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Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: Samuel Tow on December 31, 2012, 11:47:56 PM
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I don't mean this in the sense that there are no good games or there's something wrong being done with games, and I definitely don't mean to bring up the closure of City of Heroes. That's just not what I mean. Actually, looking at releases, this year saw a ton of very, very good games, fun games, too. No, I mean that more in reference to the content of the games themselves.
What inspired me to ask this question is actually Angry Joe's top ten best games of 2012 (http://angryjoeshow.com/2012/12/top-10-best-games-of-2012/). I don't discount the man's opinion, but it really served to highlight just how "dark" 2012 was for video game plot. You have Dishonoured which is basically a dark story, Far Cry 3 which is about slavery and brutality, Max Payne 3 which is just about the most depressing Max Payne game to date, you have Mass Effect 3 which took a MUCH darker tone than either of its prequels (and had a stupid and depressing ending), the Walking Dead which is about the harsh drama and reality of a zombie apocalypse... Wow, man.
Then you have other games like Diablo 3, which builds up the character of Leah only to basically ruin her towards the end. Then you have the new Tomb Raider game and, sure, that's not out yet, but it's already being sold in stores, and the creators of that were SO proud that they were torturing Lara Croft, as thought that's the reason I'd buy the game for. And if that weren't bad enough, City of Heroes itself - a game which had always been positive and uplifting, got some of its darkest, most depressing, most unpleasant content in the frikkin' mess that was SSA1. What's going on, guys?
I think back to the past, go back to the games which were considered "dark" once upon a time, say... Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within. Its developers made it with express orders to make it darker and edgier, and it shows in the final game. I thought it was needlessly dark and absurdly gritty at the time, but playing through it now, it's one of the most light-hearted, emotional games I can think of right now. Just think about that for a second. Warrior Within, the game which has THIS (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6f/Prince_of_Persia_-_Warrior_Within_Coverart.png) as a cover, is one of the most light-hearted games I can think up off the top of my head. I mean, sure, there have been comedy games like Orcs Must Die 2 and such, but I mean within the "serious" genre of games. When frikkin' Warhammer 40 000: Space Marine is among the most cheerful games I've played recently, what the hell is going on with gaming?
I'm not a comic book fan. I never have been. But I've heard so much about the 90s "dork age" of Rob Leifeld's perpetually scowling, violent anti-heroes that I might as well have been one. I can't help but feel the same is happening for games, and I don't get it. What happened to make this change? When did we start hating happy endings and fun gameplay? Because this isn't just from this year. I played through the new Tomb Raider series and I saw it clear as day. Legend is sexy, funny and awesome. Anniversary is tired, morally ambiguous and kind of dark. Underworld is just depressing, unpleasant and downright creepy. Same with Mass Effect, same with a lot of series. And I don't get why this is. It can't be that "gamers are growing up" because gamers have been growing up since the 80s and that didn't turn Sonic the Hedgehog into a dark and gri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_the_Hedgehog_%28video_game%29)... OK, now that's just not fair! You know what I mean!
So... Why is this? What happened to make us unsatisfied with happy games with good endings that we started to buy into games that intentionally torture their protagonists and proudly advertise themselves for it? "Come see Lara Croft almost get raped!" What did I miss playing mostly just City of Heroes?
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Q_Q spoilerbombed! I didn't know about D3 and Leah (I really liked her from what I played in the trial version)
Anyway... I blame the "2012 endtime" hype for the choice in theme the past couple years. Now that its blown over, maybe there will be a change.
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We're pretty much in a dark age of everything entertainment. Take a look at the 'make it grittier' approach to everything superhero.
Seems the industry has found the sex and violence lines they can't cross without getting a rating that cuts them off from the target audience. Maybe "Dark" is just the new envelope that hasn't yet been pushed to the max.
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We grew up ?
No, seriously, take another look at Sonic for instance. Do you realize he has been hopping on machines an kicking the good old Doctor's adipose tissues for 30 or more games now. He who has been kidnapping plants, birds and other things to turn them into machines (or use them as power source) and make them capture more to turn them again. Except the colorful depiction, it may as well be the God-Emperor fighting against Horus' Heresy.
Basically, we have been The Pyro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUhOnX8qt3I).
And, also, we are really tired of the "happy ending". Done too much. Although with the latest (free) DLC for Mass Effect 3, you can have a happy ending, you just have to work your sweat a bit to have it, but you can have "Shepard vanquished and survived the reapers, yay !" Just like ME 1.
But I hear you, I think real life is grim enough already, why can't we have serious (not comical) but happy games ? Like... well, did we ever have one ? Watch out for double entendre. Generally, all the "happy" games are just those you didn't think enough of how crapsack the hero always have to fight, every time, what the innocent have to suffer each and every time. It's not because it's not spoken of that it doesn't happen. It's just swept under the carpet of colors and let you go in a blissful ignorance.
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And, also, we are really tired of the "happy ending". Done too much. Although with the latest (free) DLC for Mass Effect 3, you can have a happy ending, you just have to work your sweat a bit to have it, but you can have "Shepard vanquished and survived the reapers, yay !" Just like ME 1.
But I hear you, I think real life is grim enough already, why can't we have serious (not comical) but happy games ?
That kind of brings up an interesting shift in how entertainment views its audience. A lot of time it seems like escapism is now viewed as some kind of a taboo. Unless you're 5-years old, you're not supposed to indulge in any kind of fantasy. You're supposed to gobble up CNN 24/7 and eat, sleep, breathe, and worship this living Hell we call reality.
I expected entertainment to lighten up somewhat in the past few years. We're in a situation very similar to the great depression. At the time, Hollywood responded by giving us a much-needed dose of naivety and hope. This time around, nothing has changed.
Maybe it's just that innocence has somehow become a thing to be hunted down and destroyed, compared to what it used to be, which was something to hold onto as long as possible.
You're right though, that the darkside of the story is always there. It kinda hit me funny when I realized that the villain in Ghostbusters 2, converting NYC's apathy and hatred into an energy source he could draw from, was pretty much the exact same plot that was presented in one of the Care Bears movies.
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And, also, we are really tired of the "happy ending". Done too much.
Wait, who's we? I've never been tired of it. I LOVED the happy ending in Mass Effect 2. I managed to get every damn bastard on that ship back alive, and I felt wonderful about it. Yeah, even Dr. Chakwas. Even the unnamed deck hands that nobody cares about - the entire crew. Mass Effect 3 didn't give me that option until we made a huge stink about it and you know what? By this point it's all too little too late. I'm done with the franchise, done with the series, because it rammed the "dark" ending down my throat all the while promising "choice."
But I hear you, I think real life is grim enough already, why can't we have serious (not comical) but happy games ? Like... well, did we ever have one ? Watch out for double entendre. Generally, all the "happy" games are just those you didn't think enough of how crapsack the hero always have to fight, every time, what the innocent have to suffer each and every time. It's not because it's not spoken of that it doesn't happen. It's just swept under the carpet of colors and let you go in a blissful ignorance.
Yeah, if you go out of your way to interpret every single game ending as a "bad" ending, then sure. I've heard that Squall Lionheart died when he got speared through the heart with an ice shard and everything until the end of the game was a dying hallucination. It wasn't, but people will look for depressing endings all they want. Just look at how rabidly they reinterpret the ending to Limbo. You didn't find the girl you were chasing. It's probably that both of you fell in a hole and starved to death and the whole journey was... A dying hallucination. Yeah, it's not possible that the game had a happy ending.
But games with happy endings exist. I mentioned Mass Effect, but what about Final Fantasy 7? Yes, Tifa died along the way (spoilers), but everyone else survived, both Genova and Sephiroth were defeated, "Meteor" was dispelled and the Mako reactors sapping the life from the planet brought down. Sure, Advent Children went out of its way to invent new disasters, but that's all they were - NEW disasters. When Tomb Raider 2 finished, Lara shot a red dragon with a shotgun and escaped a crumbling cave. OK, she didn't have the Dagger, but she'd saved the world. And the only people who had to die were all bad guys anyway, Marco Bartoli most of all. And, hell, Tomb Raider: Legend ends the game on as positive a note as is possible within the confines of the story, with Lara inspired and fired up to find her mother. The rat's ass angst didn't come in until Underworld.
Or look Ubi's Prince of Persia. Sands of Time has a tragic ending, but then time is reversed and the ending is both funny and cute. Sure, Warrior Within may be "darker and edgier," but it also has by far the series' best storyline of a mighty mystical empress trapped in her own fate, looking for salvation and finding hope against all desperation. Then you have the Two Thrones the entire theme of which is hope, love and integrity. It's not a particularly well told story, but it's still a very happy story that ends in a smile and a joke. Hell, even the 2008 Prince of Persia managed to pull a touching finale out of what was looking to be a bad ending, and didn't get depressing until the DLC, which I never ran because Ubi can kiss my ass with their "business reasons" for not releasing it on the PC. It wasn't until the Forgotten Sands in 2010 or 2011 that the story became dark and disappointing, and that's far more recent.
Or how about Left 4 Dead 2? The original was sort of dark and gritty, but the sequel is FUN! Yes, it has to do with zombies and death and disgusting bodily fluids, but you know what? The survivors are taking it in stride and making the entire trip entertaining. OK, they keep failing their rescue attempts, but so what? They'll complain, they'll grumble and they'll simply move on to the nest rescue attempt. And if anyone dies? Well, they weren't really dead. They just got dragged off and locked in a closet. Scooby Doo lives! It's fun, it's funny and it makes me feel good just thinking about it.
Hell, Space Marine itself, despite going out of its way to keep with WH40K's depressing "everybody sucks" mentality still manages to be uplifting and inspirational. You have a Captain Titus who not only always has a cool head and a methodical approach to problems... If not a Shatnerian line delivery... But is also somehow resistant to the Warp's dark influence. OK, yeah, he gets carted off by the Inquisition at the end, presumably to be tortured and killed, but he saved an entire world and set and example for all to come after him. And, if the cancelled sequel were ever made, I'm sure they'd have come up with a way to get him out of there.
Or how about Darksiders? The game tells the story about how the world was destroyed, so yes - too bad for humans. But the story isn't ABOUT humans, it's about heaven and hell, intrigue and power plays and this is where War steps up. He defies those who seek to control him, charts his own path and does this while being entirely awesome. Or how about Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Starkiller starts off as the champion of the dark side and spends the majority of both games using evil Sith powers, yet for most of the first game he questions the dark side, then being the good guy, then the entirety of the second game being the good guy. AND he pulls down a Star Destroyer with the Force AND he blows up another star destroyer with Sith Lightning through a capital ship cannon. He wins AND he does the right thing, despite the game pretending to be "dark" ala Warrior Within.
Lemme' check my Steam library...
Oh, yeah, what about Saints Row: The Third? Yes, in that game, you play the de-facto bad guys, but all you ever do is kill even WORSE guys. The Syndicate, the Luchadores, the Deckers. And at the end, you're given the option of either the "bad" ending where you let your friends die but kill your greatest enemy, or you go save your friends, all the while "I Need a Hero" blares in the background. And at the end of it all, the whole of Steelport praises the Saints as heroes and saviours. OK, sure, I ran over eleventy billion people along the way and took part in many violent crimes, but the game intentionally downplays this. It's not trying to be dark. It's trying to be fun and uplifting.
Or, hell, why not take City of Heroes prior to 2010? Sure, the content's execution was kind of sub par, but the stories were all good. In fact, much of Division: Line is incredibly inspirational, demonstrating that peace can be found even between bitter enemies where there is a will. And while later Hro does all he can to stop the peace, I get the feeling that nothing he does will last, eventually. Or World Wide Red - we get to stop a horrible plot from coming to fruition, and no morality, dignity or ethics have to be sacrificed. Hell, even a lot of villain storylines end up being more cool than unpleasant. Dean McArthur's entire plotline is based solely around having fun, being awesome and having a memorable story to tell. You can be despicable if you want to, but I didn't want to and it worked just fine.
And that's just the stuff I can think up off the top of my head. If you gave me a few weeks to think about it, I could come up with more. Let's see... Advent Rising, Soul Reaver, Holdover (http://www.indiegames.com/2009/07/freeware_game_pick_holdover_fo.html), Dead Space 2 (yes, really), Kingdom of Amalur, Oni, both Trine games... Hell, Sexy Beach Zero, why not? The list goes on. You can probably argue that all of them are somehow depressing and darker and edgier, I'm sure, but the games themselves didn't rub it in my face and try to depress me as a means of selling themselves to me. And I can't say that about nearly any game these days that isn't out-and-out comedic.
*edit*
I realise that this comes off as mean, and I didn't intend for it to be. My point here isn't to browbeat you, Bison. Far from it - you point out an aspect of gaming that I've always found very concerning. I just meant to relate why I feel games don't have to be depressing, based on what I've played.
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Yes, Tifa died along the way (spoilers)
A minor nitpick: it was Aeris who died, not Tifa.
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A minor nitpick: it was Aeris who died, not Tifa.
That's not a minor nitpick, that's a major plot point, and thank you for correcting me. I got the character names mixed up, and it was actually very silly of me, since I should know better. Aerith/Aeris is the one whom Sephiroth killed (who was also quite useless in a fight, I found), and Tifa Lockheart is the female fighter who served as my inspiration for female characters for some time, at least when it came to combat abilities. I replayed Final Fantasy 7 recently, with a whole bunch of HD improvements and it's still a very powerful, positive story, it's just... Not very well told, shall we say.
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yeah 2012 didnt seem to be a good year for games. Nor 2011 for that matter. Hope 2013 will be better.
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I think gaming is suffering from the same problem as comic were about 10 years ago.
No, children, Dark does NOT equal Deep.
This is a common fault in writers of all sort, especially those that want to win awards. They want to make their work deeper, and mistakenly decide that making it darker does that.
Uh, no. It just makes it depressing.
Comic writers eventually figured that out, after a loss in sales. I assume game writers will too, after a loss in sales. After all, we play these things for fun and an escape from the real world.
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Comic writers eventually figured that out, after a loss in sales. I assume game writers will too, after a loss in sales. After all, we play these things for fun and an escape from the real world.
One of the reasons why I play older games almost exclusively these days. I want to leave my game happy and satisfied, not frustrated, upset, paranoid, depressed, or otherwise emotionally crushed.
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One of the reasons why I play older games almost exclusively these days. I want to leave my game happy and satisfied, not frustrated, upset, paranoid, depressed, or otherwise emotionally crushed.
exactly.
I'm already paranoid so I have that covered without a game, and there is enough frustration, and upsetting things in real life that no game can ever compare to. And depression, recently finally conquered it about 9 months ago after battling it since 5 years old, by myself. In a nutshell, I can get the real thing of those so why would I settle for a virtual imitation?
