Living the Experience

It's pretty obvious that games want their users to connect to the experience, to "live" it in the way of suspending their disbelief. Just like books create elaborate worlds in order to transport the reader, video games, like movies, show them the world. The user interacts with the game in a way that he can't with a book or film, but the interesting thing is that the game functions as sort of hybrid of novel and movie.

On one hand, you have the graphics. Developers spend most of their time rendering environments and building a coherent and believable world. Since the game is meant to be seen, the visuals are greatly important. On the other hand, the story of the game must be addressed. Often, the story is written separately and then integrated with the graphics. The story gives the plot and general course the game is to take. It's like combining the text of a novel with the images of a film. Of course, there are many shades in between.

Some games focus primarily on the story. The visuals are just enough to show what is meant to be seen, but most of the experience comes from the actual text. Then there are games who have a basic plot outline and everything comes from interacting with the world around the character, which leads us to the actual experience.

Gamers experience the setting in a way that can never be reached in either of the other two media. The game transports the user, by means of an avatar, to this fictional world and then not only does it tell the player what to do, it allows the player to make his own decisions and figure things out for himself ... most of the time. The user wanders around and discovers important elements on predetermined roads. This always leads to the conversation about how "linear" the story line is. Meaning, does the game tell the player exactly what to do next, or can he complete the game however he wants to?

I remember one of the first games I played on the PS2 was one called "The Bouncer." At the time, it was receiving a lot of hype for it's graphics and story, but when you played the game, it was like watching a computer generated movie, but then only controlling the fight scenes. The player would watch one cut scene after another, a fight would break out, the mini movies stop, and then the player would be forced to beat up a bunch of random thugs. All of the fighting was explained in the movies, but it really didn't create the most desirable environment. At the time though, it was one of PS2's launch titles and was created to show off what the new engine could do visually but now, to ease the contention between obvious cut scenes and actual gameplay, many games now use the same graphics of regular play and then add the dialogue on top of them. This way, the transition isn't as jarring.

Then you have games like "Resident Evil 4," which was created primarily for fun gameplay. The story is severely lacking, the graphics are decent, if not good, but the real spotlight is on what your character can do. Another example is "Dead Rising" on the XBOX 360. It was celebrated for having a completely interactive environment in which the player was stuck in a mall filled with zombies and anything he saw could be used as a weapon. The options were limitless.

And finally, there are games like "Resistance: Fall of Man" which puts a huge emphasis on the story. It does pay careful attention to graphics and gameplay, but for this example, what it does with story is incredible. It takes place around WWII, but in this world, that war never happened. Game developers rewrote history, starting around 1898, in order to bring about the world in which their story takes place. They made their story around actual events and then once re imagining those events, thought of the next logical steps. It's like writing a historical fiction novel.

All three media whether they be book, movie, or video game, seek to transport the user into a newly created world. Each one goes about it in a different fashion, but usually the goal is the same. Each has things over the other, books can delve deeply into psyche, movies can literally show things, and games provide actual user experiences. It's interesting to note though, just where and how they continuously cross over with each other. While earlier I claimed that video games were hybrids of books and movies, it's important to note, to use Dr. Jones' "Lost" example, that show (which is essentially nothing but mini-movies) wouldn't have come about if not for video games. The characters behave like a game, the story unfolds like a game, and it's essentially a larger version of "Myst." But, "Myst" was essentially a larger version of Verne's "Mysterious Island." So, in this instance, book lead to game, which lead to show. This isn't the only time we see this. Movies and games become books and games become movies. They're constantly overlapping because they run on familiar themes.

A story is told, a world is created, and a user experiences both.

Code, Hacking, and Authorship

I brought up the issue of authorship earlier, when I discussed the ramifications of gamers incorporating their own mods to change the game to their liking, but upon further thought and reading, I can do you one better. What about when the gamer alters the actual code? A mod is a small program that changes the interface for the user. It's true that they're designed to alter the code of a game, but that's a difference from someone opening up the programming files on their computer and typing in new code.

