Comments on: Dragon Age: Prelude

By: erikalanhanson

erikalanhanson — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:10:19 +0000

Upon reflection (and listening to some more of Chris Thompson’s Free during lunch), it seems the difference here isn’t necessarily something worth arguing about anyway. In the end, it amounts to history vs. biography–both interesting and useful in their own rights.

By: Simon Ferrari

Simon Ferrari — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:55:37 +0000

Ah well I don’t have any more arguing in me. How bout that choose your own adventure visualizer? I like that slightly more than chart, but still not my thing.

By: erikalanhanson

erikalanhanson — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:44:20 +0000

I’m less concerned with what the general audience did experience than with the potential experiences offered by the program. I don’t care too much if, say 62% chose option A over option B. I’m more interested in what the options were, how they were presented, and what the results of each option would have been.

I admit that this is, in part, the same curiosity that made me break things like Walkmen so that I could figure out how all the parts worked. At the same time, I am most intrigued by what the consequences of each action communicate. If, for example, the situation is that there’s an obstacle that can be gone over, under, around or be blown up in a WWII FPS, I am interested if there’s a benefit to going under and keeping cover (teaching the player timidity and caution), if there’s a detriment to jumping or using explosives and giving away your position, if there’s a secret weapon cache if you try to find your way around the obstacle (endorsing exploration and dalliance), or if shrapnel from blowing it up could injure you or your teammates (as negative feedback for using force when not necessary). Then, I want to look at what all those say about tactics and about the experience of being a soldier in WWII and generally.

Then again, that’s a lot of close-reading on very small things. As I’ve said before, I have enough to read and think about that I don’t think I need any more to avoid boredom for the rest of my life.

By: Simon Ferrari

Simon Ferrari — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:26:14 +0000

How is what you want mutually exclusive with a number of people coming together to share their stories and observe differences? How can you trust one person, even yourself, to arrive at some kind of objective understanding of the system? Charles Pratt played my EoL game like 80 times, and he still couldn’t tell me how everything was put together. He was close… but still, I’d prefer to give my take and then read your take and then decide.

This idea that one person can speak to “the experience of the audience as a whole” because they reloaded their saves to follow different dialogue trees just doesn’t make sense to me.

By: erikalanhanson

erikalanhanson — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:15:25 +0000

Maybe this goes back to the old “reader response” (or “new games journalism”?) debate, but I think that the experience of the audience as a whole is a better focus than the experience of an individual player-critic. Because of that, I see value in not only looking at my own choices and their consequences, but at the choices I didn’t make, the perceived consequences of all the choices and the actual consequences that would result from each. Beyond that, I think that the whole range of dynamics puts a value judgment on each possible choice, which is a small corner of game design that I find particularly tasty.

Then again, I used to also go down those giant water slides and experiment with how the ride would differ if I changed my posture, or if I shifted my weight during a specific curve’s approach. It may just be curiosity.

By: Simon Ferrari

Simon Ferrari — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:08:06 +0000

Oh I’m sure there are people in achievement grinder forums who’ve already done it. I really don’t think obsessive = incisive. You’d be hard-pressed to prove to me that anything other than the choices you make in your first playthrough, along with the being able to plainly see those missed opportunities retreating into the distance, matters at all to a player. To a designer, sure, there’s a big difference and desire. If you want to make something like this, then you need to be able to chart it for yourself.

Of course there are four kinds of people:
1) pure players
2) people who want to be game designers and won’t
3) people who want to be game designers and will
4) game designers

Each of these kinds of people will want something different. I’m a pure player when I write, a pure designer when I code. I’m never going to make a game this complex. I make cartoonish political simulations and interactive fiction, you know?

By: Erik Hanson

Erik Hanson — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:58:00 +0000

To follow up: I think it would be marvelous if game designers gave some sort of “spoiler chart” to critics and academics. I wouldn’t mind if they charged a small fee for a stand-alone copy or packed it in with the game.

By: Erik Hanson

Erik Hanson — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:52:14 +0000

I want to make snarky comments about all of this!

For what it’s worth, I think that having a map of all the possibilities would be a great starting point for a lot of analysis–It would be a great resource to include in something like a Critical Compilation at C-D. I just don’t know anyone who’d be willing to do that much work to merely provide a starting point.

By: Simon Ferrari

Simon Ferrari — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:01:24 +0000

It’s a tough call on the exploitability. In a roleplaying game it’s your job to take a role and act accordingly, you know? But it’s hard when the designers make it so you can only play your role one of a few different ways. It’s not your fault for wanting to exploit, because the designers have hidden all this shit away from you that you have to approach in the correct manner if you want to see it.

Dragon Age takes a step away from the good/evil/nonchalant thing, but it’s still guilty of giving you some implausibly over-benevolent and -malevolent choices.

Yeah Fable 2, is the thumbs-up one. Laaaaaaaaame.

By: Max

Max — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:27:25 +0000

Also, upon reading the article you linked to, I have to ask: is it the designers’ fault for building a system that can be exploited, or is it his fault for exploiting it? So you can make the game’s interactions laughably stupid by needlessly grinding your persuasion stats – maybe you shouldn’t grind them! If you don’t want the game to seem silly and implausible, don’t do things that make it that way. I think his complaints do have a degree of validity, but come on – at least it’s not Fable 2, where you can cause women to fall in love with you left and right by spamming the “Thumbs up!” gesture (at least, I think Fable 2 was the game Tim Rogers was talking about when he told that story – whoops, sorry for mentioning your least favorite games writer!).