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Wait, who's we? I've never been tired of it. I LOVED the happy ending in Mass Effect 2. I managed to get every damn bastard on that ship back alive, and I felt wonderful about it. Yeah, even Dr. Chakwas. Even the unnamed deck hands that nobody cares about - the entire crew. Mass Effect 3 didn't give me that option until we made a huge stink about it and you know what? By this point it's all too little too late. I'm done with the franchise, done with the series, because it rammed the "dark" ending down my throat all the while promising "choice."
You're right, it wasn't even "we", but we are the closest to what I meant: "the entertainment industry perceived customers". Another way to look at it is that since all kinds of person love all the kinds of things, and since happy ending were done very well in the past, then "dark" was an open market, so it became the new target. So "we" the targeted audience became tired of happy ending the way everybody gets tired of the same meal, when you eat it only.
[...all the example...]
*edit*
I realise that this comes off as mean, and I didn't intend for it to be. My point here isn't to browbeat you, Bison. Far from it - you point out an aspect of gaming that I've always found very concerning. I just meant to relate why I feel games don't have to be depressing, based on what I've played.
No no, that is your personnal experience, and you're providing excellent examples along the way.
But that doesn't unwind my theory. Let me rephrase it:
since the hero is always overcoming odds, too many odds (ie. Dark) is just a logical exaggeration, and for people seeing all glasses half empty, it's always here.
These games/movies are happy only if you think "they lived long and had many children ever after". And that, you always assumed it when you were a child. You always thought "This is the end, so, the hero righted the wrong, the world is saved !". But what happens next really ? All you've been told was the turmoil of the hero in his/her drama. Coming to realize it, we love to see others suffer in front of odds. Or do we love to imagine improbable or impossible odds to overcome ? "The good will always win, no matter how many times the bad comes at us" implies that the bad is never ending. I'm going to become pseudo-philosophist here, but something shines because everything else is dark. And that's not inventing sorts of "this was all a dream", just by itself it's a little dark inside, when you think of the consequences.
It may also be that we became in demand of more info, and did we get what we wanted ! Ignorance is bliss. "The story was not just an episode ? It's like that every day !?" Is what improved storytelling and curiosity learned us, nothing more.
All in all, the only, truly happy game I can think of is the one the kinds of The Sims and Sim City, when you don't introduce catastrophies. And those are one hell of boring, generally.
I think it's just a matter of seeing the glass half empty or half full, and your suspension of disbelief, that was automatically high back in your tender days. I also personnally noted, but your mileage may vary, that it holds true when you're viewing something you had seen in the past. You don't reanalyze it. And it's a very good thing, because if you loose the tiny bit of innocence...
But... I also feel it's possible it's dark because you are, or letting thought that you are forcing it on a poor hero. If bad exists in his world, but it's not a danger, and that he wants to go after it "for the lulz", it's not Dark. Dark is in the fatality. This is plain old adventure. And that is also a function of how much you know or want to accept about the world. And as a child, how much of the lore in the instruction books did you read ? How much information did it actually contain ? Ho much story could you, or did you fit in a Genesis Cartridge for storytelling ?
As VV, I think it's just a passing by trend, and it may be linked to the current situation in the real world, but thankfully I can still accept it.
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I think it's just a matter of seeing the glass half empty or half full, and your suspension of disbelief, that was automatically high back in your tender days. I also personnally noted, but your mileage may vary, that it holds true when you're viewing something you had seen in the past. You don't reanalyze it. And it's a very good thing, because if you loose the tiny bit of innocence...
No. What you describe is a story approach known as the crapsack world (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrapsackWorld), where no good deed goes unpunished and no bad deed goes unrewarded, where the cynics are always right and the optimists always wrong, where heroes ultimately lose and die in horrible, disgusting fashions while bad guys get to piss on their graves, all because the writer is depressed and wants you to be as depressed as he is. I mean, with all due respect to Doc Aeon, his SSA1 is complete garbage and a strong contender as one of the worst stories I've ever seen short of Avatar: The Legend of Korra. Nothing goes right for any hero, every hero is a belligerent, incompetent dickhead and multiple people die horrible, undeserving deaths because dark, daddy-o!
That's not just me hiding behind the rose-coloured glasses of my youthful memories. I don't rely on nostalgia. All the games I mentioned up above I've played within the last few years, either on old system emulators or through Steam. I played Warrior Within not two weeks ago, for instance. I've played these games and analysed them with the same level of meticulous nit-picking as you've seen me analyse stories about City of Heroes and the same level of critical deconstruction as I applied to Roy Cooling's horrifying arc and all the internal plot inconsistencies in it. I'm not just bringing up the games of my childhood. I've played these recently and I saw them with about as much objectivity as I've ever been capable of.
Let's take one of the oddest examples - Darksiders. On the surface, this is a game where all humans are dead. Period. The apocalypse happened and killed them all, turning them into zombies, and now everyone blames horseman of the apocalypse War, who's on a quest to clear his name and punish those responsible, whom he believes is the "Destroyer," aka the devil in Christianity-avoiding story. He spends the majority of the game angry and bitter, looking for revenge for his lost honour and slave to the concept of balance, reduced to the indignity of the Charred Council's dog. It's humiliating and destructive, but War soldiers on in single-minded determination for vengeance. Yet along the way, he learns that he has been played, that his sense of honour and duty have been used against him, and that he is destined to be pawn in a much larger game, to bring ruin to yet more good people. In the course of his journey, War changes, especially once he has seen the wisdom of the Tree of Knowledge. He grows to respect those who fight for a cause like he once did, and to gain a sense of justice not simply limited to the will of the Charred Council, whose sense of "justice" has long since been replaced with a sense of political awareness.
On the surface, Darksiders is nothing but a game about a demigod with a big sword killing big things in a post-apocalyptic horrible world, that I will not deny. But the story this game tells manages to justify this setting and still end up feeling positive, with proper character development and character growth. It does to me, at least. I care about the characters, and indeed still do. It's why Darksiders 2 was such a huge disappointment - because it HAD no real characters, and the ones that make a return appearance, like Uriel and Samael, are flat and one-note. It barely even has a plot. And if Simon Templeton can't save your presentation and force personality into a flat character, you've done exceptionally badly. Darksiders 2 isn't even "dark," it's just hollow, but that's besides the point.
If you were determined to do it, you can take any happy story and make up "hidden truths" or "future developments" to make it rotten. Of course you can. Take any happy ending story you want. Let's say Ratatouille. By the end of that, the good cook has a girlfriend and a restaurant and the rat has a restaurant, too, everyone's happy and even the ruthless critic has had his life turned around and remembered why he started critiquing food to begin with. It's as feel-good as a feel-good movie can be. But what if the girl turns out to have been having an affair and the guy develops incurable cancer, and the critic gets fired because the "association" doesn't appreciate him giving them a bad name and the rat gets eaten by an alley cat? It's bound to happen, right? I mean, no good ending stays good for long, right? That brings us back to where we started:
No. No it's not bound to happen. No, it's not even likely to happen. If you WANT a good story to be depressing, you can always MAKE it depressing in your own mind, but that doesn't not change what the story is - pleasant, uplifting and feel-good. You can choose to reinterpret a good story into a bad one, but a good story it will remain. That's not the case for gaming these days. That's not the case for contemporary plots. At no point is the notion of happiness or a good ending even hinted at. These are not happy stories, and trying to spin them as happy is about as going against their grain as trying to spin something like Ratatouille or Monsters Inc. or Astro Boy or, hell, the Smurfs as "dark." The game plots of today are distinctly different from the game plots of even a few years ago, and that's not just my impression and they aren't easily interchangeable.
This isn't youthful innocence talking. I'm 28 years old. I haven't been "youthful" or, really, "innocent" for probably 10-15 years now, and many of the games I'm talking about aren't nearly that old. This is an easily definable, quite obvious change in the tone of video game storytelling that you really can't write off as "well, any story can be dark if you want it to." Yes, but some stories ARE dark, and some can only be dark IF you waned them to be, and even then you'd have to work pretty hard to make them dark. You can't really say that about something like Far Cry 3 or Tomb Raider (the new one). Hell, compare Far Cry 3 to Far Cry 1. Sure, the original was dumb, but it followed the exploits of a guy in a loud Hawaiian shirt who had a sort of carefree attitude towards gunfights with armies of heavily-armed mercenaries and a woman who seemed more macho than the man himself. Yeah, it was a bit corny and a bit silly, and yes, the game was still violent and hard, but the entire atmosphere was still a lot more positive and a lot less to do with torture and misery.
That's really what games have become these days - miserable. Depressing, filthy, rotten - miserable. They no longer strike me as something fun to do. Sure, good games have always had dramatic moments, but good games have also earned those dramatic moments with decent setup and also had those dramatic moments amount to something. Yes, something bad just happened, but it happened for the purposes of delivering a better, ultimately more uplifting story in the long run. Like the destruction of the world in pretty grim detail at the start of Darksiders, for instance - it's gruesome, but it's what sets up the ultimately very good story and very creative world. That's not what the games of today do, because the games of today just stuff filth and rot in my face and that's about it. The best I ever get is maybe some kind of revenge story that's centred around everyone being so despicable makes it easy for us to want to see them all dead and let the world burn.
To deny that the games of today have gotten darker, especially sans examples to the contrary, is not a claim I can accept. Let's put it like that.
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This is a common fault in writers of all sort, especially those that want to win awards. They want to make their work deeper, and mistakenly decide that making it darker does that.
So you'd think, but even that has changed. What "darker and edgier" meant in the early 2000s really isn't the same as what it means today, because... Well, look at the "darker and edgier" games of that time. I bring up Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within for a reason. If you can get it running, I highly recommend playing it, both for the surprisingly good story and characters, and so that you can laugh your ass off at the "middle-aged fat man trying to be cool by going to clubs and chatting up kids a third his age with lingo that nobody has used in 20 years." It's trying that hard and failing just as hard :)
But that's kind of what I mean. In 2004, "dark" meant violence, swearing, tits, rock music and dual weapons, plus the colours of red and black. Sure, it did manage to go for more mature themes, but at their heart, most of those "hardcore" stories were still about something positive in the end, just sent through a "grit" filter. In 2004, "dark" seems to me nihilism, rape, torture, depression, opera music and slavery, plus the colours of brown and grey. In a sense, the "dark" of yesteryear was trying hard, but also failing hard in a way so goofy as to be adorable. The "dark" of today, however, is succeeding all too well, to the point where I have to ask who it's even targeted at. It's like they're selling Sandy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b5m7161dZg) and people are genuinely buying it and using and giving it Oscars for its ability to chafe skin and cause lasting injuries.
And really, isn't that "dark" in a nutshell? Once upon a time, people went "dark" because they wanted to be cool, and... Yeah, being hardcore is cool. These days, it feels like people are going "dark" because they want to hurt us, because we live in a culture where being emotionally and psychologically wounded as seen as desirable. What the hell did I miss?
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I think gaming is suffering from the same problem as comic were about 10 years ago.
No, children, Dark does NOT equal Deep.
And I, for one, don't *need* "deep" - all I need is "entertaining". Entertainment value is what matters during the consumption... "Deep" or "Dark" are just some of those frivolous secondary characteristics that fuel the after-dinner debates and internet shenanigans.
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I think we've been building towards this and probably just passed through the beginning of the "Dark Age" of gaming. i.e. the first 10 years. If we throw out all of the hate-related games (sad that they even exist), I think dark probably started to settle around 2002.
First, games were just being built in a post 9/11 world, which, regardless if you're not an American, you're now living in a world where nations were/are being attacked (New York City, Madrid, London, Egypt). Thanks to the proliferation of the Internet, the world is smaller than ever and we know about the trials and tribulations of Africa and the Middle East. The perception of black and white, and even "safe" in first world nations is largely gone. Those bells can't be unrung and that awareness has settled into our collective unconsciousness and manifests in our art.
Second, if we throw out all of the hate games (sad that they exist), then we should go back to GTA3:VC (2002) for the simple fact that for the first time ever you could basically simulate just about anything "bad" - short of genocide. Yes, it was superficial, but it was also an open world to commit to those acts. Please note, I'm not trying to equate an M-rated game or random violent actions to "dark", but point out that now that the extreme boundaries of what can be done in a game have been pushed, it really opened the door to using some of those "instruments" when writing games. And, like all new things, there's lot's of experimentation. SSA1, for all of the criticism you levied at it, was experimental for both Sean McCann and for City of Heroes; CoH might be gone, but Sean will be a better writer for it.
Also, gamers are growing up...and still gaming, but also making these games. There was an interesting documentary on Netflix called Indie Gamer: The Movie and, although you cited many studio-built games, I think the documentary touched upon less than pleasant childhood experiences these developers have begun to incorporate into their games(/art). So, there's stupid "dark" which is a vehicle and then dark "dark" which is an experience, the latter of which hasn't been tapped nearly as much in gaming as other mediums...yet.
I think some of these things contribute to what some of us are seeing as the dark age. Is the age of gaming innocence gone? I don't think so, but I also think retro-gaming is more important now than ever before and the need for creating "libraries" and "museums" has to be given more consideration.
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There's a difference between dark and grimdark. The distinction appears to be lost on some, though, and even grimdark does not have to be suffocatingly oppressive at all times (see: Warhammer 40000 and Commissar Ciaphas Cain).
There is a balance that needs to be observed between too bright and cheerful and too dark and depressing. Few favor any of the extremes.
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SSA1, for all of the criticism you levied at it, was experimental for both Sean McCann and for City of Heroes; CoH might be gone, but Sean will be a better writer for it.
I'm sure he will be, but aside from being a damn depressing story, it also really came off like a series of rookie mistakes. I don't know how much experience the man has with writing, and heavens knows I've done worse, myself. You should see Sam's original story, ye gads! There's this tendency in inexperienced writers to go for the dark and the dramatic because those are some of the strongest stories that impacted us when we were still kids. Trouble is, those sorts of stories take A LOT of skill to pull off and make work, and they take a deep understanding of the underlying themes behind that drama. As without writing experience, we tend to focus on the emotions we felt as an audience and then just basically state that these emotions are happening in the bluntest, most direct way sans setup and payoff and the whole thing comes off as flat. And when you have a story which is both flat AND heavy, you're walking hip deep into disaster, and that's what SSA1 was - one man's attempt to make a deep story by claiming to be deep, but lacking the tools to build it as such, and instead simply stating it as such. That can never end well.