As I'm not much of a computer game player anymore, I'm not sure how much this still happens, but this was something that used to go on all the time. Many cheat codes or special abilities, required the gamer to open the program files and alter lines of text, telling the game to do something else.

Now first and foremost, this is an obvious revising of what the author had intended. It would be like writing additional sentences between the lines on a page to add extra meaning, or crossing something out to change the intended impact. The author certainly didn't want this because if he did, he would have written it that way in the first place, so why change the writing to suit your personal benefit? It doesn't make much sense, because you're not interacting with it on the same way you are with a game. With a book, you don't believe the revisions because you know they're not real, but in the game, you interpret it a different way and can make do with the changes. So, by doing this, is the gamer taking authorship away from the original author?

But, here's the second part, often when you type in new code, it's something simple, only an extra line or two. It either tells the game to use a preexisting action at a different time, or it unlocks a hidden function. If the code was to lets say, create any object in the game, then the user is actually limited because he can only make objects recognized in the existing code, it would be like copying a paragraph from a previous chapter to insert it in a new one. And then, the ability, the interface in the game, to type in the command to "copy" would have also had to already exist somewhere in the code as well. So, this new code, is only using old material, but in a new way. Maybe the author intended something like this would happen, so he embedded certain source files in the code that could be accessed later if the user knew the right command texts.

If this were the case, then it would mean that this is a different relationship. In the first example, the gamer was taking authorship away from the original, but in the second one, the original still has the power because he created everything and knew how it would be used, so in a way, he's offering up some of up power as the author to share it with the gamer. He recognizes that things can change and helps the gamer bring them about, by making it possible. The original author also makes these changes optional, since he doesn't put them in the original version of the game, or publish the command cheats with the game, it has to be up to the gamer to find them and incorporate their use.

This sort of shared experience is something akin to the "choose your own ending" books, where the options are there, but it's up to the reader to put them all together and use them. It gives the user/reader more control over his world and allows for a deeper level of personal experience.

Myst into Resident Evil

It's been awhile since my last post, I know, but I'm correcting that. This post isn't necessarily a textual analysis persay, but more of an observation.

It started during class, when we were breaking Myst down into it's individual elements: The isolation, the puzzles, the delayed effects. I got to thinking that a lot of what we were talking about, reminded me of Resident Evil.

Aside from the boss battles, most of Resident Evil is puzzle solving. You need to find the right key to unlock the right door, or you'll find a crank, but you'll need the hex gear to use it, and so on. They eventually get kind of complicated, but just like Myst had the diagrams in the books to help the player out, Resident Evil has certain documents scattered around the area that the player must find for the hint. Some though, are really simple. Just like Myst had the blue page fitting in the blue book, Resident Evil has the Armor Key unlocking the Armor Lock. Sometimes, you'll run accross a larger puzzle that requires you to find multiple pieces in order to finish it. Fans of the first game will recognize what I'm referring to, when I talk about a door in the courtyard out the back of the mansion. This door eventually leads the player to the next area, but in order to open it, one must find 4 different crests spread throughout the entire building, and they'll have to accomplish a series of smaller puzzles to reach each crest. This is kind of like the switches on the main island of Myst. You can't get all of them right away, you need to do smaller puzzles first, but once you get all of them, you can unlock the next area.

Next, just like Myst is about isolation on an island, I never realized it before, but Resident Evil is the same thing. Instead of an island, you're stuck in a mansion. Granted, you have to avoid various zombies and monsters, but the feeling of being alone is just the same. You're stuck in this awful situation and you have to figure a way out of it, and along the way, you get pulled into the plot through documents, letters, and reports you find, not to mention, the few cut scenes when you actually run into other people. In Myst, there are still notes and letters to help you out and bring you into the story, and you meet the characters in the books instead of walking around.

Having never have been too familiar with Myst, it really came as a shock when I realized that Resident Evil probably wouldn't have existed without that other game. Sure it may have been made eventually and it even may have involved killing zombies, but the puzzle aspect and the way the character interacts with the world wouldn't have been invented yet. Again, I know this wasn't really textual analysis, but it was just an observation that I wanted to get off of my chest.