In preparation for Fallout 3 I recently downloaded Wasteland from www.abandonia.com. Wasteland was the precursor to the original Fallout, and a lot of the ideas from it ended up in the later series. Given that Wasteland was originally released in 1986, I obviously wasn't expecting it to be much like Fallout, but I tried to approach it with an open mind. Unfortunately I had trouble getting beyond the first hour or so.
I can quite happily read a book written two hundred years ago, watch a film from the twenties, admire paintings from the Renaissance and see a play first performed in ancient Athens. But I have trouble playing a game that's only twenty years old. I'm not sure it's just a technology issue (although that's probably part of it) since I still revisit older games a lot. What turned me off were things like the fact you're thrown in without anything to really direct your initial play, the random combat where enemies don't appear on the map as you travel, and the seeming lack of any real continuity between towns. Wasteland seems like strong evidence to me that games really have evolved in terms of both storytelling and mechanics despite what a lot of pundits say. I want to be fair to Wasteland, and to explore it properly, but I can't see it sucking vast chunks of my life away like its successors did...
While I'm on the subject of 'retro' games: I really dislike that label. In film and music,
'retro' usually refers to modern releases which evoke the medium's past. Austin Powers is a retro movie which draws on things like Our Man Flint and The Avengers, but those influences are not retro themselves. Imperial Teen have a retro sound, influenced by bubblegum pop of the sixties and new wave acts of the late seventies and early eighties like Blondie and the Pretenders, but that doesn't make the Pretenders retro from the perspective of 2007. Citizen Kane is not a retro movie, so why is Wasteland a retro game? I'd argue that a true 'retro game' is something like Darwinia, which is a modern spin on older games like Cannon Fodder and Space Invaders, or Ankh, with its plot and puzzles both heavily and openly influenced by Monkey Island. I know it's just semantics, but it seems like there is that distinction to be made.
styg
Sunday 17 June 2007
Wednesday 13 June 2007
My First Blog Post Ever
Yup.
I always thought I'd live out my life blissfully blog-free. Except recently I realised it would be the best thing for helping me do something I've always needed to do: find some way to condense all my obtuse thoughts on ludology, interactive media and game theory into short, easily grokkable segments.
Hopefully the first [i]real[/i] post will be up soon.
styg
I always thought I'd live out my life blissfully blog-free. Except recently I realised it would be the best thing for helping me do something I've always needed to do: find some way to condense all my obtuse thoughts on ludology, interactive media and game theory into short, easily grokkable segments.
Hopefully the first [i]real[/i] post will be up soon.
styg
THIS IS NOT A TEST... oh wait. Yes it is.
A necessary evil to start off with... defining some of the terms I'm going to be using in this thing. Bear in mind that each and every one of these definitions is much more nebulous than I can describe here. These are starting points, effectively, and I might revise definitions based on future research.
MEDIA
Basically any cultural communication form which involves a facilitating medium in addition to the human mind and body. I'm going to be focusing primarily on forms of storytelling (e.g. games, plays, books, movies) but will touch on others such as non-narrative communicative forms (e.g. chat rooms/fora) and information reporting (e.g. newscasts, commentary, journals).
AUDIENCE
Any person observing a piece of a medium who wasn't involved in the creation of that piece of media. Yes this definition sucks. Hopefully I'll come up with a better one.
GAME
Anything played. Yeah, this is the big one. According to common parlance, football is a game (the beautiful one at that), yet so is Dungeons & Dragons, which is self-evidently a completely different form of entertainment. So, for that matter, is pointing a stick at other kids and going 'Na-na-na-na I shot you you're dead.' What exactly are the connecting factors between different types of game?
LUDOLOGY
Also 'game studies'. Technically the academic study of gaming, specifically videogaming but I also intend to look at other forms of gaming (see above). Ludology is also (sort of) a tenet of game design which favours play over story.
NARRATOLOGY
The academic study of storytelling. In reference to gaming, narratology usually refers to the tenet of favouring story over play.