I was one of the greatest decriers of City of Heroes writing past... Wow, I8? Certainly past Going Rogue, because I got the impression that the writers were both completely abandoning established themes and canon, and also shooting for a "darker" tone for no reason other than because it was darker, and not because the story actually demanded such a tone. Yes, Praetorian Earth was supposed to be a distopian future where one man's vision of paradise had mutated into a totalitarian nightmare. That's fine, and it's been done before quite well. It's when you try to grab me by the back of the neck and slam my face in the filth and stink of how bad this place is that I start to take objection, because I question what, precisely, it is that you're trying to do. Are you trying to tell a good but heavy story, or are you trying to make me throw up? Because one's better than the other.
And I speak from experience on that note, as well. I, too, have written a lot of "dark" stories, and I got severely panned by the people who read them. Memorably, at least to me anyway, I've been told by people that they refuse to read on because it's too unpleasant. This was my wake-up call and I had to go out of my way to assure them that "No, honestly! I'm going somewhere with this!" So I know the highs and the lows of "dark" writing, and I just feel that better balance is needed to where you affect your audience, but you don't ultimately disgust them. You want people to care, to be invested, but you still want to entertain them in the end. At least I do.
Also, gamers are growing up...and still gaming, but also making these games. There was an interesting documentary on Netflix called Indie Gamer: The Movie and, although you cited many studio-built games, I think the documentary touched upon less than pleasant childhood experiences these developers have begun to incorporate into their games(/art). So, there's stupid "dark" which is a vehicle and then dark "dark" which is an experience, the latter of which hasn't been tapped nearly as much in gaming as other mediums...yet.
Gamers growing up is an argument I don't get, because "gamers" aren't all one single social group. The gamers of the past who grew up on Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog and were playing the old consoles of the 80s grew up a long time ago. Hell, I'd personally like them to stop identifying themselves with "gamers in general" because I've never played a Super Mario game in my life, nor ever owned a console. My generation of gamers - the 90s kids - also grew up, but we did so more recently. We grew up on Tomb Raider, Half-Life and Resident evil. And there's a whole new generation of gamers who are still kids today, the children of the 2000s. They're growing up on Halo, on God of War, on World of Warcraft and GTA. And they're still kids too young to be making games of their own yet.
At any point in time past a decade after the beginning of video games, a generation of gamers has grown up and started producing games of their own. No other generation, however, has produced games this dark and depressing. We've seen more violent games, sure - Mortal Kombat comes to mind. We've seen grittier games, too - Baldur's Gate was outright cruel. We've even seen dramatic games in the past. Though I praised Oni, it still ends up with the world covered in deadly pollution and people forced to "evolve" by use of the Daodan Crysallis. But all of these games still had an ultimately creative message. They told us that life may be bad and hard and cruel and unfair, but that if we really tried hard enough, everything would still be OK in the end. Even Oni's seemingly "dark" ending is severely tempered by the fact that Konoko herself has been evolved by means of Crysallis, and she turned out just fine. Hell, I want to be like her, so bring on the evolution!
If we are to argue that "gamers grew up," we'd need to look for what sets this generation of grown-up gamers apart from the previous ones that they would make these depressing games. What, specifically, when I am part of this generation of gamers.
As to the point of personal trauma, this is actually something I can understand, as I've gone through it, myself. My parents went through a yelling divorce when I was 15, and I want to spare you all the specific details. It did define my life for nearly a decade, and much of the "darker" stuff I wrote was a capitalisation on the unpleasant emotions I was going for. But even at my darkest hour, even when I was feeling my lowest, even when my writing got the most depressing... The entire point why I was writing in the first place was to create a BETTER fictional world. A world where all the problems I was facing also existed, but where the characters had the strength and opportunity to make things right in ways I never could. As my life seemed bad, I wrote to write something better, and it makes no sense to me why I would write about a life which is WORSE. If I wanted this kind of darkness and pain, I got that when I got up from the PC. In fact, gaming was my only sanctuary from it. It's completely irrational to me that I would infect it with the very same negativity which I was using it to escape from.
That's part of why it's difficult for me to understand how "gamers grew up" and "gamers had crappy lives" could come together to produce depressing games. I would have thought that, as gamers grew up, they would become better at comprehending how much they can fix their own lives and heal their own pain precisely by NOT dragging their entertainment down into a black pit. Maybe that's just me being biassed, but I don't thing writing stories like these and making games like these helps with problems like are being cited as causing it. If I'm depressed, I need to be told that everything will be OK, not that life sucks and I should just go die for all the world cares, which is the vibe I'm getting from a lot of today's stories. It's certainly what I got out of SSA1, to the point where I worried someone on the writing team might actually literally be suicidal. No joke, no exaggeration.
I think some of these things contribute to what some of us are seeing as the dark age. Is the age of gaming innocence gone? I don't think so, but I also think retro-gaming is more important now than ever before and the need for creating "libraries" and "museums" has to be given more consideration.
"Retro-gaming" is actually one of my pet peeves, and not because I dislike old games, but rather because I highly disagree with most people on why retro games were good. I look at the Steam Greenlight and veins start popping up on my forehead. McPixel? Really? Why does everything have to be 8bit? Why does everything have to be ugly and ridiculous? Plenty of old games - even games of the 80s - were serious and dramatic and had a point. It creates this false dichotomy that games can either only be depressing or only be completely ridiculous, with no room in-between. I mean, I'm sure games like Retro City Rampage have their place in the world, but I honestly do prefer contemporary graphics and serious storytelling, yet I have to contend with the notion that anything "serious" has to push my comfort zone and dash my childhood innocence of a fair world.
Of course, I'm not getting that idea from this thread. I like the overall discussion has been rather fair and analytical. But it's the impression I get from how the gaming industry is behaving. People remade Tomb Raider as what's being advertised as pure torture, and that's seen as "better" than Legends. Because it no longer sexualises Lara? Um... Yeah it does, it just sexualises her in a much more unpleasant way. That's my core problem with this "generation" of games and game designers - it seems like they're all trying to design Oscar bait. "I'd like to thank the director who cast me as a mentally-challenged, handi-cap orphan, making this award almost inevitable."
Of course, that's not to say I hate retro games. MAME is my hero and I still love me some Metal Slug, Marvel vs. Capcom, Knights of the Round and Golden Axe. What can I say - I grew up on arcades :)
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First off, reality isn't the horrible place some folks make it out to be. Sure, the human condition involves challenges and sometimes tragedies occur, but humans are creatures capable of great kindness. For every horror on the news, there's a plethora of acts of compassion that go unreported.
In regards to games, it really depends on the genre and who the target audience is. The survival-horror genre, for instance, is dark by its very definition and happens to be quite popular at the moment because a number of folks want to imagine having to survive a horrifying situation (such as the collapse of civilization due to brain munchers). Not my cup of tea, personally, but as long as folks keep buying titles in the genre, game makers will continue pumping 'em out.
On the other hand, there's still a good number of lighthearted games being produced. Nintendo games, Minecraft, racing/sports games, and fighting games (which has seen a resurgence in popularity recently) come to mind.
On a side note, I rather enjoyed SSA1. Heck, I'd even say it was my favorite storyline of the game.
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"Retro-gaming" is actually one of my pet peeves, and not because I dislike old games, but rather because I highly disagree with most people on why retro games were good. I look at the Steam Greenlight and veins start popping up on my forehead. McPixel? Really? Why does everything have to be 8bit? Why does everything have to be ugly and ridiculous? Plenty of old games - even games of the 80s - were serious and dramatic and had a point. It creates this false dichotomy that games can either only be depressing or only be completely ridiculous, with no room in-between. I mean, I'm sure games like Retro City Rampage have their place in the world, but I honestly do prefer contemporary graphics and serious storytelling, yet I have to contend with the notion that anything "serious" has to push my comfort zone and dash my childhood innocence of a fair world.
Of course, I'm not getting that idea from this thread. I like the overall discussion has been rather fair and analytical. But it's the impression I get from how the gaming industry is behaving. People remade Tomb Raider as what's being advertised as pure torture, and that's seen as "better" than Legends. Because it no longer sexualises Lara? Um... Yeah it does, it just sexualises her in a much more unpleasant way. That's my core problem with this "generation" of games and game designers - it seems like they're all trying to design Oscar bait. "I'd like to thank the director who cast me as a mentally-challenged, handi-cap orphan, making this award almost inevitable."
Of course, that's not to say I hate retro games. MAME is my hero and I still love me some Metal Slug, Marvel vs. Capcom, Knights of the Round and Golden Axe. What can I say - I grew up on arcades :)
Perhaps my perception of retro-gaming is different than the mainstream, but I see it more as preservation of classic games (although I have no qualms with the notion of giving them a facelift). The kind of games I'm talking about preserving are stuff like Baldur's Gate (re-released in enhanced version!) and its sequels, Freedom Force, LucasArts Outlaws (which, although an old FPS, I think you would have enjoyed for its stellar storytelling of a marhsall trying to recover his kindapped daughter--also independently being revived), the Police Quest/Space Quest/King's Quest series, and then those console games that actually had stories involved (the super mario era).
When you consider stories, the print medium hasn't radically changed in hundreds of years and now we're seeing the conversion to electronic format. Motion pictures have largely been transferred as the mediums have shifted from reel to VHS to dvd to electronic format. And yet, although computer gaming has shifted over many platforms, we haven't necessarily seen those games preserved (except with some independent emulators or through "sequels") and to me, that is a shocking and terrible loss.
Retro-graming is ensuring those games are available, assuming the older graphics and sound are not so offputting that people are willing to play them for the story and/or gameplay. X-COM: UFO Defense is a game I constantly recommend to people. I warn them about the EGA graphics and midi sound, but also explain how it still works so well creating atmosphere and for its storytelling. It's swell that a true sequel has been made and I look forward to playing it although I wonder about the changes that have been made (likely not as radical as Lara); regardless, I still tell people about the original to this day.
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Gamers growing up is an argument I don't get, because "gamers" aren't all one single social group. The gamers of the past who grew up on Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog and were playing the old consoles of the 80s grew up a long time ago. Hell, I'd personally like them to stop identifying themselves with "gamers in general" because I've never played a Super Mario game in my life, nor ever owned a console. My generation of gamers - the 90s kids - also grew up, but we did so more recently. We grew up on Tomb Raider, Half-Life and Resident evil. And there's a whole new generation of gamers who are still kids today, the children of the 2000s. They're growing up on Halo, on God of War, on World of Warcraft and GTA. And they're still kids too young to be making games of their own yet.
There were actually two parts to that statement and I really didn't articulate it well.
Part 1 - In 1980, I was 5 and playing on an Atari 2600. In 1985, I was 10 and playing on a NES. In 2013, I am 37 and playing on a Wii and a PS3, but mostly on a PC. In 2013, my parents and even my older siblings (5 and 8 years older) don't game. Some of that can be chalked up to disposition, but the point is that "gamers have grown up" means that more adults are playing video/computer games now, which is a more mature audience that can be targetted now than when you and I first started out playing. What's more disturbing to me is that the mature-themed games such as Halo, God of War, Warcraft and GTA are being played by children at such an early time in their gaming (and, naturally, age)
Part 2 - the gamers of the 80s (and since then) are those kids that were the first latch-key kids (kids who came home from school to an empty home because both parents worked), the generation that grew up with AIDS, the went through Frank Miller's Dark gritty dark age of comics, angry grunge music, 9/11, the realization that they are the first generation that will not be better off than their parents (in the US) and ones paying into a social security system on life support (in the US). Sex and violence are pervasive in the media. The grittiness that went through comics, music, movies, and tv is now tapping into gaming. It's the world we've grown up into (and helped/help perpetuate). So when you ask, what is the difference between generations, basically we're not talking about a few visionaries of a bygone era such as Steve Jobs and Roberta Williams making games any more (although Roberta Williams was pushing limits with Phantasmagoria in the 90s), but products of a generation that have already been fed this type of stuff much of their lives.
With that written, I think gaming has been largely pulled into the massive cultural feedback loop, echoing themes and feelings from other media and present day situations, but that isn't to say all is lost or cannot change. There are many examples of sharp cultural shifts/innovations that created new trends, just because someone opted to do something a bit different. Steven Spielberg opted to pay homage to the old adventure movies when he created Raiders of the Lost Ark which had numerous contemporary spin-offs, but then later on was echoed with Tomb Raider and eventually the Uncharted series.
One other thing I did want to point out though was in a number of your examples, you did mention sequels (I'd even classify SSA1 into that group). I think when we start factoring in sequels, there has to be consideration for the author going "what can I do to top the last thing" and it also I think explains some of the ...vacuous darkness...for lack of a better phrase. Your DarkSiders example actually would fit that perfectly.
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Let's take one of the oddest examples - Darksiders.
Whatever character development comes out, whatever positive the game unfolds, it's still Dark. War has been set up, one of his former closest friend is the Big Bad and killed, Uriel's heart will be broken. How can you call that not crapsack ?
If you were determined to do it, you can take any happy story and make up "hidden truths" or "future developments" to make it rotten. Of course you can. Take any happy ending story you want. Let's say Ratatouille. By the end of that, the good cook has a girlfriend and a restaurant and the rat has a restaurant, too, everyone's happy and even the ruthless critic has had his life turned around and remembered why he started critiquing food to begin with. It's as feel-good as a feel-good movie can be. But what if the girl turns out to have been having an affair and the guy develops incurable cancer, and the critic gets fired because the "association" doesn't appreciate him giving them a bad name and the rat gets eaten by an alley cat? It's bound to happen, right? I mean, no good ending stays good for long, right?
That's the difference between Dark settings and, let's say, delightful settings. Let's get this straight: in my mind, in Dark settings, bad things are likely to happen. In delightful settings, what's told is either an unlikely ("Oh, I unexpectedly created a monster while trying to do this !"), or a wanted event ("I want to become the best Chef of all!"). In the Dark setting, everything was good or bearable before the story, everything gets really bad, and then end in another bearable state, but still not good. On the contrary, a delightful plot ends in bliss in any case, with a sort of a promise of no problem anymore.
The problem is, the "setting" is dependent on where the "story" "begins" and "ends". An that is the writer's decision.
That brings us back to where we started:
No. No it's not bound to happen. No, it's not even likely to happen. If you WANT a good story to be depressing, you can always MAKE it depressing in your own mind, but that doesn't not change what the story is - pleasant, uplifting and feel-good. You can choose to reinterpret a good story into a bad one, but a good story it will remain. That's not the case for gaming these days. That's not the case for contemporary plots. At no point is the notion of happiness or a good ending even hinted at. These are not happy stories, and trying to spin them as happy is about as going against their grain as trying to spin something like Ratatouille or Monsters Inc. or Astro Boy or, hell, the Smurfs as "dark." The game plots of today are distinctly different from the game plots of even a few years ago, and that's not just my impression and they aren't easily interchangeable.
