245 réponses à ce sujet

[Maria Caliban]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...

Presumably, you always know when you've hit your thumb instead of a nail and can then proceed to actually hammer in the nail. With tone, you can only hope that you interpret tone correctly.

If it's an active conversation, you could always ask for clarification. 

"Wait, you were serious?"

To reach the same level of accuracy as hitting your thumb instead of a nail, you would have to ask for clarification every, single time you interpreted tone.

Really, you'd be better off speaking to an Elcor as they explicitly tell you what tone they intend.

Modifié par Maria Caliban, 09 novembre 2010 - 05:14 .

[upsettingshorts]

Maria Caliban wrote...

To reach the same level of accuracy as hitting your thumb instead of a nail, you would have to ask for clarification every, single time you interpreted tone.

Case in point, you're taking my choice of metaphor far too seriously.  Unreliability does not equal uselessness.  Forget the hammer, I'm not going to be a slave to my own analogies.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 09 novembre 2010 - 05:16 .

[Maria Caliban]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

Case in point, you're taking my choice of metaphor far too seriously. 

Actually, you're *assuming* that I've taken your metephor seriously, created your own scale of unacceptable vs acceptable seriousness, and generated a level of serious for my posts that has little to nothing to do with my actual level of seriousness.

You're not even interpreting tone here inasmuch as you're creating it whole-cloth.

Upsettingshorts wrote...

My point was that we use unreliable tools all the time.  Hopefully the fact we're conscious of their unreliability allows room for doubt, but that doesn't make them useless.  Language itself in its raw form is itself susceptible to being misinterpreted due to ignorance or bias.

But if a tool is too unreliable, we discard it. Would you build a house with a hammer that hit your thumb 50% of the time?

Sylvanus simply has a lower tolerance for error and sees tone as being highly error prone. If he can function without relying on it, and he appears to be able to do so, then discarding it makes sense.

[upsettingshorts]

Maria Caliban wrote...
You're not even interpreting tone here inasmuch as you're creating it whole-cloth.

Guilty as charged.  But this is the internet.  I wouldn't have even taken issue with Sylvius' statement if we were just talking about forum conversations. 

Maria Caliban wrote...

But if a tool is too unreliable, we discard it. Would you build a house with a hammer that hit your thumb 50% of the time?

Sylvanus simply has a lower tolerance for error and sees tone as being highly error prone. If he can function without relying on it, and he appears to be able to do so, then discarding it makes sense.

Are we saying that tone is universally unreliable to the point of uselessness, or just unreliable for people who are error prone in interpreting it so that it may as well be useless?  If it's the former, I'm going to keep disputing that.  If it's the latter, I have no issue.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 09 novembre 2010 - 05:30 .

[Fortlowe]

Excellent, Slvius has wandered into solid disagreeable territory and all is right with the world again

@ Sylvius: A PDF?! Now that is a little too much, plus reading it and calling that gameplay would be a bit of a stretch. The beauty of the Codex is that it is immediate and a living part of the narrative (albiet admittedly not always implemented in the most digestable way). Collecting the masive jumble of information that is the DA lore into a PDF would become the very 'wall of text' I've been debating doesn't exist. And let's not forget that the Codex is ultimately a collection of information that the PC gathers (a point that I should have addressed in the previous argument) so a PDF would not only do this dynamic a disservice, but also the inevitable 'introduction scene' at the beginning of the game as well (Bioware always handles those so well, I think).

Modifié par Fortlowe, 09 novembre 2010 - 05:49 .

[Fortlowe]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Upsettingshorts wrote...

Case in point, you're taking my choice of metaphor far too seriously. 

Actually, you're *assuming* that I've taken your metephor seriously, created your own scale of unacceptable vs acceptable seriousness, and generated a level of serious for my posts that has little to nothing to do with my actual level of seriousness.

You're not even interpreting tone here inasmuch as you're creating it whole-cloth.

Upsettingshorts wrote...

My point was that we use unreliable tools all the time.  Hopefully the fact we're conscious of their unreliability allows room for doubt, but that doesn't make them useless.  Language itself in its raw form is itself susceptible to being misinterpreted due to ignorance or bias.

But if a tool is too unreliable, we discard it. Would you build a house with a hammer that hit your thumb 50% of the time?

Sylvanus simply has a lower tolerance for error and sees tone as being highly error prone. If he can function without relying on it, and he appears to be able to do so, then discarding it makes sense.

