Wanted to get something off my chest that makes me really really sad at the moment.
I'm going to use Cod4 MW2 as a kind of case study here. It suits the purposes as the epitome of the problem.
What has happened to gaming? In general, that is. Today i saw a post by someone saying "some of the characters are a bit unoriginal though, i mean look at Oghren - its a dwafr [sic] who drinks! How stereotypical!"
It made me want to cry.
Dragon Age is one of the best pieces for the PC ever made. Or on any platform. It is so because the characters are incredibly multi layered, the plot is highly intelligent (even more so than appears - think Anora and Aemon poison etc etc), and the choices realistic. Even random NPCs seem to have a purpose - to amuse, to comment on things happening or to add a great atmosphere. This is just summing up - I could go into endless detail but I've done so too many times.
Such characters as Morrigan are such multi faceted individuals that due to the incredibly and painstakingly detailed dialogue backed up by actors who seem so dead-on in their voice portrayals (most notably Black, Kempa and Valentine) to the point of being as good as top notch seiyuu that they start to cease to be merely videogame characters and are truly brought to life as if in a brilliant movie.
So we have 60 + hours of amazing gameplay, top Hollywood level acting and groundbreaking character depth alongside a great plot, a very good musical score and excellent gameplay. DA:O was announced as early as 2004. I would presume its been in the making for what, 6 years?
How much has DA:O been outsold by, by say, Cod4 MW2? Lets not even go into WoW. Wanna compare the profits? Effort to create? Originality? Professionalism?
How many people who played DA REALLY understood it? Or REALLY appreciated it? How many "oghren is just a dwarf who drinks", or "Morrigan is just some stupid ****" people are there? How many people see Loghain as just a mindless, whimsical villain bent on world domination? This is just on forums! We're not even counting those who won't use forums, and you can generally presume DAO forum users are going to be more into the piece, or at the very least read posts by people who DO take DAO for what it is.
Is there something wrong? Well, yes. The designers of the acclaimed Deus Ex, Warren Spector and Harvey Smith once complained about the fact that their work, in all its glory which took years to create and endless dedication and effort, made them far less money to make the sequel than such games as Time Crisis did. There really is something wrong when such things happen. I like Cod4. I like WoW too. Time Crisis is ok. They're good games, though just as DAO is more of a work of art than a game, WoW is indeed more of an alternate world than a game as well. But when they are far more successful than stuff like Deus Ex and DAO it annoys me.
I have this picture in my mind relating to the Call of Duty series which shows a man turning a lever while smoking a cigarette, and the lever is working a machine which is creating new games every 6 months. Each one is the same as the last but with an extra small addon attached, and they all look fairly bland. They are dropping from a conveyer belt into a fat 20s ish looking guy (who looks like a bit of a ******) mouth labeled "average consumer", and hes ****ting out money. This sums up my view on the matter, because it really is like that. I reiterate that CoD is fun and I've had much entertainment playing it with friends and online. Yet the effort to make it is so small, and its so blindingly unoriginal (i mean common they even have the perfect excuse to use weapons which are already in the real world, locations which are almost exact copies of areas in the middle-east, and half the animation is EXACTLY the same as the last game). The plot is...well...THEIRS A TERRORIST RITE? WELL LOL YOU ONLY SHOT HIS ARM OFF AND HES NOT DEAD SO U GOTA GO CATCH HIM. GOGO. It is ~6 hours long. The multiplayer is the same set of maps over and over again which are only good because its a very competitive game.
To try to put it into perspective, it's like modern novels. It's Twilight (to an extent, like CoD4: fun but unignorably poorly written and overly populist. Love how a vampire impregnates a mortal off the coast of Rio on an island he owns, while sparkling in the sun - may as well have had him go snorkelling at mid day but I digress and possibly offend the bottom-feeders) vs Shakespeare. The world's population seems to be getting more and more retarded and tasteless.
So while things continue to go in this disturbing direction, pieces like DA:O come to need the idiots who will buy it but not appreciate it just for the money - otherwise how can there be a sequel? You can bet there'll be more Time Crisis, Soul Calibur and Call of Duty (and that they'll sell like hotcakes), just like you can bet Stephanie Meyer will pump out "Edward Goes On Holiday to Spain - Naked" (which will be proclaimed by such papers as the most popular one - The Sun - [itself a damning indictment on the English population] as the "best thing ever written"). It is sad.