The problem is that, inherently, every episode or season ends "well" and then the next one begins anew with another problem. Actually, each and every story could be parallel, and entertains the idea that nothing gets sure anymore, because there will always be a new problem to face and overcome. I'm sorry, but that's not "delightful", it's near crapsack, even if it's the smurfs. True it's more implied that one day they'll become safe, that no angst is shown, no dirty things like that. But since we don't know what's the "end" of the story, it's the writers' freedom to end it badly. And it's not because you started reading believing all is beautiful that the writer can't make a U-turn, like Sonic.
This isn't youthful innocence talking. I'm 28 years old. I haven't been "youthful" or, really, "innocent" for probably 10-15 years now, and many of the games I'm talking about aren't nearly that old. This is an easily definable, quite obvious change in the tone of video game storytelling that you really can't write off as "well, any story can be dark if you want it to." Yes, but some stories ARE dark, and some can only be dark IF you waned them to be, and even then you'd have to work pretty hard to make them dark. You can't really say that about something like Far Cry 3 or Tomb Raider (the new one). Hell, compare Far Cry 3 to Far Cry 1. Sure, the original was dumb, but it followed the exploits of a guy in a loud Hawaiian shirt who had a sort of carefree attitude towards gunfights with armies of heavily-armed mercenaries and a woman who seemed more macho than the man himself. Yeah, it was a bit corny and a bit silly, and yes, the game was still violent and hard, but the entire atmosphere was still a lot more positive and a lot less to do with torture and misery.
What you're demonstrating, is that you can totally make a game not talk about these things, but does it make these thing not happen ? What's the thickness of the storyline of FarCry ? of Tomb Raider 1 ? (of every Tomb Raider). If you want a complex story line, you can't have only good things happening, it's going to turn bad at one point (except in Simulation games, where you're becoming good, then better, then the best at something. And you can still have storylines !).
That's really what games have become these days - miserable. Depressing, filthy, rotten - miserable. They no longer strike me as something fun to do. Sure, good games have always had dramatic moments, but good games have also earned those dramatic moments with decent setup and also had those dramatic moments amount to something. Yes, something bad just happened, but it happened for the purposes of delivering a better, ultimately more uplifting story in the long run. Like the destruction of the world in pretty grim detail at the start of Darksiders, for instance - it's gruesome, but it's what sets up the ultimately very good story and very creative world. That's not what the games of today do, because the games of today just stuff filth and rot in my face and that's about it. The best I ever get is maybe some kind of revenge story that's centred around everyone being so despicable makes it easy for us to want to see them all dead and let the world burn.
To deny that the games of today have gotten darker, especially sans examples to the contrary, is not a claim I can accept. Let's put it like that.
Did I deny that ? No. What I intended to prove is that Darkness is inherent with how detailed you make your story. There is darkness everywhere, and is only hidden by omission. If you are not careful, details will bring out the darkness, there is the option to not do it, as I agree with everyone, but as statistics prove, greater number of throws yield a greater number of 1 and 6. Also, I dare you put out a simple game like Sonic 1 or Mario 1 today, not be detailing the story, and be called an "uninteresting game plot-wise", or even getting a rating. I mean, "the evil Doctor kidnapped every little animals. A super-sonic hedgehog embarks on a journey to free all of them by defeating the doctor". Seriously, fits in a line ?? (I should just try to fetch the instruction manual from back then and see the length of the story told in it and the game). It could be about birds fighting evil pigs ! Oh my...
But what is also unlikely, is that the only gamers back then (I'm 25 so same boat I think) were little children, so developpers basically had to appeal to them. Most older and more mature players already played MUDs or text-mode adventures. True, other games existed which were utterly depressing for most endings (such as I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, as soon as in 1995). Now, every game can have the complexity of MUDs, and the accessibility to kindergartens. And the oldest devs can grow tired of making dumb games, let them be. They want "twist", or a new one, and that inherently comes with twisted stories. But, that they focus on the grimmest details of the story, is a choice that I can't deny them making, but not all, it's just that most twisted stories get more spotlight. Look at the TV News.
And if you want funny and delightful games, don't look at the PC roster, look at the Wii or the DS. Non-dark often intersects with Casual.
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A misguided attempt to shock in the face of a fast-moving media-saturated world is the culprit I think.
FlyingCarcass mentioned earlier that reality isn't the horrible place some folks make it out to be, and that's absolutely true - but if you watch any tv news (especially the 24hr rolling stations) you'd never believe it. What people forget is that news, practically by definition, is aberrant. If it were normal it wouldn't be news.
Similar kind of thing is going on with games I think. Instead of accepting that a lot of people like tradition and happy endings, the game companies seem intent on pitching new and ever more shocking/outrageous/depressing storylines because they're afraid if they did something old school, buyers would say "Meh, seen that story before, I want a new one!". This single fact demonstrates clearly that the people behind the decision to go dark are not themselves storywriters, because as any storywriter will tell you, there isn't anything 'new'. All the best stories flow from just a surprisingly few simple recurring concepts.
I have no doubt that turning things 'dark' is a passing trend, thankfully, because eventually some publisher or other will have a brainwave and realise that the irony of using the tactic of saying "Do I shock you?" itself only works so many times before people get jaded, and then maybe they'll go back to the old school storylines.
It's funny in a way because it reminds me of a situation where you have a modern teenager trying to shock their parents with a tattoo or bizarre item of clothing, and the parent says "Yawn-yawn kiddo, it'll take more than that to shock me. I was a punk when I was your age - pink superglued hair, safety pin piercings...and don't even think about trying to shock your gran, cos that won't work either - she was at Woodstock!"
Eventually the game publishers will grow up and realise "the shock of the new" is, in fact, anything but :D
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In regards to games, it really depends on the genre and who the target audience is. The survival-horror genre, for instance, is dark by its very definition and happens to be quite popular at the moment because a number of folks want to imagine having to survive a horrifying situation (such as the collapse of civilization due to brain munchers). Not my cup of tea, personally, but as long as folks keep buying titles in the genre, game makers will continue pumping 'em out.
Oh, definitely. Horror, and especially survival horror, has never been better than it is now. The games are scarier and more depressing, the settings more oppressive and and darker, it's all going according to plan. Yes, I know, Resident Evil 6. I know. But there are more decent horror games now than ever before. It's why I've all but stopped playing them altogether - they're getting TOO good for me. I think Silent Hill was the last horror game I actually enjoyed, and even then mostly because it gave me a good ending. Not a "good" ending, but a literal good one. Sure, Silent Hill 3 kind of ruined it, but it kind of had to if it wanted to go the story route it did.
I think the most "horror" I'd play these days is Left 4 Dead 2, and that's not exactly "horror."
On the other hand, there's still a good number of lighthearted games being produced. Nintendo games, Minecraft, racing/sports games, and fighting games (which has seen a resurgence in popularity recently) come to mind.
Right you are. Just looking at my own Steam library, I can see a number of these like Crevures (HORRIBLE!!! game, do not buy it!), Audiosurf, Heavy Weapon: Nuclear Tank, Team Fortress 2 and so forth. The trouble is that these games either have no... Oh, and Blade Kitten! The trouble is that these games either have no plot, thus nothing to be "dark" or "light," or are otherwise parodies in terms of the story they tell. It seems to me like game design has become polarised, where you have McPixel and Portal on one side and, like, Modern Warfare and Tomb Raider on the other and nearly nothing in-between. I guess what I'm trying to say is games are so mired in expressing some kind of "tone" that adventure games in the literal sense of the word almost don't exist. Let me explain.
Think about the older Tomb Raider games. What were they about? Other than "breasts?" Adventure, at least in my book. You got to see the great wall of China, you got to dive to the wreck of the Maria Doria (the most beautiful game level for years), you got to fight a T-Rex and lions and tigers and bears, oh my! It was glorious. Sure, Lara got knocked out once and she did spend a lot of time getting set aflame by unexplainable burners coming out of the ground and I broke her neck oh so many times misjudging my jumps, but the whole atmosphere was more of... Well, Indiana Jones or, more recently, the Mummy. It was much less Les Miserable or Salo or something like that, because the game was intended to be fun BECAUSE of the danger.
I'm not a pirate fan (pirates and cowbows just don't do anything for me), but I still like to use it as an example of the kind of story which showed what was historically a horrible existence lived by pretty terrible men into something that looked exciting and thrilling and even alluring. Yes, we know the movies romanticised it, but we liked them anyway, because of how much fun everything seemed. And this carries over into Pirates of the Carribean... Or did, anyway, before the series went off the rails.
I guess my point should have been that it seems like the gaming market is being polarised between grim and gritty games, and goofy and zany ones with very little striking a good balance between both. To a large extent, I'd attribute that to a rise in "unpleasant" gaming experiences, which prompted a nostalgia trip back to when games weren't so complicated, butting middle-of-the-road titles into one extreme or the other. Does that make sense to anyone?
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It makes more sense than you probably expect it to.
If you want a complex story line, you can't have only good things happening, it's going to turn bad at one point (except in Simulation games, where you're becoming good, then better, then the best at something. And you can still have storylines !).Did I deny that ? No. What I intended to prove is that Darkness is inherent with how detailed you make your story. There is darkness everywhere, and is only hidden by omission. If you are not careful, details will bring out the darkness, there is the option to not do it, as I agree with everyone, but as statistics prove, greater number of throws yield a greater number of 1 and 6.
Quite. It's a fact that some "dark" aspects are often needed in a story, the problem is that the writers intentionally exaggerate them too often.
Sometimes the protagonists need to lose a battle. Sometimes there has to be a price to their victory. Sometimes good people go too far. Sometimes a character has to be hurt to show they are human (or more human than they seemed).
It's always a question of how these parts are balanced in the story. Sometimes you need nigh-invincible heroes, sometimes you need fallible human beings.
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And I, for one, don't *need* "deep" - all I need is "entertaining". Entertainment value is what matters during the consumption... "Deep" or "Dark" are just some of those frivolous secondary characteristics that fuel the after-dinner debates and internet shenanigans.
Ironically, take a look at what's become of sci-fi lately. Sci-fi used to be thought-provoking, and show important political issues to us all the time, without becoming ridiculously dark. The original Star Trek series was so light-hearted that it might as well have been a cartoon, but it was still very intellectual. Compare that with what we have now... it's mostly "Days of Our Lives" in space/future.
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Whatever character development comes out, whatever positive the game unfolds, it's still Dark. War has been set up, one of his former closest friend is the Big Bad and killed, Uriel's heart will be broken. How can you call that not crapsack?That's the difference between Dark settings and, let's say, delightful settings. Let's get this straight: in my mind, in Dark settings, bad things are likely to happen. In delightful settings, what's told is either an unlikely ("Oh, I unexpectedly created a monster while trying to do this !"), or a wanted event ("I want to become the best Chef of all!"). In the Dark setting, everything was good or bearable before the story, everything gets really bad, and then end in another bearable state, but still not good. On the contrary, a delightful plot ends in bliss in any case, with a sort of a promise of no problem anymore.
OK, you're just mixing your metaphors here and getting hung up on semantics when I'm pretty sure you know what I mean. It doesn't matter if you call it "dark," "black," "gritty" or what have you. The reason I write walls of text in response to you is specifically so I can get across the meaning of my words and make sure we don't get hung up on terminology.
The problem is, the "setting" is dependent on where the "story" "begins" and "ends". An that is the writer's decision.The problem is that, inherently, every episode or season ends "well" and then the next one begins anew with another problem. Actually, each and every story could be parallel, and entertains the idea that nothing gets sure anymore, because there will always be a new problem to face and overcome. I'm sorry, but that's not "delightful", it's near crapsack, even if it's the smurfs.
No, it's not crapsack, and you're really stretching your terms here. I'm going to die some day, and that's a set fact. You don't see me identifying my existence through that inevitability, however. I manage to live a happy, fulfilling life despite knowing I'm going to die, everyone I knew and love is going to die, everything I cared about will be destroyed and forgotten and the universe will likely eventually end. Who gives a toss? That's like saying "No matter how much crime you stop, you'll never stop it all." So? We don't stop fighting crime just because it'll never end. That's not the point. The whole point - and if you'd acknowledge that all stories that aren't MLP aren't necessarilt "dark" - is that we don't have to stop all crime and stop all evil and prevent disasters from ever happening and make sure that the world is perfect forevermore for a setting to be "feelgood."
You can never solve all problems. New ones will always show up. To expect otherwise is to construct a straw man, simple as that. This shouldn't even BE an argument. I'm not aware of any story ever written which ends in complete and perpetual happiness with not even the slightest possibility of anything wrong ever happening, and when such a concept is brought up in storytelling, it's the stuff of madness and delusion. That's what the Paladin from Serenity would dream of - a perfect world that has no place for monsters like himself. But he is insane, and the world he hopes to achieve cannot exist, hence why he is the bad guy despite his ideology suggesting that he should be the good guy. That's the whole point.
If you want a complex story line, you can't have only good things happening, it's going to turn bad at one point (except in Simulation games, where you're becoming good, then better, then the best at something. And you can still have storylines !).
Yes, you can, and many stories have done this. Like I said - Darksides is a perfect example of this. Yes, bad things happen if you want to be pedantic, but the way the story is arranged, they aren't TREATED as a big deal, as that much of a big thing. War is bummed that Earth was destroyed, but not because all the humans died. He's war. His entire purpose in existence is to kill people. He's bummed because balance is upset and he was framed. And by the end, balance is restored by unleashing the "End of Times" properly and he finds inner peace realising it wasn't his fault after all, growing as a person. Abbadon - the Destroyer - was never War's friend, at least none that I could determine. He was simply someone he knew. Uriel's heart may have been broken, but she will heal. "Reap what you have sown, betrayer!" are her final words to Abbadon. Every action she has taken up to that point proves that she will survive and thrive. And with the Four Horsemen finally summoned at full strength and free of the binds of the council, whatever manipulators may be plotting will fall, because nobody stands up against the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
There's a reason Darksiders was as popular, and why War's final line in response to "You would fight this battle alone?!?" saying "No. Not alone" with a pan shot to reveal the other three descending from the sky... There's a reason this ending was as popular as it was, and this isn't because it's "dark." There's nothing dark about it, not in the slightest. The reason this ending has become such a trademark of the franchise that the sequel could not help but parrot it verbatim is because it's AWESOME. Not dark, not depressing, not reminding me of the futility of existence. It was awesome, and it made me want to get up off my chair and cheer along with the credits. Everything is resolved at the end, everyone has found peace and stability and all remaining problems will surely been solve because the story itself sets up the Four Horsemen as an unstoppable force that both Heaven and Hell fear. That is not "dark."
