A couple of notes: I have been very busy since my last post as I am now in Warsaw. However while I was here I have managed to secure an Interview with CDprojekt (makers of Witcher II & Baldurs Gate) in September, a solo game developer through a guy at work sometime hopefully next week and I am still waiting to hear back from City Interactive (sniper Ghost Warrior & Combat Wings) and Peoplecanfly an Epic Games Studio (Painkiller, Gears of war & Bulletstorm), hopefully more will follow when I return to the Netherlands. So those are all things to look forward to this holiday, got myself a recording device thingamajig and will post it online as soon as it happens!
Last post I was left with an interesting question from Mark; "do games as a medium employ the deliberately artificiality of representation that one finds in film, or do they tend toward a kind of realism?" And although I already had a reply for about two weeks, I didn't post it yet, don’t ask why it’s just one of those things...
I’m afraid this question is a bit narrow in that there are certain things it doesn’t consider. It suggests that games have to make a choice between being deliberately artificial, like the developer purposefully wants you to think everything is fake! OR that the developer wants you to think everything is real! The truth in this case is somewhere in the middle. Now player’s maybe playing games, but they’re not all dumb and they know, that what their playing isn’t real, that does not mean they don’t want to be convinced! Now there are hundreds of ways to convince the player, and I do not know all of them. But one thing that is certain, is that it’s not all graphics, and that it certainly has a lot to do with the social interactions, I talked about this in detail in "the relevance of social encounters and time in architecture of fast paced first person shooters.”
One of many examples of the artificality we find in movies; a good example is Sin City, is how the visual style of the movie is clearly not in par with reality. This makes the movie more interesting, because its something different, and more; if its used well, i.e in par with the storyline it has the ability of convincing the viewer that things do make sense, nothing contradicts. So the artificiality maybe labled “artificial” because its obviously not real, but what may keep it interesting, and real to the movie is that the medium used to employ this style follows through with it and uses it effectively in relation to the messages and contexts of whats happening inside the medium, in essence that nothing appears random... (i.e its designed well)...
In games, its very common to see the phenomena of altering the behavior of NPCS in relation to the environment and gameplay and vice versa, so they do not have freedom of thought and are clearly artifical. This is done, because the developers don’t really have a choice if they want to make a good game. Everything in games is done to support the gameplay, if this artificiality does not support the gameplay, the game is bad, and not true. So in this case, if we assume the NPCS were real, were exactley as intelligent as real humans and had freedom of thought, they may just walk of and do random things in the game world and the last thing they may do is support the gameplay. Therefore in actuality the way the characters coincedentally do things that are just so conveniant for the player is aritifical, but if the developers find a way to make these occurances seem very logical or perfectley likley in the world that is the game world, the player is convinced and this artificallity seems appropriate.
Sometimes, and this can be seen in terrible fantasy games; the artifical world the developers created condraticts itself. This can create a feeling like the world falls beneath your feet and nothing makes sense, because given that this aritficallity is aritifical in the first place (meaning it is not like on Earth, fair enough) but if it doesn’t even follow through in the games world, that certainly screems in your face; “IM FAKE!”. Therefore their neads to be unity. Obviously in games a common version of artificallity, would be that things are too coincidental and too perfect, for instance that Dog would fit so perfectly into his environment, it’s a bit surreal, but it seems wonderful and memorable, and that too convinces the player.
So In the other sense of the notion of “artificiality” The NPCs’ are programmed to simulate realism (that is a realism of the game world), so they are artificial in every sense as a simulation. Some games cover there NPCS in masks. They give the NPCS the role of a robot or hologram for instance, which would in any case have an AI and is programmed to behave in certain ways, and that by definition “tends to realism” as you said. The reason the NPCS are often unified to the gaming environments is to convince you that they belong, that they are unique to the world your in… that they fit the contexts, the story and everything that goes with it, to convince the player that the environment he/she is in is developed! Especially in fast paced FPS where you only play for a couple of hours and first impressions are very important to help the player differentiate character roles, backgrounds etc.
Now the importance of being convinced cannot be emphasized enough to clear up the fact that artificiality is ok, if things are interesting enough/developed enough... I have yet not talked about the most important thing, the rules of the game...
A) Just like in movies, books and anything worth reading or seeing, games have to be worth playing, they have to be extraordinary so by obviously in some sense they are not realistic and often games will make that very clear through art styles etc, but that isn’t the important realism we are talking about I take it...
B) Just like in shows like House or the A-Team we measure the level of success of the characters based on the challenges they solved.
C) The level of achievement of solving these challenges in our minds is benchmarked around the rules of the movie, in House it is science, in A-Team it is justice.
D) In games, there will also be a set of unchangeable rules the player has to cope with while dealing with challenges, (some simple ones are your health, ammo, your special abilities if any, the environment itself (if its underwater, in space)) if they work solidly and well they convince the player that things work. If things are at odds they player may feel like the rules of physics went out of control and that the world is falling apart and things just generally suck!
E) Once the player is convinced, the game seems to be realistic, regardless of how artsy, violent, or stylized the game is.
F) NPCS are there to enhance this realism because you can relate to them, and the more (like you)they are in the game to convince you, the better, especially if they do a good job in teaching you how to engage with the worlds "rules."
G) But most importantly everything in the game is to support the gameplay, if anything gets in the way it doesn’t seem realistic, because by definition, the realism is benchmarked on the games world, not our own world. So logically, characters have to look like their environments, and this artificiality we talked about, seems strangely enough, realistic if anything!
I found online an article by a designer; Jespur Juul who wrote a book "Half-Real" which deals exactley with this whole phenomena, here is what he had to say:
"The Half-Real of the title refers to the fact that video games are two rather different things at the same time: video games are real in that they are made of real rules that players actually interact with; that winning or losing a game is a real event. However, when winning a game by slaying a dragon, the dragon is not a real dragon, but a fictional one. To play a video game is therefore to interact with real rules while imagining a fictional world and a video game is a set of rules as well a fictional world." -Jespur Juul
Jespur here clarifies some of the juxtapositions players are experiencing in games; giving us another look at the whole argument about intentional artficiality. So to answer the question, the act of artificially connecting the NPCS to their environments is deliberate, but is also what convinces you of how they connect to the storyline, this is what makes the game realistic (to itself) and by connection it’s what makes it realistic to you at the end of the day.In movies where you are distanced, this artificiality is clearer, but in games, where you literally take the reins, this artificiality of extraordinary characters that perfectly match their environments becomes your reality, and seems, real!
However, one thing that movies accomplish that games have a very hard time accomplishing is tradgedy. This whole notion was taken from Jespur Juul's research into the two: Martin Nerurkar an architect/game critic who attended one of Jespur's lectures had this to say:
"Here Jesper took a closer look at the elements that make up a tragedy and why it’s so difficult to recreate that in games. His theory is that this lies within the paradox of failure. Usually, when we as players succeed in some task within the game, we are happy, as is the protagonist. Likewise, when we fail we are frustrated and suffer, as does our protagonist. In Tragedy however we need to delight at the failure and misfortune of the protagonist. Our long-term aesthetic desire for a well-rounded story has to overcome our short-term desire for the protagonist to succeed, something that’s quite strong in video games."
We have seen how games can be artifial, but intentionally, but in a way thats convincing, and how they place the player in an extraordinary position by creating a list of rules that are in fact real, but take place in another reality. And how their are yet certain things games can do that movies cannot, and vice versa...
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