sure that when Walter Elias Disney takes a look at page, he'll go like "Who the fuck is Namor? What have I done?"

I dunno, I've played CS so many times that the game just feels like.. a game.

That is an issue.

Things like hearing "fire in the hole" just mean do a certain series of actions to evade getting owned rather than, "holy shit I feel like a real counter terrorist!"

I think the former sounds more like something what would be on a real counter terrorist's mind.

That's not to say that Counter Strike accurately simulates (counter) terrorism or anything.

Until I see all them in one, I probably won't feel the way I'm supposed to feel.

The way God intended. It's going to be glorious.

But a game where players have to pay attention to contextual and visual and other clues for their strategy rather than playing with numbers sounds rather nontraditional to me.

He has do pay attention to that in order to what? Be efficient at the game?

lol huse i use crome its not i the poll..    :gentleamen:

No it will be different and magical!


Regardless, I think the decision to show or hide numbers is a part of designing the game. It's not something you can do after.

I guess there's a difference between being totally immersed into the game, and being totally immersed into the character you are playing.

I dunno. Either way, the article appears to be aiming for the latter:

Western RPGs like Fallout 3 (or earlier games like Ultima IV) do a somewhat better job by at least allowing the player to make some dialog choices -- but still, the character isn’t you.

I'm actually starting to lose my handle on what immersion actually means now, because like you i got totally captured by civilisation (1 in my case). Was that immersion?

I've no idea. It's what I think of when I hear the word used about gaming. That's the only kind of experience I've had that I think suits the term*. Everyone else might be going on about something entirely different and magical for all I know...


* And I could have used DOOM or whatever as an example. But DOOM is going to throw me out of the game every once in a while anyway, so it doesn't work as nicely in a "look how much that fucked up my day" kind of way. Turn-based strategy games tend to last damn long

I dunno. I remember, when I was little, playing Civilization II and then suddenly realizing it was late at night. And a while back, when everyone suddenly had massive hard-ons for "immersion", I kind of figured that that kind of thing was what it was about. That feeling of only the game, and the not noticing the outside world. It also sounds like what mewse said. But that's just what happens if the game is really good. Then you like totally get into it and you don't give a shit about anything else.

So like, whether or not the FOV matches that of real life, or whatever, isn't really what's on my mind when I am in the game. I suppose if the game kind of sucks and my mind starts to wander, I might make that consideration. But if it's amazing, I'm rather more concerned about the fact that I'm about to fucking die if I don't find a health pack now (and no, I can't stop to consider whether or not health packs that instantly heal you are believable, because then I'll die).

It’s difficult to empathize or identify with a camera or floating gun. I can empathize with De Niro’s character in Once Upon a Time in America, even though I don’t agree with what he does, simply because his world is so well-realized, and I can see how he reacts to events. In first-person games, there is no reaction on the part of the character, and it becomes difficult to feel anything about him or her.

And what's up with that? Doesn't feeling something about a character imply that you are not that character? That you are outside; a spectator. Does this guy empathize with his own actions and totally relate to and like identify with himself?

some of them do, however the opengl one does not.

Huh?

http://www.lazyfoo.net/SDL_tutorials/lesson36/index.php

And then it says "Download the media and source code for this tutorial here." near the end...

But that's not really interesting to me if I know every choice will be pretty much the same, and doesn't take into concern, say, randomized items.

What? The difference in numbers you are talking about is the difference that you want to hide from the player anyway. Isn't that your point, that the player should not consider that difference when making the choice? Why would the choice become less interesting by removing something that isn't taken into account by the player anyway?

I know it's a staple of RPGs and the like, and with computers the numbers will always be in the background, but why is it we always put it out there for players to see?

We don't. We usually show some numbers while hiding others. And very often hide a lot of the formulas using those numbers.

When we do that, players are encouraged to examine every aspect from the game in terms of efficiency or effectiveness.

People will still try to win if we hide some more numbers. Playing will just consist of more trying to estimate those numbers and "getting a feel for it".

I mean, like you say:

In real life it's much more difficult to quantify someone's strength or agility or intelligence (ESPECIALLY with intelligent), if they can be quantified at all.  Wouldn't it be interesting if you were going to recruit someone,  you instead had to infer how skilled or intelligent they might be?  It could be from visuals, talking to them, or even looking at a resume.  It might even create interesting events, like say you are considering letting a soldier join your crew--either you take his word he's a good fighter or you can spar him and get a feel for how good he is.