What I intended to prove is that Darkness is inherent with how detailed you make your story. There is darkness everywhere, and is only hidden by omission. If you are not careful, details will bring out the darkness, there is the option to not do it, as I agree with everyone, but as statistics prove, greater number of throws yield a greater number of 1 and 6.
This is not even remotely true, to the point that I can't imagine where you're even getting it from. Unless you specifically set out to write a story full of darkness, you don't have to put any into it. Any writer who claims to be unable to do otherwise is doing it wrong. Yes, I feel strongly enough about it to make such a broad statement, because I can't remember disagreeing with anything more strongly in years and years. There is never any need to be "dark." You are the writer, you set the tone, you make the rules, you decide how a story should be told. If you find yourself unable to proceed but to introduce darkness in a story, then YOU have failed, not storytelling as a concept. If you, as a writer, cannot conceive of a world written to a theme which does not turn into darkness when you detail it, then you need more imagination, and very likely a wider pool of references. And undoubtedly a more objective interpretation of other people's stories.
In anything you write, you decide how the "world" treats action. Are good people punished for trying to do the good thing, or are they rewarded for being good? If you pick the latter, then the more detail you go into, the more uplifting a story will become. Nothing can ever stop you from doing this.
Also, I dare you put out a simple game like Sonic 1 or Mario 1 today, not be detailing the story, and be called an "uninteresting game plot-wise", or even getting a rating. I mean, "the evil Doctor kidnapped every little animals. A super-sonic hedgehog embarks on a journey to free all of them by defeating the doctor". Seriously, fits in a line??
Um... Portal. Quantum Continuum. McPixel. Orcs Must Die. Serious Sam. Aquaria. Limbo. Vessel. Holdover. Gish. Blade Kitten. Alien Swarm. Sonic Adventure (Robotnik has used the Chaos Emeralds to transport Sonic and his friends to our world, get them back!). All of that's off the top of my head. So... Yeah, challenge accepted. Would you like to know more?
You can have a game with a simple story that's still incredibly good if it's done right, told right and drawn up with the right theme and tone. As a point of fact, the more complicated you make a story... Oh, 2008's Prince of Persia! The more complicated you make a story, the worse it usually ends up being. Take something like Naruto, for instance. The show was by far at its strongest when the premise was at its simplest - a boy cursed to house the spirit of the evil 9-tailed fox is hated by his peers, but fights to earn the respect and friendship of his peers. That's all it ever needed, and it's when it turned political, philosophical and soap-opera-ish that it turned bad.
Now, every game can have the complexity of MUDs, and the accessibility to kindergartens. And the oldest devs can grow tired of making dumb games, let them be. They want "twist", or a new one, and that inherently comes with twisted stories. But, that they focus on the grimmest details of the story, is a choice that I can't deny them making, but not all, it's just that most twisted stories get more spotlight. Look at the TV News.
So, wait... Are you saying that games which don't have "the complexity of MUDs" are "dumb games?" Are you seriously operating under the idea that children are stupid and games made for them need to be stupid to accommodate this? Because I've seen games made "for kids" and they're insulting to my intelligence, and theirs, as well. When I was a child, I didn't play Sonic or Mario. I played Blackthorne, Dune II: Battle for Arakis, Mortal Kombat. I played Sin and Half-Life and, yes, even the original Serious Sam. I played Star Control, I played WarCraft. I've played games that were grim and bloody and nasty. Hell, forget that, I played stuff like the Bible Black bishujo game. I've seen nasty stuff for as far as I can remember, but it's never been this prominent and it's never been this nasty. Yes, even Bible Black.
Because, honestly, I'm sick of games that remind me of the Angel Corps comic book. And no, please don't Google that. And it ISN'T just the "most twisted" stories that I'm concerned with. The stories of today aren't any worse than what's come before. Some are even much tamer. It's just that the stories of today are overwhelmingly much more often unpleasant, grim and cynical. It's like I'm living in the world of John Constantine or Dylan Dog. The real world is NOT that grim and dark, and the idea that the only way to have "complex" games is to make them grim and gritty is just... About as bad as what's been getting Oscars of late. At one point, video games used to be an exciting medium full of promise and potential. Now they're just like the news. And there's a reason I don't watch the news and have never watch the news - they don't try to inform me, they're looking for shock value to inflate their audiance numbers.
And if you want funny and delightful games, don't look at the PC roster, look at the Wii or the DS. Non-dark often intersects with Casual.
All you're doing is perpetuating the myth of the "PC Master Race" of stuck-up self-righteous players who see themselves as superior to the riff-raff of console players with their "more intelligent" and "more complicated" games that "challenge" you on more "fundamental" levels. Oh, you want games that are actually fun to play and don't leave you an emotional wreck? Go play the Wii with the other kiddies. The PC is for grown-ups. I'm a PC-only gamer and even I find that attitude detestable. There's nothing about the PC which precludes games made for it from actually being fun and pleasant. And there's nothing inherent in unpleasant games that makes them morally and intellectually superior. The primary reason I now live a happy, relaxed life is expressly because I chose to stop exposing myself to angsty drama with no real reason.
A one-dimensional, one-note game library does not make the PC more "mature." It just makes it less varied. It's easy to gloat about the PC's superiority, but the next generation of consoles will come out soon enough, and we'll continue to NOT get many decent games released for the PC, or at best given to us in shitty ports like Fall of Cybertron, and we'll keep patting each other on the back about how much the scant few games we do get are so morally superior to the "casual" console games.
That attitude is not healthy for the industry and it's not healthy for PC gaming. Variety ensures support and popularity, and until we accept that all genres are equally valid and no player should be shamed away from playing "casual" games lest he be seen as less of a gamer, we're never going to grow up as a community. And for as much as you say "gamers grew up," I get the feeling that many are still doing everything they can to PROVE they've grown up by making and playing games intentionally the reverse of "casual games for kids." It's like that episode of Cow and Chicken where Chicken, Flem and Earl were turned into rugged, burly men... Yet their final test was to play with Pencilneck Sissy dolls, because a real man isn't afraid of playing with Sissy dolls.
It's this whole retention of what's "mature" and "complex" and "adult" that gets my panties in a bunch. "Mature" games are not better. If anything, they're worse because they're made for a limited market. There's nothing intellectually superior about them, ESPECIALLY if they're actually completely juvenile like Saints Row The Third, but hiding behind a Mature Content label. It's why many people tended to avoid "Mature RP" in City of Heroes - because it ended up being the most immature, perpetuated by people who took "maturity" as a perk.
"Dark" is not "better." It's not worse, but it's not better. And we can just about do with some more variety.
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Perhaps my perception of retro-gaming is different than the mainstream, but I see it more as preservation of classic games (although I have no qualms with the notion of giving them a facelift). The kind of games I'm talking about preserving are stuff like Baldur's Gate (re-released in enhanced version!) and its sequels, Freedom Force, LucasArts Outlaws (which, although an old FPS, I think you would have enjoyed for its stellar storytelling of a marhsall trying to recover his kindapped daughter--also independently being revived), the Police Quest/Space Quest/King's Quest series, and then those console games that actually had stories involved (the super mario era).
Well, that's what it SHOULD mean, but the term has taken on another face, which is the production of new, contemporary games intentionally done in 8-bit graphics, scored with MIDI chip tunes and using very simplified controls, stories and game mechanics. For instance, go and play Stealth Bastard, and you'll note that aside from the dynamic lighting engine, the game may as well have come out of 1989. As with "dark" games, where I take issue with this is it seems like literally half the games on Steam Greenlight are brand new replica retro titles. I get why it's done, of course - 320x240 graphics, midi music and very spastic animations are cheaper and easier to produce, typically for development teams comprised of between a single person and up to four people. If you make the game short and simple enough, it becomes something you can knock out on your own in relatively reasonable time.
The thing, though, is that the banner of "retro" gaming has permitted some truly horrendous, crappy games to exist, excused solely because... Hey, they're retro. Games in the 80s looked like crap and played like shit. It wouldn't be "retro" if it were actually good. It smacks of people buying games for the 8bit graphics, not the quality of the games. And I can tell you for a fact that neither MegaMan nor Mario nor Metrid were popular at the time because they were ugly and dated. Back then, these were the latest and greatest that gaming could produce. They were popular because they were good games, but have since become popular because they are BAD games compared to modern gaming, and their worst qualities are being perpetuated in a new generation of replica retro games.
I mean, if it sells, it sells. It just blows my mind that there's SO MUCH of it.
In 1980, I was 5 and playing on an Atari 2600. In 1985, I was 10 and playing on a NES. In 2013, I am 37 and playing on a Wii and a PS3, but mostly on a PC. In 2013, my parents and even my older siblings (5 and 8 years older) don't game. Some of that can be chalked up to disposition, but the point is that "gamers have grown up" means that more adults are playing video/computer games now, which is a more mature audience that can be targetted now than when you and I first started out playing. What's more disturbing to me is that the mature-themed games such as Halo, God of War, Warcraft and GTA are being played by children at such an early time in their gaming (and, naturally, age)
OK, I can grant you this much. However, I do believe that adults who grew up on video games often have a rather different mentality when it comes to entertainment than those who don't. I live in a fairly poor country where few people can afford to play games, so we're essentially 50 years behind the US in terms of gaming. I can definitely see that my old gamer friends grew up to have very different lives than my old non-gamer friends. I'm not judging this in terms of success or happiness - it all varies. But those we used to game with still enjoy doing it even pushing 30, some even 40, while those who never did much have moved on to other media. What I'm saying is... Yes, there are more mature gamers these days, but can this really account for such a steep change in tastes? Because I have a hard time seeing that. The same thing happened to comic books, and those have been around since the 1940s. There has to be something else at play here than people just "growing up" and no longer liking happy stories. I mean, happy movies still sell. Look at anything Disney ever made.
One other thing I did want to point out though was in a number of your examples, you did mention sequels (I'd even classify SSA1 into that group). I think when we start factoring in sequels, there has to be consideration for the author going "what can I do to top the last thing" and it also I think explains some of the ...vacuous darkness...for lack of a better phrase. Your DarkSiders example actually would fit that perfectly.
Here, I don't think I can argue, as you do have a point. It usually seems like sequels to games, rather than the games themselves, end up going "dark." Sands of Time, for instance, was quite dramatic, but ultimately cute and huggable. Warrior Within was Ubi's attempt to top themslves, and they went WAAAY overboard. Same with Tomb Raider, I think. There seems to be this really uncomfortable belief that things which are darker are "better," thus everything is made darker the longer a series go on. "Shit just got real." The trouble with this is that "dark" isn't better. It's simply different, and - not to mention - far, FAR easier to get right. Get a happy-go-lucky story wrong and at worst it's boring, but people who like that sort of thing will still roll with it. Get a "dark" story wrong, though, and you'll either turn it into an unintentional self-parody as Warrior Within was, or into a disgusting experience like the Legend of Korra. In either case, you stand to lose a whole lot more.
I'm actually awed by how Saints Row The Third chose to "up the ante." It didn't get darker, it grew even more insane. And I don't mean just the famous purple dildo or even Professor Genki's Super Ethical Reality Climax. I mean basic, simple things like having your very first real mission be an assault on a military base, introducing cloned super-soldiers and a virtual world and running you through a fetish club so grotesque it circles right around and becomes funny again. I remember playing that with a friend of mine and he spent 15 minutes going to all the rooms and bursting out laughing when he saw a mannequin fist mounted to an oscillating saw or an "iron maiden" crate lined with floppy dildos on the inside. Sure, it's gross, but it's so over the top it's just funny, and in a very juvenile way. And because of this, Saints Row has been far more memorable than, say, Silent Hill 2, because I could never figure out what the giant purple dildo was going on half the time.
My point is that I think gamers still, in some ways, need to get over the fear of cooties coming from non-serious games. We're adults now. We all have ID cards. We don't need to keep proving how mature we are, and we don't need to be ashamed of cracking a smile at a final boss fight that's an honest-to-god professional wrestling match. What's fun is fun, low-brow or high-brow.
Similar kind of thing is going on with games I think. Instead of accepting that a lot of people like tradition and happy endings, the game companies seem intent on pitching new and ever more shocking/outrageous/depressing storylines because they're afraid if they did something old school, buyers would say "Meh, seen that story before, I want a new one!". This single fact demonstrates clearly that the people behind the decision to go dark are not themselves storywriters, because as any storywriter will tell you, there isn't anything 'new'. All the best stories flow from just a surprisingly few simple recurring concepts.
I really like the way you phrased it, because... Yeah, I don't believe genuine writers are making these decisions a lot of the time. I know for a fact that this was the case for Warrior Within - the developers were outright told to make it dark and gritty. And it shows. I'm not going to pretend to be a great writer, myself, but I know a thing or two on the subject, and I know a thing or two about how people perceive writing from both sides. If I've learned anything, I've learned this - ideas are cheap. It's execution that counts. If you execute a story well, people will buy it. Light or dark, happy or sad, if you execute it well, it will resonate. But that's not what Marketing believes. They believe that if you make a story "dark," it'll sell better because "dark" is the new black. They foist this on their writers, and their writers completely drop the ball. I've seen this happen so, so many times, and I know what to look because I've been there. Boy have I been there.
It's often very easy to spot a writer trying to be "dark," because you'll see him focus on why things are bad and the gruesome details of how they're bad, to the point where you want to grab him by the collar and yell "We get it! It's dark! Can we move on, please!" in his face. It's the sign of a writer who has no inspiration and is simply focusing on the details of the work he's been given to work on. He's not going anywhere with it, he's simply describing what he sees in his mind's eye and filling pages to meet a quota.
I'm not a fan of South Park, but the South Park writers are clever people. Probably the best advise that they've given is that you should NEVER tie your story bits with "and then." This happens, and then that happens, and then this other thing happens. Always tie them together. This happens because that happened, however when this other thing happened, that other thing happened, which is why we are where we are. Any detail in a story that has any kind of thematic weight to it needs to be going somewhere, and you never get the idea that this is the case with most "dark" games these days. They aren't going anywhere. They aren't being dark to build up to some kind of statement or climax. They're being dark because being dark is cool. They're torturing Lara Croft because sexualising her has been done, and it's more shocking to see her almost raped. "Breaking the pretty," as the cynics among us would call it. It's a trope, and it's lazy writing when THAT is the whole point of your game, or at the very least the fulcrum of your advertising. They were proud of all the torture and pain because "it's a different depiction." It's not building up to anything other than the most predictable "she rises above it," but you don't need to dig a hole a mile deep to have a character climbing out of it be meaningful.