I have a good friend who plays DAO. Great guy, known him a long time. He likes gameplay. Skips cutscenes (every reader just cringed), doesnt bother much with dialogue, leaves characters naked in camp, makes choices at random and likes flashing lights/pretty things in games. He isn't really a one-off. The problem is a pervasive one. I am 19, but I sympathise with some older people when they complain that everything in media in general is too fast, too flashy and has less class. I am writing in a kind of flow of consciousness but hopefully you understand what I'm getting at.
I wonder what Bioware could do with the kind of budget Blizzard gets? Or if the creators of DAO are, at the back of their minds, annoyed that such people as the creators of CoD4 MW2 undoubtedly get paid more than them, probably by a long way? Though in a way, I'm sure the resultant pride and industry acclaim from creating such a great work is, partly, a great reward.
But surely, if you follow the money, things can only get worse?
I give my thanks to people like David Gaider for being able to do what they do even with this state of gaming.
EDIT by page 3: By the way I love the arguments developing here, well constructed or not. The fact that people are willing to argue about whether Loghain was the good guy or not shows DAO's success and that Loghain IS a deep character. Ha! Proved right by proceedings!
Maybe I'm slightly overanalysing Oghren oO
Edit Page 4: if you like this topic, 5 star it. thx ;p
Edit Page 5: What i REALLY want is that when a game comes out which is so much classier than the rest, that it should be recognised as such in charts and sales as well as reviews and acclaim - above all the rest -
resulting in more being created. This is idealistic in a sense - i admit this wont happen. Doesn't stop me being angry about it though.
But the problem is something which encourages developers to simply "ape convention" (comtrav) with the boring old-samey WW2 FPS rather than come up with something interesting.
The idea that if everyone appreciated stuff like DAO over CoD4's "visceral tension" (squiggles1334 p4) there would be complaints controversial to my thread is hard to argue - people will always "understand" (ibid) such things as "cinematic gameplay" (ibid) because its very hard not to. Takes some effort and intelligence to appreciate the much cited Planetscape Torment/Deus ex/DAO and co.
p.4Driveninhifi wrote...
Something
else to keep in mind: Shakespeare tried to appeal to everyone. He's got low and high brow stuff in all the plays from political machinations to blood flowing across the stage.
this is the most pertinent and insightful comment i've seen so far. Maybe we should not so much "embrace" as "use" the general wish to see easy/simple themes and styles in games. This relates back to ComTav's comparison to movies - look at Dark Knight for example. Dark Knight had the explosions of a major blockbuster but it was also pretty complex - somewhat like DAO in some aspects. Compare that to something (im only looking at modern films atm) like The Prestige or Donnie Darko. Undoubtedly high brow films.
YET Dark Knight did better in relation to its contemporaries in terms of acclaimed success. It appealed to both worlds just as Shakespeare did indeed use lowbrow elements to appeal to the masses as well as the elite of the period. To what extent does DAO do this? Obviously the "elite" are those who can appreciate the more complex games, and the masses are those who happily lap up the average and mass reproduced conventions.
Donnie Darko especially did amazingly well as well - though I sincerely doubt most people who saw it understood it. Is that being unfair? If it isnt, then why did it do so well? Theres no amazing sex in it or anything to draw
a popular crowd. Why did it do so well when its so utterly not-summer-blockbuster?
Both The Prestige and Donnie Darko rose above the competition even being as they were - so why cant games of the same level do this? I suppose its down to film audiences vs gaming audiences but arent these very similar groups of people?
Tough questions.
----
Malificis is a 19 year old psychology student at King's London whose favourite games include DAO, Final Fantasy 7-X, Mask of the Betrayer, Deus Ex, Metal Gear Solid 1-4, Wc3 Frozen Throne, and Starcraft.
All intelligent feedback is appreciated.
Modifié par Malificis, 11 décembre 2009 - 12:34 .
Retour en haut