There's nothing "aesthetics over efficiency" about that. It's just that some other activity is now part of what you're doing in the game. You're still trying to do it efficiently. It's just a different game.

example: "In fact, if I were to isolate the absolute worst trend in modern games, it would probably have something to do with how so many of them are clumsily slapping manipulative adolescent melodrama onto their game engine in the misguided belief that a profoundly shitty story is better than none at all."

this quote is saying that the stories that do exist in games are adolescent melodrama -- which is an indirect insult to the people who enjoy the stories in games, because it's saying they either are adolescents or enjoy adolescent stuff

I didn't say that anything was or was not insulting, and what I was responding to didn't deal with that. I said that what was said did not imply disliking those people. Whether or not those people were insulted is a different matter.

anyway, i think you're just nitpicking what i wrote; if you like, ignore the part about insulting those who like games you don't like, and just keep the parts about saying that games with good stories don't exist and that devs who use linear stories in their games are taking the wrong approach

Uh. Yes. I pretty much have to ignore any part that I can't make sense of, or that I can't see how is related to the rest of the discussion. Sometimes I ask about them first.

the people in the chatroom made fun of WoW players and how idiotic and nerdy they are and so on (as if the same isn't true of starcraft players?))

I like how you just called a bunch of guys idiots

And yeah. Often people do dislike people because of what they like, and I suppose that might very well be snobbery. But it was not openly stated by anyone here, so why assume that?

And why bring it up? Why is who is and who is not a snob suddenly relevant to every topic? If we're discussing whether or not the Barbie Horse Adventure series is a series of good games or not, why would anyone's opinion on people who like Barbie Horse Adventure games automatically invalidate their arguments? Why wouldn't it just be some off-topic observation? Or at best some poor ad hominem?

those can all basically be summed up as 'games with stories all suck, don't make them, and those who think they enjoy them or think they're good are deluding themselves'

No one's really saying that part about how people who enjoy those games are deluding themselves, and it does not follow from what they are saying. If I say that games with stories all suck, then, as far as the people who like those games are concerned, it just means that I think those people have bad taste.

Kind of the same goes for those accusations of snobbery you like to make these days. Disliking a game does not mean disliking the people who like that game.

it's just that i don't think stories which are linear but use a little interactivity to heighten the experience are monstrous creatures which shouldn't exist because the primary virtue of games is interactivity (which is the chris crawfordian position)

Why would the primary virtue of games have anything to do with what kind stories should and should  not exist? Has anyone made such a claim? I would imagine that the primary virtue of stories would be more relevant. (And maybe the primary virtue of existence, if you're religious )

People don't say that chess sucks and is immature because it doesn't make people cry, why does that sort of claim keep getting applied to video games?

On that note, I'm pretty sure chess and a ton of other (video)games have made people cry, or have stronger emotional outbursts for that matter. It's just that it's not considered "mature" when it's over something that concerns you. Crying (or throwing your controller into a wall,  whatever's your fancy) over actually losing at videogames is childish and silly and you should sort yourself out; crying over a fictional series of events concerning someone losing at life is dandy, because it's all so deep and meaningful mature.

Knights of the Chalice is out now. Full game and demo. It looks real sexy.

Quote from that other thread, but this applies to words in general, so taking it here:

That said, I'd argue that the term has already come to mean "interactive media" just by popular application to things that aren't purely "games" - and that's totally fine.

So. We already have a term for interactive media: it's "interactive media". And then we have one for games, and that one is "games". If we make "games" mean interactive media then we have two terms for interactive media. And this might seem really neat if you're really into interactive media, as you now have two terms that you can use interchangeably and that makes it all so very flexible and if you think that one of the terms is "wordy and gross sounding" you can just use the other one. It is grand!

But then some of us care a great deal about games, and want to talk about games, and it turns out that there's no term left for games.

: (

Why would that be fine?

It also makes the language more meaningless and confusing and so on and it's not very cool.

(Hello! This paragraph isn't all that much about the thing I quoted, but just kind of on topic.) It's like, why should only the morons who use words without knowing what they mean have a say in the evolution of the language? That is, if we're not supposed to argue semantics, then the only way to participate in the process is to be too stupid to realize that we're fucking the language up.

it's just semantics

Semantics is a big deal and is worth discussing.

So here's some joke about people calling old school dungeon crawlers for spreadsheets.


And I think it's quite dandy that games are called "games". It fits.

I'd be hilarious if Jon Blow goes through a fast food drive through and instead of just ordering a meal, he gives a philosophical speech about free will or altruism or something. For some reason I could easily imagine him doing that, hahaha.

It'd be hilarious if falsion goes to a thread about the game Jon Blow is working on and instead of just posting about the game Jon Blow is working on, he posts some opinion on how Jon Blow does hiring ads or something or other.