That's why I like using the little smiley face things at the bottom of the text box.

[Vaeliorin]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Vaeliorin wrote...
Since we're not likely to get this sort of thing, however, I appreciate the setting information that exists in the Codex, and I would be annoyed if we were to lose it.

If we have to collect the information in game (as the DAO codex works), then by the time we get it it's too late.  we need it before we start playing.

Certainly.  In a setting where I'm unfamiliar, my first playthrough is often about gaining as much information about the world as I can, in order to have subsequent playthroughs actually make sense.  As such, those playthroughs often play out like I'm playing someone who has been dropped into the world from out of nowhere.  They're not as fun as they could be, but I like learning about worlds, so it's not too bad.

Sure, I'd rather have a printed manual, too, but publishers and retailers want packages with a lower mass to reduce shipping costs.  We're not going to get a 250 page manual back...

...unless those 250 pages are digital.

Probably.  Doesn't mean I'm willing to give up on it.

Try a Kindle.  Apparently those are easy to read.

I despise E-Book readers.  Honestly, the only things I'm willing to read in a non-paper format are things like forums and news sites that are constantly updated.

Fortlowe wrote...
@ Sylvius: A PDF?! Now that is a little too
much, plus reading it and calling that gameplay would be a bit of a
stretch. The beauty of the Codex is that it is immediate and a living
part of the narrative (albiet admittedly not always implemented in the
most digestable way). Collecting the masive jumble of information that
is the DA lore into a PDF would become the very 'wall of text' I've been
debating doesn't exist. An let's not forget that the Codex is
ultimately a collection of information that the PC gathers (a point that
I should have addressed in the previous argument) so a PDF would not
only do this dynamic a disservice, but also the inevitable 'introduction
scene' at the beginning of the game as well (Bioware always handles
those so well, I think).

A massive, illustrated setting book would be much preferable to the codex, as far as I'm concerned.  They could even sell it separately, so that those who aren't interested in such things don't have to purchase it.

I honestly considered buying the DA PnP books just for the setting/lore information, but I've yet to get someone to reply to me when I asked how about much lore it contained compared to the game (I also dislike it being divided up and sold by level range, but that's neither here nor there.)

Modifié par Vaeliorin, 09 novembre 2010 - 05:49 .

[biomar]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

How do I know, if my PC has only met one Qunari in her life, whether Sten is that way because all Qunari are or because that's just Sten?  I don't, but if I find Brother Gentivi's book on the subject, I can learn more.  I may even learn something about Brother Genitivi or the Chantry in the process, which adds something to the story I wouldn't get just by talking to Sten.

The problem is that you DON'T learn more from Genitivi's book.  (Or, actually, "paragraphs.")  You learn stuff that you can infer from talking to Sten or is simply stated outright by him.  And, in fact, the book is limiting to future writing because it would tend to indicate that ALL Qunari ARE a lot like Sten, so you now either can't write wild-ass atypical Qunari or you're saying, implicitly, that Mssr. Genitivi didn't have any better of real cross-section than you did with your sample size of one.  Either way, the codex entry is pointless.

I really don't understand why people have such a hard time grasping this idea.  I am not saying that text is an inferior method of storytelling (there is stuff you can do with text that you cannot do with ANY other medium.).  I am not saying that the information should be cut from the game entirely.  I am saying that, due to the nature of THIS medium, that is, COMPUTER GAMES, you have a huge wealth of options available to you for conveying this very same information without resorting to *text footnotes*, so WHY would you have the text footnotes?!  Authors don't enclose CD's of all the songs they were listening to when they were writing so you can get a better feel for their state of mind!  They rely ON THE MEDIUM to convey what they want to convey! 

Why on earth should we *not* hold video games up to this standard?  Stop arc-welding bathtubs to your game just because you can.  Sheesh.

Addendum:  In older games the medium was so limited that text footnotes were very often the only option you had, so I understand where the convention came from.  But this isn't true any more and becomes increasingly untrue with every year that passes and every improvement in technology.  Would you approve of a modern movie that used the text-screens of old silent films alongside their spoken dialog because you like to read those text screens?  No.  That would be silly.  And if a movie did this, you'd say it was gimmicky.  It'd look like the commentary track that comes on the DVD.  How much would you like going to a movie in the theater where the commentary track was included and you couldn't just watch the actual movie?  You'd feel like they'd cheated you out of your 10 bucks or 12.50 or whatever it is now.