INTERACTION
Any action undertaken in media in which the audience directly affects the medium. At the most basic level, you usually interact with a videogame in that you control the central character's actions. In most books, you do not. If a stand-up comedian banters with a heckler, that audience member, the heckler, is interacting, while the other audience members are not. At this point cognitive psychologists and discourse analysists may be shaking their heads and tutting. Well, that's another subject for another time.
INTERFACE
The method in which interaction occurs.
EMERGENCE
Unexpected or unscripted results stemming from interaction, typically applied to videogames.
SCRIPT
The things which are hard-coded into a videogame - and also the dialogue and directions which occur in pre-written media. Curse homonyms, curse them I say!
MMO (MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE)
Huge, online games which act as shared gaming experiences. Like chat rooms with graphics, basically. Not my forte but I do intend to look at them to at least some degree.
VIRTUAL WORLD
The world in which a videogame takes place, typically MMOs but can the term technically be applied to any game. Even Tetris.
LINEARITY
A fixed story, in which the audience do not influence the overall plot.
NONLINEARITY
The opposite of linearity. A story in which the audience can influence the overall plot.
FREEFORM
A game in which the player has broad options of how they want to interact, typically in the sense that they can travel all over the game's world, and approach challenges or plot points how they wish. A somewhat relative term.
That's all the important terms I can think of for now... well, I can think of others, but I'll define them when I discuss them. The ones above are the basic tools I'll be using to talk about other things. I'm not happy with all the above definitions, and I'm sure some will change.
styg
MEDIA
Basically any cultural communication form which involves a facilitating medium in addition to the human mind and body. I'm going to be focusing primarily on forms of storytelling (e.g. games, plays, books, movies) but will touch on others such as non-narrative communicative forms (e.g. chat rooms/fora) and information reporting (e.g. newscasts, commentary, journals).
AUDIENCE
Any person observing a piece of a medium who wasn't involved in the creation of that piece of media. Yes this definition sucks. Hopefully I'll come up with a better one.
GAME
Anything played. Yeah, this is the big one. According to common parlance, football is a game (the beautiful one at that), yet so is Dungeons & Dragons, which is self-evidently a completely different form of entertainment. So, for that matter, is pointing a stick at other kids and going 'Na-na-na-na I shot you you're dead.' What exactly are the connecting factors between different types of game?
LUDOLOGY
Also 'game studies'. Technically the academic study of gaming, specifically videogaming but I also intend to look at other forms of gaming (see above). Ludology is also (sort of) a tenet of game design which favours play over story.
NARRATOLOGY
The academic study of storytelling. In reference to gaming, narratology usually refers to the tenet of favouring story over play.
INTERACTION
Any action undertaken in media in which the audience directly affects the medium. At the most basic level, you usually interact with a videogame in that you control the central character's actions. In most books, you do not. If a stand-up comedian banters with a heckler, that audience member, the heckler, is interacting, while the other audience members are not. At this point cognitive psychologists and discourse analysists may be shaking their heads and tutting. Well, that's another subject for another time.
INTERFACE
The method in which interaction occurs.
EMERGENCE
Unexpected or unscripted results stemming from interaction, typically applied to videogames.
SCRIPT
The things which are hard-coded into a videogame - and also the dialogue and directions which occur in pre-written media. Curse homonyms, curse them I say!
MMO (MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE)
Huge, online games which act as shared gaming experiences. Like chat rooms with graphics, basically. Not my forte but I do intend to look at them to at least some degree.
VIRTUAL WORLD
The world in which a videogame takes place, typically MMOs but can the term technically be applied to any game. Even Tetris.
LINEARITY
A fixed story, in which the audience do not influence the overall plot.
NONLINEARITY
The opposite of linearity. A story in which the audience can influence the overall plot.
FREEFORM
A game in which the player has broad options of how they want to interact, typically in the sense that they can travel all over the game's world, and approach challenges or plot points how they wish. A somewhat relative term.
That's all the important terms I can think of for now... well, I can think of others, but I'll define them when I discuss them. The ones above are the basic tools I'll be using to talk about other things. I'm not happy with all the above definitions, and I'm sure some will change.
styg
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