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SXSW 07: Will Wright KeynoteMarch 14th, 2007 |
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“Whenever we take control away from player at all we are taking away the most important thing about games.”
That’s interesting, because I’ve been trying to define art in game design. I decided while in college, theatre is art through the human condition, music is art through sound, dance is art through bodily movement (or lack thereof), so games would be art through interaction. Will tells us, essentially, that without interaction, we take away from what makes it a game.
I wrack my brain sometimes, trying to think of how to make a story happen in a game. But then, maybe it’s up to the player to define the story, while the game just gives a series of interactions. I still play Alpha Centauri, and each time I see a different story unfold. I also started playing the Sam & Max series on Gametap, but we only see one story come from that.
It’s still a game, but it’s not the most…artistic? Certainly not, by the way I’ve defined art in games. But there’s a lot of other art going on there; there’s music, there’s visuals, there’s dialog. Just no art through interaction. You just click a bunch of stuff until the game shows you more stuff.
I often see a game as a way for two people to play together only in different times/spaces. In many ways you are playing a game between you and the game developer(s). Very often I’ll find myself wonder what the designers thought about this level, or did they consciously bring this character onscreen right now. Its like a quick way to play overseas “chess” - against a game designer.
I had to mention however a game that seems very close to “art” for me, but not in the traditonal sense. Playing System Shock 2 was a turning point for me. Sure playing Doom you might get an occasional jump when a creature popped out at you, but System Shock really got under your skin. I remember playing in the dark one night and getting so heeby jeebied that I had to stop playing and turn on the lights 
Creating an experience like that is a dream…
I wonder if Will has a creationist-lunatic-proof bunker somewhere?
Should the game tell you a story like a novel or a movie does, or should the game be a setting where you create your own story?
Or should it do both?
One of the big reasons I play single-player RPGs like, say, Final Fantasy on the console or PC is precisely because they fill the same entertainment niche for me that movies and books do - they tell me a story. I get to participate in the story some and that helps my sense of engagement.
At the same time, I play games like Civilization an awful lot, where I am essentially creating my own story, and it’s different every time.
What Will seemed to be trying to say is that games should allow players to tell their own story. I think there is definitely a place for that, but I also think there’s a place for games that are more along the line of interactive novels/movies, with a preset story to be told. They’re both good and they both resonate with the audience, for different reasons.
I did like how he went into the ways that story gets presented in games. Do you follow a linear path, do you allow the player to choose his own path punctuated by various “gates”, and so on. Very cool stuff.
All in all, that’s a keynote I wish I had been able to hear firsthand.
I’m totally on the Spore bandwagon now just so I can see “interstellar wars between the carebears and the Klingons.”
“I wonder if Will has a creationist-lunatic-proof bunker somewhere?”
Why would he need one? Spore is clearly a game about design.
–Paul
Evolutionary algorithmic based feedback loop that supoports UGC? WOW.
I’d like to take a peek at that database as well as those algorithims, I dont want to assume to much but his treatment of stories linear, symetrical and asymetrical, as well as “gating” leads me to believe that Spore likely works on a deeper level (meaning the machine learning pattern recognition) than any other games have to date.
In terms less esoteric, WW Spore allows Wisdom of Crowds, UGC, and player interactivity to actually create the game (AI?). (maybe I’m reading to much into his talk however)’
Thats got some pretty serious (thoretical) ramifacations that go beyond the game, (from a data mining perspective) maybe the Mice in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy should have hired Will Wright, might have saved them some space/time…
Human brains after all are the best supercomputers (W)right?
“In the Sims we saw, when players were playing while sitting next to each other, they were verbalizing story as played.”
Game IS story. It is the story of the player.
I think what is being compared in this talk isn’t story and game. It’s passive media and interactive media. Comparing game to story is different than comparing passive to interactive. Mistaking stories for passive media and games for interactive media restricts innovative thinking and creativity because it puts the very things we strive to change into unchangeable boxes. There is no reason why stories cannot be interactive or games passive.
“Movies are primarily visual, games are primarily interactive, so whenever we take control away from player at all we are taking away the most important thing about games.”
But not the most important thing about entertainment. Games are entertainment first, games second. In entertainment, there is ultimately only one rule: “Whatever works, works.”
Every rule can be broken, every belief about “what people want” can be shattered, every preconceived notion about “what sells” or who the “hottest demographic” is can be turned inside-out overnight.
Assuming games cannot take control away from the player without taking away the value of the game itself is a waste. It is a waste of creativity, possibility, and potential audiences.
“Story is following one causal chain and presenting it to the viewer.”
Assuming that story can only follow one causal chain or only be “presented” to the viewer passively is also a waste of all the ideas and innovations that could have come from NOT making such an assumption. And it seems strange coming from the mouth of someone who also talks about putting story creation into the hands of players. We cannot give players the power of storytelling if stories are unchanging and linear because if stories are unchanging and linear, they cannot be interactive, non-linear games.
“Stories tend to be unchanging, very linear, whereas games tend to be open ended.”
Games tend to be unchanging, very linear, whereas stories tend to be open-ended.
Anything can be true if you find a way to make it true. Isn’t the challenge in making something that isn’t so rather than in making what already exists?
Game IS story. I intend to make it so. ^_^
Game is struggle and play-pretend.
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