In a lot of your posts in this thread you argue that good writing doesn't need an addendum . . . yet, as you can see here, addenda do have their uses .

Modifié par biomar, 09 novembre 2010 - 11:05 .

[biomar]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

What was great about ME1-2's Codex wasn't that it had a VO. It was great because I could actually find the goddamned article I wanted to read because they had titles.

Yeah, alphabetically ordered codex entries with no need to hover over the entry would help.

Modifié par biomar, 09 novembre 2010 - 10:25 .

[Addai]

Stick668 wrote...

Addai67 wrote...

--- I don't understand why text should be considered an inherently inferior method of storytelling.  Especially since it happens to be my favorite.  Being a game, I expect there to be visual and audio storytelling, too, but variety is a good thing.  I also reject the idea that it represents creative gimping.  Just because you don't favor it doesn't make it lazy or un-creative.

Not attempting to speak for PsychoBlonde here, just riffing on generalities...

Text is not inherently inferior in a novel or a text adventure, where it makes up the entire actuality of the work.

In an "interactive moving picture with sound" situation, text by definition is not core gameplay. It's immersion-breaking. It's a sideline. It's extracurricular reading. No, there's nothing wrong with that. I love frivolous off-hand throwaway texty bits, as any of the five people who played in my NWN campaigns could tell you. But showing off your clever world-building should be done by showing off your clever world-building. Not by making your blueprints public reading material.

If we go with the assumption that you can reallocate zots from supplemental text to improve actual in-game information density... of course that would be preferrable.

The best example I can think of is Mass Effect 2's ambient incidentals. Yes, the background ads and announcements in the Citadel and on Illium. It made me gasp at times, because it just wouldn't let up.

"Hey, that's something I did in ME1. Wow, this place is nuts. Hang on, what that game salesman is saying sounds awfully familiar. Oh god. 'This one wonders whether its heat sink is over capacity.' Mwahah, individually targetted intrusive adverts." And so on.

How'd this translate to the Dragon Age setting where public address systems consist of waving your hands and raising your voice? Not sure. More random rambly party conversations? More time spent on perfecting facial animations and body language? More random encounters? Fleshing out the Board Quests a bit?

Hmmm... now that I write it, I sort of confirm my own suspicion that it probably wouldn't be that easy in practice. A song lyric writer that can't play music on his own will never be a one-man band. You can't just take X person-hours of Writing and apply them to the totality of the work. Be nice if you could, of course.

To stay on the ME2 examples: I found the pure-text character background files available in Lair of the Shadow Broker to be an absolute hoot. Time well spent. And I get why. It's a fairly "low-impact" way of creating some additional content. In the sense that you don't need fifteen other people to script, animate, code, score and voice-act what you scribbled. I appreciate that.

But in a perfect world? I'd still prefer a DLC called Jack's Forum Adventure. Not to mention Legion Appropriatez The Inexperienzed and Catsuit Lawson Goes Looking For Trouble...

Codex isn't always immersion breaking.  Sometimes it is text in the world, a note you pick up for instance.  Learning information by ambient chatter is fine, but I look at it as a both/and.  For one thing you don't always catch the chatter if you're focused on something else.  It's also not organized and there's no reference to it without a codex.

[Dhiro]

I hate when there is spoilers in a Codex's entry. Really D:

[biomar]

Addai67 wrote...
Codex isn't always immersion breaking.  Sometimes it is text in the world, a note you pick up for instance.  Learning information by ambient chatter is fine, but I look at it as a both/and.  For one thing you don't always catch the chatter if you're focused on something else.  It's also not organized and there's no reference to it without a codex.

Exactly.

[Stick668]

Addai67 wrote...

Codex isn't always immersion breaking.  Sometimes it is text in the world, a note you pick up for instance.

If you stayed in the world while reading, it wouldn't be. 

If you stop playing the character in the world and start fiddling with arcane computer menus, you are by - at least my - definition "breaking immersion". (Which isn't necessarily a Terrible Terrible Thing. Zooming in on every book and having to read it yourself "in character" would certainly be "immersive". Might also get tedious.)

That's all I meant. By that bit.

[Addai]

Stick668 wrote...

Addai67 wrote...

Codex isn't always immersion breaking.  Sometimes it is text in the world, a note you pick up for instance.

If you stayed in the world while reading, it wouldn't be. 

