I love the way that games, especially board games, have the power to provide a social experience. The giant joystick in this clip certainly got me thinking about that idea:
http://www.areyouindie.com/showcase/profile.php?id=19
Part of why I'm down on video games lately is that, while they can provide a heck of an experience, its generally not a social one. That often makes the experience empty, somehow, if you ask me.
Mankind's earlier games, from board games to general acts of vaguely organized frollick, were inherently social, at very least by nature of involving one or more people. One could argue that this was out of necessity.
Let me back up a step: one major difference between a game and a non-game activity is unpredictability. You don't know what's going to happen next when you play a game, and trying to affect that outcome, and experiencing the results, is part of the joy of it. This is why we don't play games that are "solved", why we shun the broken strategy, why a game without depth loses its appeal quickly. We don't want to go through the motions, we want the thrill of uncertainty, and the challenge of affecting it.
So, early on, the easiest way to provide challenge and uncertainty was to pit players against one another. You want X, he wants not-X, conflict ensues, the outcome is uncertain.
But computers can do a bunch of stuff under the hood, can cut decision outcomes along time-discretions so fine that our performance is at the mercy of our more base reflexes, they can provide an uncertain outcome in our interaction with them.
And sure, a deck of cards for solitaire can provide uncertainty. A ball-and-cup game, through the finer points of physics can provide the unexpected bounce and twitch.
But for many people, the social end of gaming has become the exception.
Some people are fine with all this, I'd reckon. 'Gimme uncertainty, via a person or a magic box or whatever, I want to impose my will on the world. Thank god I'm not at the mercy of having other people around to get my game on'. I can't imagine anyone actually uttering that statement, ever. But you get the point, I don't think some people see the loss of a human element in games as a problem.
For me though, I feel like I need that social element. Believe it or not, this isn't even meant as some screed in favor of social interaction, its just what I'm finding I want from games lately. When I play video games, I strive for coop gameplay when I can find it. Even when I play a video game alone, I find myself looking for games that are going to promote social interaction after-the fact. I like my ownership-of-experience games (I don't think I've done my rant on this yet here) where I can tell someone a story of what I did that is different from the experience that every player has. I want something where I can compare achievements and high scores. Bioshock's coming out, and I'm stoked to play it, but its at least partially because I want to talk about (what's shaping up to be) a landmark game, with other game lovers.
Side note, I played the demo, god damn. An enormous, abandoned 1950's underwater city, ready to collapse under the weight of the ocean at any moment, filled with period propaganda, magestic architecture, and crawling with maniacs. Abandoned, underwater, 50's, metropolis. Jesus! Best video game atmosphere ever? So yeah, I'm still a sucker for the solo elements.
This comes into board games too. They're inherently social, but I'm finding I want to weild this in ways other than outright competition. Not just because of my game-based neuroses, though I'm sure thats part of it, I feel like there are other kinds of interaction that can be inspired by games than I-win, you-lose. I'd like more cooperative games, and even games that encourage creative expression, for example. That's a lofty enough goal, I'll stop short of games that let you share your feelings.
To get back to the initial inspiration, I love the idea of the giant joystick. It's collaborative, but furthermore, it allows people to choose their own approach to the collaboration. Its cooperative, but there's a negotiation there, I can imagine. Its a creative act, just playing it, just deciding how to play it, and one that multiple people participate in. All this despite being a video game. Delicious.
I can only dream of a board game design like that: one that allows people to choose their own mode of interaction, while providing enough of a framework so that the whole exercise doesn't fall into disarray.
It seems impossible, but as if often the case with these posts, I'm warmed by the promise of the idea's distant glow.
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2 comments:
I like how Giant Joystick flips the video game reward system on its head. The basic premise works out to "if you can figure out how to use me, you will be rewarded with the social, physical playing of a game." The game becomes a cooperative problem solving project of how to wield the thing, and success there means you can finally a lot mental space to the REAL game, ie shooting the asteroids or avoiding the ghosts.
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However, to explode that out into your broader topic, games with simple simple premises, like asteroids, robotron, pacman etc are among the best at presenting unique problems each time you play them...and while the graphics and 3rd person view are super static and old, they can still be different, challenging, and bring on a zen-like state of concentration.(And I could rave forever about the pyshological benefits of the concentrative zen focus of certain games, but as that sort of runs counter to your point, I will save them for later.) Contrary to God of War or Halo where literally the rote repetition of how to solve a problem presented is what gets you through. Which (counter-intuitively?) makes pac man carry a rich imagined micro-narrative for each encounter, and the supposedly epic story of Halo seem completely unemersive, Hollywood-hack, going through the motions BS.
-This is getting off topic, but I'm going to run with it.-
And those older games recall the glory days of the arcade, that bastion of social video gaming where people physically met, competed, reveled in awe, and discussed strategy. AND they had money on the line. God, fuck deathmatch.
eh, thats a can of worms...
I agree with all of this, and I think its all related. I gave a lot of thought to the purpose of games when working on my still-unfinished "why God of War is everything wrong with games" essay
I think that getting in that zen-like flow state is one of the main worthwhile things you can get out of a game. There is this essay in Salen and Zimmerman's game design reader called Eyeball and Cathexis that I wish I could get to you somehow. Its a great discussion on the utter absorption that Breakout, and games in general can bring.
I feel like most games I like either provide me with an absorbing flow state or a social opportunity. They might be unrelated, but one way I look at it is:
I want games to either enhance my life, or take me away from it. It needs to integrate satisfyingly with my reality, or truly immerse me (via artistry, clever suggestion or base adreneline) in its own.
Singstar, 4 player bomberman, sim city, even a unique gta foray, all feel like good life activities. Pac man, Bank Panic, Tetris, Picross are all immersive enough that I forget my life and its troubles.
But a game like god of war or halo is worthless as a gameplay experience, and isn't imersive enough for me to forget it.
Your idea of Pac-Man as a richly imagined narrative is also interesting. Its a matter of unpredictability, again, I think. It is simple enough that you engage it on the level of the basic dramatic events; the escapes, captures, deaths; and attach your own importance to them. Halo engages you on the level of how cool that explosion was, and there's nothing to attach to it that hasn't already been attached for you.
That's not a wholly fair assessment, but I think my point is in there somewhere.
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