"Dark" stories pass for better storytelling when they all too often come with WORSE writing attached.
Ironically, take a look at what's become of sci-fi lately. Sci-fi used to be thought-provoking, and show important political issues to us all the time, without becoming ridiculously dark. The original Star Trek series was so light-hearted that it might as well have been a cartoon, but it was still very intellectual. Compare that with what we have now... it's mostly "Days of Our Lives" in space/future.
I've never watched the Original Star Trek series. It was before my time. I have, however, seen some of the Picard series on TV (we never really got much Star Trek here) and I remember being smitten with the imagination and depth these had. They were all made up of good ideas and strong narrative, and when they did turn dark - which I don't remember being all that often - I can remember feeling like the show earned it.
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I've never watched the Original Star Trek series. It was before my time. I have, however, seen some of the Picard series on TV (we never really got much Star Trek here) and I remember being smitten with the imagination and depth these had. They were all made up of good ideas and strong narrative, and when they did turn dark - which I don't remember being all that often - I can remember feeling like the show earned it.
This is slightly off topic, but if you want to check out the original Star Trek series hulu.com has the it available.
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This is slightly off topic, but if you want to check out the original Star Trek series hulu.com has the it available.
"Sorry, currently our video library can only be watched from within the United States"
Ah, well, thank you for trying anyway :)
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Netflix has Star Trek too I'm pretty sure.
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Just as an FYI, "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" was scripted by Harlan Ellison, the granddaddy of Dark SF, who wrote the short story it is based on (which won a Hugo Award) in 1967. The story by itself is the source from which all darkness, depression, and hatred flows. I am not making that up, go read it if you dare. It's brilliantly written and appalling.
Harlan hates computer games. When Cyberdreams approached him to make the story into a game, I suspect he decided to make it even worse than his story, perhaps in the hopes that anyone who played it would be so traumatized they would never play another game again. Harlan is like that. Basically, in the original concept, he wanted to create a game that could not be won, only be lost, ethically.
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Harlan hates computer games. When Cyberdreams approached him to make the story into a game, I suspect he decided to make it even worse than his story, perhaps in the hopes that anyone who played it would be so traumatized they would never play another game again. Harlan is like that. Basically, in the original concept, he wanted to create a game that could not be won, only be lost, ethically.
So this is something that was going to happen? Or no?
... sadly, I want to play this game. The concept isn't entirely unfamiliar to me either. The kind of coding that would be required to make the game work probably won't be possible until we all have quantum computers on our desks. Maybe I'm way off-base, but it makes me think of "The Butterfly Effect", which probably reminded me of real life a lot more than most. The idea that every time you fix something you end up breaking something else in the process. A puzzle with no solution and you just have to sort of choose which flaw you want to leave in when you're finished.
Games that can't be won though has been done before though. Just about every arcade game in the early days was "unwinnable", and on a fundamental level, that reflected life in a more realistic way. No matter what you do, you're going to die. The only thing you can change is how many of those darned Centipedes you can take down before it happens.
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So this is something that was going to happen? Or no?
... sadly, I want to play this game.
Oh it was created. 1995, Even got a lot of good reviews, since it was in the tradition of Cyberdreams' signature darkity darky dark games taken up about 20 notches.
http://www.giantbomb.com/i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream/61-2695/ (http://www.giantbomb.com/i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream/61-2695/)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream)
You might even be able to find an old/used copy out there.
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First off, reality isn't the horrible place some folks make it out to be. Sure, the human condition involves challenges and sometimes tragedies occur, but humans are creatures capable of great kindness. For every horror on the news, there's a plethora of acts of compassion that go unreported.
Yeah, there's some truth in that, but if humanity does not alter its current path and do so very, very soon, compassion will become another statistic.
In regards to gaming and popular culture, I have long since railed against the trend in comics towards "grim and gritty" because it ceased to become unique and instead became the status quo. DC was beginning to crawl out of a Grim and Gritty phase that lasted far, far too long...and then they went and foisted the New 52 on us and I gave up. Marvel was beginning to crawl out of the Grim and Gritty morass of horrible stories that it had become mired in back in the 1990's, and then they had to go and blow that sky high starting with Civil War, and IMHO it has yet to recover.
I think sometimes writers give into this because they are depressed, sometimes they do it because they simply like to push the envelope, and still others do it because its easy. Back in the 1970s and early 80s a lot of talented comic-writers managed to write stories that were thought-provoking and accessible to a wide range of age-groups. Now its almost a lost art.
I agree with Tim: I deal with enough crap in my life, and see enough real-life-horror via the media. I don't always NEED that when I want to escape. Sometimes I want love and friendship and compassion to win out and prevail in a non-ambiguous happy ending that makes you squee despite yourself.
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You might even be able to find an old/used copy out there.
I won't vouch for this site, but evidently it's abandonware and you can find it.
http://www.myabandonware.com/game/i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream-2sv (http://www.myabandonware.com/game/i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream-2sv)
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I used to have that, once upon a time. I actually was less disappointed by it than I was the Infocom HHGTTG game. The basic story was there, but these ridiculous puzzles were added. No thanks.
Adapting existing fiction to "interactive fiction" didn't really work for me, but I could get lost in something like Zork or Myst. The SSI Gold Box adaptation of AD&D was acceptable (and addictive) because AD&D was flexible enough to accommodate the adaptation. I actually prefer those and the first Baldur's Gate to just about any other electronic iteration of the game.
I'm one of those "retrogamers," and it's not because I think that the old games have something that the new games lack. In a sense, they do, though. I still have my Star Wars action figures and toys. I still have most of my Transformers, though my 11 year old has them, now. And, I still have or have reacquired most of my favorite games from the various stages of gaming in my life. I'm even working on rebuilding a power supply for my old Commodore 64 and will start sourcing an old 1541 floppy drive, once that's back up. It's not for any particular quality or merit other than nostalgia.
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OK, you're just mixing your metaphors here and getting hung up on semantics when I'm pretty sure you know what I mean. It doesn't matter if you call it "dark," "black," "gritty" or what have you. The reason I write walls of text in response to you is specifically so I can get across the meaning of my words and make sure we don't get hung up on terminology.
I'm a bit mixed up, but I'm mainly focusing on different things. It's not a Crapsack world. But the story can be spun into dark, depending on how you stress it, so it has dark "elements" (unless those don't exist): (I'm skipping most of the details you can take directly from the storyline, such as what is War, who set him up...)
"War has been set up, the leader of the Angels is now ruling over earth as a reincarnated Demon, who won the Apocalypse. The current leader of Angels, the former's love interest, holds War responsible. Despite this, War manages to uncover the truth, properly launch the Apocalypse by killing the fallen Angel, and make friends of the Angel leader."
"War has been set up. A Demon now rules the Earth. The leader of the Angels believe War is responsible for dooming earth and the Angels, who lost the Apocalypse. War even discovers that the ruling Demon is the former Angel leader, reincarnated, and former love interest of the current Angel leader. War nonetheless manages to properly launch the Apocalypse, earning the respect of the Angels, but killed the fallen Angel."
But, per my own definition of dark and your own elements I don't quote for brevity, I realized Darksiders' ending is not dark at all. Quite the contrary.
No, it's not crapsack, and you're really stretching your terms here. I'm going to die some day, and that's a set fact. You don't see me identifying my existence through that inevitability, however. I manage to live a happy, fulfilling life despite knowing I'm going to die, everyone I knew and love is going to die, everything I cared about will be destroyed and forgotten and the universe will likely eventually end. Who gives a toss? That's like saying "No matter how much crime you stop, you'll never stop it all." So? We don't stop fighting crime just because it'll never end. That's not the point. The whole point - and if you'd acknowledge that all stories that aren't MLP aren't necessarilt "dark" - is that we don't have to stop all crime and stop all evil and prevent disasters from ever happening and make sure that the world is perfect forevermore for a setting to be "feelgood."
There are a lot of technically identical stories to MLP ;) but yeah, I acknowledge. But, "feelgood" should be improvement, which, however little, is going to end into perfect, whatever you say. What of "back to normal" ? Depends on the setting, which is either perfect, improveable, or needing improvement.
I'm not aware of any story ever written which ends in complete and perpetual happiness with not even the slightest possibility of anything wrong ever happening, and when such a concept is brought up in storytelling, it's the stuff of madness and delusion. That's what the Paladin from Serenity would dream of - a perfect world that has no place for monsters like himself. But he is insane, and the world he hopes to achieve cannot exist, hence why he is the bad guy despite his ideology suggesting that he should be the good guy. That's the whole point.
So you don't buy "they lived happily ever after", even if it's written black on white by the story writer ? You're saying that this epitome of happiness is folly ? What have you been read as a child ?
Unless you specifically set out to write a story full of darkness, you don't have to put any into it.
That's what I said, didn't I?
Sonic Adventure (Robotnik has used the Chaos Emeralds to transport Sonic and his friends to our world, get them back!).
That's not the whole story of the game (You don't even talk of half the characters. what's the origin of Chaos ? Tikal ?). Whereas in Sonic 1... well, you don't learn anything during the game and that was all the story we were told in the manual I think (still haven't fetched the booklet). Except the badniks and bosses, but all games have those so it doesn't count.
Um... Portal. Quantum Continuum. McPixel. Orcs Must Die. Serious Sam. Aquaria. Limbo. Vessel. Holdover. Gish. Blade Kitten. Alien Swarm. All of that's off the top of my head. So... Yeah, challenge accepted. Would you like to know more?
What are those ? Dark but short games with no or short storylines ? Can you put the entire storyline (setting and story told by the game) in a single line ?
You can have a game with a simple story that's still incredibly good if it's done right, told right and drawn up with the right theme and tone. As a point of fact, the more complicated you make a story... Oh, 2008's Prince of Persia! The more complicated you make a story, the worse it usually ends up being. Take something like Naruto, for instance. The show was by far at its strongest when the premise was at its simplest - a boy cursed to house the spirit of the evil 9-tailed fox is hated by his peers, but fights to earn the respect and friendship of his peers. That's all it ever needed, and it's when it turned political, philosophical and soap-opera-ish that it turned bad.
Those are my points. Simple games that have no storylines (most early games in history) are provably neither bad or good, you assume it's good, that's all. That's why I took Sonic as a counterpoint of your point that they did the most horrible thing by turning him in dark stories. In fact they did nothing contrary to what they did before because what they did before had no intent.
So, wait... Are you saying that games which don't have "the complexity of MUDs" are "dumb games?" Are you seriously operating under the idea that children are stupid and games made for them need to be stupid to accommodate this? Because I've seen games made "for kids" and they're insulting to my intelligence, and theirs, as well. When I was a child, I didn't play Sonic or Mario. I played Blackthorne, Dune II: Battle for Arakis, Mortal Kombat. I played Sin and Half-Life and, yes, even the original Serious Sam. I played Star Control, I played WarCraft. I've played games that were grim and bloody and nasty. Hell, forget that, I played stuff like the Bible Black bishujo game. I've seen nasty stuff for as far as I can remember, but it's never been this prominent and it's never been this nasty. Yes, even Bible Black.
If all you played while a child was Blackthorne, Dune II and Mortal Kombat and the likes, I don't see why you're complaining we are in a dark age of gaming nowadays.
Because, honestly, I'm sick of games that remind me of the Angel Corps comic book. And no, please don't Google that. And it ISN'T just the "most twisted" stories that I'm concerned with. The stories of today aren't any worse than what's come before. Some are even much tamer. It's just that the stories of today are overwhelmingly much more often unpleasant, grim and cynical. It's like I'm living in the world of John Constantine or Dylan Dog. The real world is NOT that grim and dark, and the idea that the only way to have "complex" games is to make them grim and gritty is just... About as bad as what's been getting Oscars of late. At one point, video games used to be an exciting medium full of promise and potential. Now they're just like the news. And there's a reason I don't watch the news and have never watch the news - they don't try to inform me, they're looking for shock value to inflate their audiance numbers.
Maybe you need to put this into perspective too. Having such dark, grim and gritty stories told does make real life not this dark, grim and gritty. And allows you to enjoy it to its fullest.
All you're doing is perpetuating the myth of the "PC Master Race" of stuck-up self-righteous players who see themselves as superior to the riff-raff of console players with their "more intelligent" and "more complicated" games that "challenge" you on more "fundamental" levels. Oh, you want games that are actually fun to play and don't leave you an emotional wreck? Go play the Wii with the other kiddies. The PC is for grown-ups. I'm a PC-only gamer and even I find that attitude detestable. There's nothing about the PC which precludes games made for it from actually being fun and pleasant. And there's nothing inherent in unpleasant games that makes them morally and intellectually superior. The primary reason I now live a happy, relaxed life is expressly because I chose to stop exposing myself to angsty drama with no real reason.
You're right, but PC is such a versatile platform, that it's not even primarily intended for gaming, much less "casual" gaming. I don't even recall a party game on PC that's not an adaptation of a board game (Monopoly) or on other consoles (Worms). In fact, most games on PC also go out on Sony and the other Microsoft entertainment systems, and also Wii. The most versatile gaming platform must be the Wii, actually, in terms of varied gameplay. So back to the original topic, you can't say "we are in a "dark" age of gaming" without looking at all the consoles, which I did direct you to one specifically. If your idea was specifically for PC, you should have said so.
[...] ESPECIALLY if they're actually completely juvenile like Saints Row The Third, but hiding behind a Mature Content label.
That's both for adult and not for adult, those are not contradictory. I don't think you can see "drugs", "swearing" and "violence", which is all Saints Row is about, for children, and not for normal adults either. So yeah, it's Mature. Duke Nukem shoul be rated M for Manly ;)
"Dark" is not "better." It's not worse, but it's not better. And we can just about do with some more variety.
Agreed, but we didn't have much choice in the matter before either, as it was much more goody. And consumers did "change" the Mass Effect ending. And like all games with multiple endings, you have to work a lot to have a "good ending", so it is rewarding to play.
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I won't vouch for this site, but evidently it's abandonware and you can find it.
http://www.myabandonware.com/game/i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream-2sv (http://www.myabandonware.com/game/i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream-2sv)
If you only mind about the stories an don't careabout personnal xperience of gameplay, you can also watch a long play
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So this is something that was going to happen? Or no?