If you stop playing the character in the world and start fiddling with arcane computer menus, you are by - at least my - definition "breaking immersion". (Which isn't necessarily a Terrible Terrible Thing. Zooming in on every book and having to read it yourself "in character" would certainly be "immersive". Might also get tedious.)

That's all I meant. By that bit.

Why is that any more immersion breaking than stopping to fiddle with combat menus?

In-world reading mechanisms are quaint but tend to be unwieldy, like the books in Oblivion.  If it could be implemented easily and then the text ferreted into a secret codex for future reference, I'm fine with that.

[Stick668]

@Addai67:



My working definition of "immersion" is tied to how... transparent the UI is.



For others it is dependant on being able to play dress-up with NPCs, killing every person they encounter, engaging in intercourse with every person they encounter, stealing everything that's not tied down, being able to untie things that are tied down, the presence of horses, the availability of swooshing garments, the ability to throw offensive party members out the airlock, the isometric perspective, the turn-based hex-grid movement and the inclusion of realistic management of bodily functions.



Which is why I rarely use the accursed word at all.



... does that make my previous post any clearer?

[Addai]

Er... no, not at all. You're the one who brought up the fact that codex is supposedly immersion-breaking.

[Stick668]

Because it takes you out of the game and into the menus? Sorry if I was unclear or gratuitously rambly.

[In Exile]

Vaeliorin wrote...
I despise E-Book readers.  Honestly, the only things I'm willing to read in a non-paper format are things like forums and news sites that are constantly updated.

Just as an aside, empirically, people read slower using non-book formats. Not sure why this is. A friend of mine is working in a lab on an experiment in precisely this thing.

[errant_knight]

In Exile wrote...

Vaeliorin wrote...
I despise E-Book readers.  Honestly, the only things I'm willing to read in a non-paper format are things like forums and news sites that are constantly updated.

Just as an aside, empirically, people read slower using non-book formats. Not sure why this is. A friend of mine is working in a lab on an experiment in precisely this thing.

Really? I find that interesting. I wonder if it's because the eye finds it more difficult to track text on the screen. Let us know how that experiment works out.

[Pronto One]

The codxs is all well and good to give you a better picture of the history of Dragon age, but it seems peeps either love it or hate it. I personally think it is a reflection of how much thought went into a game to create an alternate world. I thought the codex was pretty good.



That is just my two copper pieces though.

[Eludajae]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Ms does not indicate matrimonial status.

Miss = unmarried
Mrs = married
Ms = liberated from your patriarchal value judgments

Oh I like you  

[Sylvius the Mad]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

If it's an active conversation, you could always ask for clarification. 

"Wait, you were serious?"

If the game doesn't allow that, then the tone is useless.

Language itself in its raw form is itself susceptible to being misinterpreted due to ignorance or bias.

The "raw form" you describe is an obstacle to be overcome.

Lojban.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 09 novembre 2010 - 04:46 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

errant_knight wrote...

In Exile wrote...

Just as an aside, empirically, people read slower using non-book formats. Not sure why this is. A friend of mine is working in a lab on an experiment in precisely this thing.

Really? I find that interesting. I wonder if it's because the eye finds it more difficult to track text on the screen. Let us know how that experiment works out.

I suspect it has to do either with the angle of the eye (when reading a book my eyes are looking down relative to my head, but when I'm reading a computer screen they're looking up), or with contrast levels between the medium and the background.

I used to do a lot of data entry, and I found that I could work much more quickly if the light levels of the paper from which I was working and my computer screen were the same.  Because LCD screens often don't support low brightness levels, I demanded a CRT for years after LCDs became commonplace.

E-Readers all have LCD screens.  I wonder if you can make them as dim as a piece of printed paper would be in the same room.  That's something worth testing.  Place a Kindle side-by-side with a mass market paperback - which one's brighter?

[In Exile]

errant_knight wrote...
Really? I find that interesting. I wonder if it's because the eye finds it more difficult to track text on the screen. Let us know how that experiment works out.

We don't know. There hasn't been a comprehensive theory. Older experiments were done with computer screens, so it might be a special feature of having to read on a screen versus holding a device in your hands that tries to simualte a book.

Alternative theories are that we are well practiced at reading books and not reading from screens, so there is a practice lag, other theories are that the eyes tire from the bright lights, and still others are that there the physical format of books is more conducive to reading.

The study will ideally be done by March, so we'll have a better notion of what's going on by then.