... sadly, I want to play this game. The concept isn't entirely unfamiliar to me either. The kind of coding that would be required to make the game work probably won't be possible until we all have quantum computers on our desks. Maybe I'm way off-base, but it makes me think of "The Butterfly Effect", which probably reminded me of real life a lot more than most. The idea that every time you fix something you end up breaking something else in the process. A puzzle with no solution and you just have to sort of choose which flaw you want to leave in when you're finished.
I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream happened. I didn't play it because either the copy I had was bugger or I didn't speak English at the time or I was just a dumb kid, but I couldn't make ANY progress on ANY of the main characters, so I moved on the greener pastures. Now that I know what it's about, I wouldn't bother tracking it down, myself. Not interested in that sort of thing.
However, the "you fix something, something else breaks" is basically the entirety of Ubi's Prince of Persia series, and yet THAT doesn't end up depressing and soul-crushing. In the broadest of terms, the original has the Prince use the sands of time to rewind time to before he even opened the hourglass, saving his father and Farah and everything ends well. Turns out that "whoever unleashes the sands of time must die," so now an unstoppable beast chases him, because he was supposed to die. The whole of Warrior Within is spent running from it, and then realising his very quest for salvation was the cause of his own damnation. Yet he succeeds and returns home, with the Empress of Time in tow, who has defied her own fate. Returning home, however, it turns out that preventing the creation of the Sands of Time prevented him from going to Azad and killing the evil Vizier, who is now sacking his home and who releases the Sands of Time again, by killing the Empress. Worse still, his father is dead in the fight, but finally the Prince decides to stop trying to fix his mistake and live with the consequences. So he saves his city, destroys the sands forever, wins Farah back and everything is... Well, happy, despite the casualties.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that this concept doesn't have to make for a "dark" story. It can make for a very positive, upbeat story. You can't fix all of your mistakes, but that doesn't mean you can't overcome the consequences of your failure and come out strong and tall despite this. Just because bad things happen to you, it doesn't mean you can't have a happy ending. Because you don't need a PERFECT ending for it to be happy.
I think sometimes writers give into this because they are depressed, sometimes they do it because they simply like to push the envelope, and still others do it because its easy. Back in the 1970s and early 80s a lot of talented comic-writers managed to write stories that were thought-provoking and accessible to a wide range of age-groups. Now its almost a lost art.
Sad but true. It seems like these days people write in buzz words and package concepts, expecting that just their theme will carry a story forward. And it can't. Ideas are cheap. I've seen "dark" so many times before that just advertising something as "dark" these days does nothing for me. It's like a 90s movie advertising itself as an "action" movie. So? We have a billion of 'em. Tango and Cash, Commando, Cobra, Die Hard and its sequels, etc. What makes YOUR movie different and why should I watch that instead of re-watching one of the classics which are - let's be honest - of much higher quality. What are you gonna' show me that I ain't seen before over and over again? How many Spec-Ops: The Line do we really need?
I agree with Tim: I deal with enough crap in my life, and see enough real-life-horror via the media. I don't always NEED that when I want to escape. Sometimes I want love and friendship and compassion to win out and prevail in a non-ambiguous happy ending that makes you squee despite yourself.
Agreed. Though, to be fair, I'm usually more a sucker for fist-pumping "awesome" endings that make me want to see more. Take, for instance, the ending to Tomb Raider: Legend. Lara finally realises the truth about her missing mother and is all fired up to find her. "Zip, find me this and that! Allister, get this and that scholar on the line! Tell them my father was right!" We don't see it, but we know that what follows is going to be awesome just by how excited and confident Lara is, and we know this because we've seen what she's capable of when she puts her mind to something all throughout the game. She took on the Triad in an evening dress, for goodness' sake!
There's nothing wrong with an ending which leaves me with a smile on my face, and I wish the game-makers of today would remember this.
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I won't vouch for this site, but evidently it's abandonware and you can find it.
http://www.myabandonware.com/game/i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream-2sv (http://www.myabandonware.com/game/i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream-2sv)
Two are also available on Gametz.com (http://gametz.com/Games/PC/I+Have+No+Mouth%2C+and+I+Must+Scream.html (http://gametz.com/Games/PC/I+Have+No+Mouth%2C+and+I+Must+Scream.html)), although one of those is in French. As an aside, gametz is a really good game trading site (I'm therainstormlord there), assuming you use common sense. ( ' :
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I'm a bit mixed up, but I'm mainly focusing on different things. It's not a Crapsack world. But the story can be spun into dark, depending on how you stress it, so it has dark "elements" (unless those don't exist): (I'm skipping most of the details you can take directly from the storyline, such as what is War, who set him up...)
But here's the thing - you can reinterpret anything into a "dark" story, whether it has elements which suggest it or not. You can re-interpret any dark story into a "happy" story, too. See: Cthulu Saves the World. You can no less reinterpret a story than you can write a brand new one, and tons upon tons of fanfiction exists that does exactly this. But what you're arguing is, essentially, Death of the Author (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeathOfTheAuthor). And yes, I'm still quoting from TVtropes. My apologies. But you're arguing for our interpretation of an author's work based on what we think it could represent over what the author himself meant to imply. Yes, it's sometimes difficult to tell, but that's not always as nebulous as it might seem. Especially because...
But, per my own definition of dark and your own elements I don't quote for brevity, I realized Darksiders' ending is not dark at all. Quite the contrary.
Exactly. It doesn't always come across through my explanation because I'm cutting down a 10 to 12-hour game down to a few sentences. However, playing it, there's no mistaking what the writers were focusing on, and it wasn't the horrors of the apocalypse. It was, basically: "ZOMG Angels with rifles! Oh, wow, demons are so cool! Check out War's giant sword! Woah, he just cut that bug guy in half! Aaawesooome!!!" Yahtzee describes it as "a 10-year-old's view of masculinity," and it is. But that's precisely why I can't take the game as being dark - it's not a soliloquy on the futility of life, it's a game which celebrates its own style and awesomeness with an almost child-like glee. Penny Arcade describe Darksiders 2 as "fucking bitchin'" and that applies just as well to the original. That, at least as far as I can tell after a dozen or so playthroughs, is the whole point. Angels fighting demons at the end times is COOL! :)
There are a lot of technically identical stories to MLP ;) but yeah, I acknowledge. But, "feelgood" should be improvement, which, however little, is going to end into perfect, whatever you say. What of "back to normal" ? Depends on the setting, which is either perfect, improveable, or needing improvement.
Not necessarily, and you seem to be basing your argument on the notion that "back to normal" is a bad thing, presuming the characters disliked their normal lives. Maybe that's just personal experience, but I like my life, and I'm perfectly happy with stories of characters who liked their lives before the "call to action" yanked them out of their normal existence. See Commando's John Matrix living a postcard-perfect life with his daughter until she's kidnapped and he's forced to fight the entire army of a small third-world country to get her back. He picks up a girlfriend along the way, saves his daughter, kills a lot of dudes and then what is his reward? Well, he tells off the Colonel, so presumably he goes back to living an idyllic life with his new girlfriend and his child daughter. And there's nothing wrong with that. For him, "normal" was good. He didn't want to change everything, he didn't set on a quest to save the world. All John Matrix wanted was to be left alone in peace. And at the end of Commando, he achieved that. Could more bad stuff happen to him in the future? Meh, sure. But that's for another movie, if it ever gets made. For NOW, we have a happy ending.
So you don't buy "they lived happily ever after", even if it's written black on white by the story writer ? You're saying that this epitome of happiness is folly ? What have you been read as a child ?
By your own admission, you can spin that to be a bad ending because someone died along the way and someone was hurt and innocence was lost. It's a happy ending, but it's not a PERFECT ending. A perfect ending would be Mass Effect 2 where I save everybody because quite literally nobody has to suffer this entire game if I play my cards right. I talked Garrus out of being a murderer, I talked Thane out of killing his own son, I saved Tali's ass (for later) during her tribunal, I stopped Jacob from doing something he'll regret, I saved Amanda's sister... God, I'm forgetting half of it now, all the good stuff that happened. Point is, that's quite literally the only story I can think of that had a perfect, happy ending, and even then only because it had every opportunity for that ending to go wrong, yet I played my cards right in every one of them. Thank you, online walkthroughs!
But aside from that, I've never seen a perfect ending ever. Any good ending has its own sombre parts, but that doesn't make it any less good.
That's what I said, didn't I?
Not how I read it. What I read you implying was that any story, no matter how it's written, is always dark unless you specifically skip the dark parts it will always have. In essence I read you implying that the only way a story can be "not dark" is if it's written for children and simplified.
What are those ? Dark but short games with no or short storylines ? Can you put the entire storyline (setting and story told by the game) in a single line ?
I was under the impression you were asking for games like the old ones with almost no story made today, not such that are specifically dark. And I can:
Portal: Malfunctioning AI has taken over a base and is forcing Chell to test.
Quantum Continuum: Q from Star Trek is lost from a failed experiment and a young boy needs to save him with his own gadgets.
McPixel: Haven't actually played it, so I don't know the plot.
Orcs Must Die 2: The villain of the previous game has lost her power and must now team up with the hero to survive and prevent an Orc invasion.
Serious Sam: Aliens are invading the past in ancient Egypt and Sam has to stop them.
Aquaria: An old boy was lost in the depths and gained the power to create an underwater world, including a creature who ended up something more.
Limbo: What plot?
Vessel: A man has developed machines that make robots out of liquid which take a life of their own, leading him to believe they're the next step of evolution.
Holdover: Nuclear war once destroyed the world and left a little girl forgotten in a stasis pod, who must now find rescue in the new world. And get naked a lot.
Gish: A living ball of tar has his girlfirend kidnapped and must descend into the underworld to save her.
Blade Kitten: The plot was so thin I don't actually remember.
Alien Swarm: The bugs from Starship Troopers have taken over a base and a team of four Marines must go there and deal with it.
Also Trine: Three unlikely heroes are bound to an artefact and must find a way to free themselves, defeating the evil which rules the kingdom now.
Those are my points. Simple games that have no storylines (most early games in history) are provably neither bad or good, you assume it's good, that's all. That's why I took Sonic as a counterpoint of your point that they did the most horrible thing by turning him in dark stories. In fact they did nothing contrary to what they did before because what they did before had no intent.
A game with an uncomplicated story is not the same as a game with no story. You should know better than this. The original Mass Effect had a very simple story, which is why it worked out so well. Also, I never said that turning Sonic the Hedgehod (rather, Shadow the Hedgehog) "dark" was a horrible thing. I didn't even comment on it, but my implication was it was a STUPID thing to do. It didn't make the game darker, it made it ridiculous in much the same way as Warrior Within.
If all you played while a child was Blackthorne, Dune II and Mortal Kombat and the likes, I don't see why you're complaining we are in a dark age of gaming nowadays.
That's not ALL I played. In fact, you quote three titles out of a much longer list and implied that's ALL I played. I don't know how you can say that with a straight face. And OK, let's say that's all I played for the sake of argument. Just HOW depressing were those games? Let's go by endings. I don't remember Dune II, it was something like 20 years ago, but I do remember the other two. In Blackthorne I defeat the demon and save the world. In Mortal Kombat I (well, Liu Kang) defeats Shang Tsung and saves the world. For all the blood and gore those games had, neither was anywhere as depressing anywhere as consistently as so many modern games today.
Maybe you need to put this into perspective too. Having such dark, grim and gritty stories told does make real life not this dark, grim and gritty. And allows you to enjoy it to its fullest.
No it doesn't. It makes me want to sleep and never wake up. It makes my head throb like I've been headbutting Pride of Fullmetal Alchemist fame. It makes me not want to watch TV, speak with people or DO anything for a good few hours, and the only way I can recover quickly is to rant about it to friends and family. Ending a story feeling like crap does not make life feel any better any more than smashing my finger with a hammer makes my headache feel any less painful. It just makes my head AND my finger hurt. A HAPPY story showing me that life doesn't have to be rotten makes me feel better about the world. It gives me hope, optimism and the kind of light, aerie feeling I need to take on life's everyday challenges with a smile on my face. You can actually trace my posting history on the City of Heroes forums based on what I was watching or playing at the time, and the times when I was by far the biggest jerkass bastard were exactly the times I had the misfortune to misjudge the tone of a game or movie and it ended up souring my mood for a week.
You can't say "we are in a "dark" age of gaming" without looking at all the consoles, which I did direct you to one specifically. If your idea was specifically for PC, you should have said so.
You're right, I should have. I have literally never owned a console in my life, so it's easy to forget there are more games out there than just for the PC, and I should have specified. I like to think I'm "up" on what's being sold for consoles, but clearly that's not the case, and for that I apologise. Yes, I'm speaking specifically for the PC. Hell, if I were including consoles, I'd have had to account for Uncharted, which I'm told is a pretty upbeat game.
That's both for adult and not for adult, those are not contradictory. I don't think you can see "drugs", "swearing" and "violence", which is all Saints Row is about, for children, and not for normal adults either. So yeah, it's Mature. Duke Nukem shoul be rated M for Manly ;)
Oh, of course, of course. It has nudity, it has drugs, it has violence, it has prostitution, it has giant purple floppy dildo bats, it's not for kids. But what I'm saying is that it's not "mature" in the sense of the word which implies wisdom, responsibility and dignity. I think we need to strike a line between "adult" entertainment and "mature" entertainment and stop trying to slap the "mature" rating on "adult" material because it makes us feel more grown-up. Other than the literal nature of the content, there's nothing "mature" about Saints Row The Third. Or Duke Nuken Forever, for that matter. They're some of the most immature games I've ever seen. Well, at least Saints Row is funny, unlike Duke Nukem, which is just crass.
All I'm saying is I object to seeing "mature" games as being somehow better when even the simplest, most child-friendly games can still be just as powerful. And that, to me, is part of the problem. The gaming industry seems to have gotten it in its head that "dark" is somehow "better" and that's why they keep making those games. Critics, in their infinite wisdom, are constantly praising those games so OF COURSE they're going to keep getting made. But to me, a lot of video game critics approach games with a mentality that's very alien to that of a player. Take, for instance, Extra Credits (google it, it's a smart web show) - they're game DEVELOPERS, so they interpret games as developers. They're also high-brow critics who are convinced that "games need to move beyond fun" and are endlessly amused by horrible retro games, boring art/walking games and literary drama games. I'm sure there's room for that in gaming - to each his own - but the rising popularity of this stuff has made it so prevalent it's next to impossible to find a major release that's not "gritty" these days. I'm basically down to old games and indie stuff, and the indie stuff is mostly 8-bit simulacra games or goofy self-referrential parodies. Or horribly depressing survival horror games.
I mean, seriously - look at Steam's Greenlight and tell me what you see.
Agreed, but we didn't have much choice in the matter before either, as it was much more goody. And consumers did "change" the Mass Effect ending. And like all games with multiple endings, you have to work a lot to have a "good ending", so it is rewarding to play.
Dark games have always existed, and they will always exist. What I take issue with is how they've been turned into a fad, to the point where they're poisoning existing franchises. Why the hell did Lara Croft need to be tortured, sexually assaulted, strung up on a cross, nearly drowned and literally dragged through the mud, all proudly displayed as the POINT of playing the game? Again, I've heard the arguments that they didn't want to sexualise her, but if they wanted to do that, why not simply make a regular adventure game which doesn't do that? Why go so far in the other direction that you circle right around and make it feel even more uncomfortable than before? At least before it was pretty...
I guess that's my whole point. Once upon a time, games strived for better graphics so they could look pretty. Now they strive for better graphics so they could be even more ugly. What the hell, guys?
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Hope 2013 will be better.
It most definetly will... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UjK_yeXOmo)
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It most definetly will... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UjK_yeXOmo)
You know, I generally don't go for Deadpool's brand of humour, but... That made me chuckle quite a bit :) So, mission accomplished. Bouncy!
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I don't mean to forgo what others have said, but here's my response to the OP: I agree 100%. Gaming used to be about challenge and skill, now its moving towards story, multiplayer and graphics. There are a few strongholds in the challenge and skill department. The Zelda (puzzles) and Mario (skill/platforming) franchises immediately come to mind. I would also argue that the Pokemon series fits the mold, as long as you're willing to go deep enough into it. But look at the reputation they've earned their publisher (Nintendo). They're repeatedly viewed as children's games. Yet Zelda has some of the most intricate and well-designed puzzles you'll seen anywhere, and I still find myself swearing at a particularly difficult level of any Mario game (Galaxy 2 is a good, recent example). Oh, and don't even get me started on the incredibly deep, even overwhelming, combat system Pokemon has developed (Google it if you don't believe me). Point is, they're far from children's games.
But, appearances are everything. If you don't have blood, killing and intrigue (somewhat optional) you must be playing a child's game. Which is ironic, because very few parents (in my experience) stop their children from playing such games. My parents were the only ones I knew who outright prohibited M-rated video games in the house.
I am not saying that they're bad games, but these "dark" trends are the ones coming to characterize the video game market. While the outliers I mentioned will likely be around for awhile, they persist largely due to the audience they captured at the time of their inception. What will kids and early teenagers today come to view as nostalgic in ten years? I don't think it'll be Mario Bros. 3.
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It most definetly will... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UjK_yeXOmo)
I was unaware of this game's potential existence. Thank you for putting it on my radar.
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I couldn't figure out a good section to crop, so here's the quote in its entirety.
I don't mean to forgo what others have said, but here's my response to the OP: I agree 100%. Gaming used to be about challenge and skill, now its moving towards story, multiplayer and graphics. There are a few strongholds in the challenge and skill department. The Zelda (puzzles) and Mario (skill/platforming) franchises immediately come to mind. I would also argue that the Pokemon series fits the mold, as long as you're willing to go deep enough into it. But look at the reputation they've earned their publisher (Nintendo). They're repeatedly viewed as children's games. Yet Zelda has some of the most intricate and well-designed puzzles you'll seen anywhere, and I still find myself swearing at a particularly difficult level of any Mario game (Galaxy 2 is a good, recent example). Oh, and don't even get me started on the incredibly deep, even overwhelming, combat system Pokemon has developed (Google it if you don't believe me). Point is, they're far from children's games.
But, appearances are everything. If you don't have blood, killing and intrigue (somewhat optional) you must be playing a child's game. Which is ironic, because very few parents (in my experience) stop their children from playing such games. My parents were the only ones I knew who outright prohibited M-rated video games in the house.
I am not saying that they're bad games, but these "dark" trends are the ones coming to characterize the video game market. While the outliers I mentioned will likely be around for awhile, they persist largely due to the audience they captured at the time of their inception. What will kids and early teenagers today come to view as nostalgic in ten years? I don't think it'll be Mario Bros. 3.
"What teenagers will view as nostalgic" is a good question, as it touches on what they're playing the most, which is... I don't actually know, but I suspect it's things like Halo and Call of Duty, or possibly God of War and the like. Counter-Strike, maybe - the game that refuses to die already. Probably not Mario Brothers 3, probably not Aquaria or Trine or some such. The heck of it is, though, that Call of Duty used to be good at some point, back when it was about simulating the horrors of WW2. These days, it's just about multiplayer deathmatches. I was a teenager once. I remember playing the hell out of Half-Life deathmatch with my friends, so I certainly understand the appeal.
I'm not sure I can agree with you on the nature of games being about skill, though. To me, that's treating games like a sport and - me being not very good at them - I try not to. Yeah, I played Rick Dangerous and Golden Axe and Metal Slug, I finished Captain Comic an all of the Commander Keen games, and those were pretty rough. However, that's because the games of that time physically lacked the ability to tell a story... And because I was 8 years old and didn't speak English. But the games of today can be so much more than just skill challenges and I now have the vocabulary needed to appreciate them. Easily one of my favourite games of all time, for instance, is Aquaria specifically for the economic story it tells and its beautiful atmosphere. I'm a huge fan of Soul Reaver, as well, even though the games got progressively worse to play as the series went on, just because Simon Templeton, Michael Bell and Tony Jay could make ANY story awesome. These days, I love Darksiders not for the Devil May Cry combat style, but because it tells a "fucking bitchin'" storyline with a very over-the-top macho tone.
But "challenging?" Maybe it's because of my experience with the concept in City of Heroes (where "challenging" simply meant it was a pain in the ass), but I've had my fill of games fighting me back just so I could play them. City of Heroes showed me that a game could be a ton of fun even when played on "easy mode" if the theme were decent and the story were engaging. I do very much play games for the story these days - them being less about platforming and puzzles really isn't my beef. I like that games are story-driven, I just feel the stories which drive them have been turning increasingly darker and edgier in a neat parallel to the Rob Leifeld era of comic books in the 90s. It feels like every game these days is aiming to be the equivalent of an Oscar bait Hollywood movie, basically boiling down to an innocent child losing said innosence to a cruel and dark world. It feels like games have been trying to be pretentious and speak to ME as a player more and more, and it's getting a bit crowded, not to mention the fourth wall is barely holding together at this point.
I'm getting sick of being preached to by the games I play. I'm getting sick of so much as casting a sideways glance at a game and reading the not-at-all-hidden agenda of the people who made it. I'm tired of "messages" hammered into my head at the expense of plot, settings, pacing or theme. And I'm tired of these types of games being virtually the ONLY ones that get any real critical recognition any more and most of what makes critics' top ten lists. I'm tired of every game trying to be Spec Ops: The Line.
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One of the reasons why I play older games almost exclusively these days. I want to leave my game happy and satisfied, not frustrated, upset, paranoid, depressed, or otherwise emotionally crushed.
You mean you actually want a happy ending? I find them totally unrealistic. Granted, some stuff now is a bridge too far... but not everything.
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You mean you actually want a happy ending? I find them totally unrealistic. Granted, some stuff now is a bridge too far... but not everything.
It's fiction. Isn't it being impossible, unrealistic and not real the whole point? My argument has always been that if I want realism, I have a real world right outside my window I could be looking at. I can turn on the news and I see real. I go to games expressly because they AREN'T real and are different from the real world which I happen to dislike.
So, yes, I want happy endings. I play games to make myself happier than I would have been had I not played them. For lack of a real "meaning of life," the point of mine is to be happy, thus intentionally doing something which results in me feeling worse off than I would have had I not done it and which brings no other benefit to me just doesn't work. I respect that some might enjoy this sort of thing for reasons I could never comprehend and acknowledge that it's a legitimate side of entertainment in general and gaming in particular, but not ALL games have to have sad endings, or gaming loses its entire point to me.
So yes, happy endings are unrealistic, which is exactly why I like them.
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OK, maybe a stereotypical disney style happy ending is a bit much but I would like a few more ...satifying... endings.
I may have lost some companions along the way but I did manage to save the day/world/galaxy/universe... that kind of thing.
I have had enough of the 'oh well you tried but it was just fated to happen anyway' kind of stories that make me throw down the controls and ask why I bothered playing in the first place. It may just be me but without that sense of accomplishment, I might as well be playing Monopoly or tic Tac Toe.
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And what, exactly, is wrong with a happy and/or emotionally satisfying ending? J.R.R. Tolkien's "eucatastrophe" ("the sudden turn of events at the end of a story which ensure that the protagonist does not meet some terrible, impending, and very plausible doom") is not just a valid ending, it's the ending that we're hardwired to want. Remember that this isn't deus ex machina, which is an unforeseen and implausible intrusion of a power that saves the day. Eucatastrophe is a sudden, massive change that totally alters the landscape of what happened previously in the story, yet, unlike a deus ex machina, is completely consistent with the theme and story and will have been foreshadowed several times.
Our brains want this. Our brains want this because it is literally good for us. A happy ending in a story or a game gives us hope for a happy ending in reality. As G. K. Chesterton said, "Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed." We want to know our monsters can be killed.
I'm not saying that every game or story has to have a happy ending. But what I am saying is that the catastrophic ending is first, not what our brains want, second, not any more "intelligent," "superior," or "deep" than a happy ending, and third, very often is as much a cop-out of a lazy writer as a cliched happy ending where suddenly a magical unicorn flies in and makes everything better. It speaks of "I can't think of a way out of all this, so frell it, I'm killing them all."
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OK, maybe a stereotypical disney style happy ending is a bit much but I would like a few more ...satifying... endings.
I may have lost some companions along the way but I did manage to save the day/world/galaxy/universe... that kind of thing.
That's really what I mean when I say "happy" ending, really - an ending which is satisfying, thus making me happy. You'd think it's a fine point of semantics, but I've seen a fair few ending in recent times specifically designed to make me feel rotten, and I have no idea why that is. Is it some attempt to be "artistic" by trying damn hard to depress me? Like this is high art or something? And even if I get a happy ending, oftentimes the story itself is so depressing I can't finish it. Or even start it.
I mention Tomb Raider (the new one), and I can tell you one thing for a fact - that awful torture advertising ensured that I'll never buy this game, or even pirate it because I don't want to PLAY it. Even if it's not what it looks like from all the press, I'll never know because the press made damn sure to drill it into my head and that's what I expect now. And like going to the dentist, I simply don't want to do it, only unlike going to the dentist, I can choose not to and not be any worse off. But you wouldn't know it from some industry critics, who treat you not wanting to play a game which challenges your comfort zone and slaps you awake at the cold, uncaring world like some sign of immaturity suggesting that you should go play "casual" games, instead, said with teeth-gritting disdain.
Actually, putting this to words just now reminded me of how people used to tell me the same thing about playing games AT ALL, because games are for children. Could we have reached the point where games are still for children, but REAL games are now for adults?
I have had enough of the 'oh well you tried but it was just fated to happen anyway' kind of stories that make me throw down the controls and ask why I bothered playing in the first place. It may just be me but without that sense of accomplishment, I might as well be playing Monopoly or tic Tac Toe.
Interestingly enough, I did some reading on the concept of Fatalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism) as research for writing about the Titan Project (turns out it's not quite what I was after) and this kind of seems relevant here. Obviously, this is me being a first-year student thinking that every problem relates to exactly the thing I just learned about, but still, is there not a thematic connection? As far as I can piece together, Fatalism generally believes that what's fated to happen will happen and there's nothing we can do about it, with a side order of suspecting that what's fated to happen is bad, bad, bad all the way. I found this in a roundabout way, trying to capitalise on doom predictions in relation to an eldritch abomination that's actually real (in fiction, anyway), but this really does describe modern "grim and gritty" gaming quite well, does it not? So well, in fact, that I may well start calling such titles "fatalist games." It always helps to put a name on your problems.
In a sense, calling this a dork... Pardon, dark age of gaming is a tad unfair, as it brings about the dork age of comic books where everything had to be grim and gritty. I say this because this time tends to be remembered for its over-the-top grit, with characters like Pitt and Rob Leifeld's perpetually scowling jerkasses. Games seem to be trying to do this AND be taken seriously as literary works, which to me speaks much more so of fatalism. Games aren't trying to be edgy and to shock or startle us. "Grit" is too old hat to do this by now. Instead, they seem determined to depress us and convince us that no matter how hard we try, no matter how well we do, Shepard is still going to die and the godchild is still not going to make a lick 'o sense... Or something. They're trying to convince us that even if we can change something, the most we can hope for is a choice between a shit ending and a slightly less shit ending. Hence, fatalism. Or if it's not the ending, it's the theme or the story in-between.
And what, exactly, is wrong with a happy and/or emotionally satisfying ending? J.R.R. Tolkien's "eucatastrophe" ("the sudden turn of events at the end of a story which ensure that the protagonist does not meet some terrible, impending, and very plausible doom") is not just a valid ending, it's the ending that we're hardwired to want. Remember that this isn't deus ex machina, which is an unforeseen and implausible intrusion of a power that saves the day. Eucatastrophe is a sudden, massive change that totally alters the landscape of what happened previously in the story, yet, unlike a deus ex machina, is completely consistent with the theme and story and will have been foreshadowed several times.
Our brains want this. Our brains want this because it is literally good for us. A happy ending in a story or a game gives us hope for a happy ending in reality. As G. K. Chesterton said, "Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed." We want to know our monsters can be killed.
I'm not saying that every game or story has to have a happy ending. But what I am saying is that the catastrophic ending is first, not what our brains want, second, not any more "intelligent," "superior," or "deep" than a happy ending, and third, very often is as much a cop-out of a lazy writer as a cliched happy ending where suddenly a magical unicorn flies in and makes everything better. It speaks of "I can't think of a way out of all this, so frell it, I'm killing them all."
"Our brains want this." I like that. This is the kind of perspective I stem from, and I'm glad you managed to put it into words. I've often heard statements made on the subject which assert that a good ending is unrealistic or unbelievable, or that it's somehow childish or weak, perhaps that I don't deserve a good ending or even that that's just not good storytelling. Circumstances permitting, I could agree with any of the above, but this doesn't change a very basic fact - I WANT a happy ending. Whether it's deserved or not, whether it's erudite or not, it's what I want. It's why I read books, watch movies and play games. It's why I started writing stories in the first place - because I could make up adventures which, when told properly, made me feel good. Sometimes they were awesome, sometimes they were heartfelt, sometimes they were funny, and sometimes even scary, but at the end of the day, I walked away from writing them (and, subsequently, re-reading them) feeling good. Better than I had before.
Maybe my perspective is warped. I view every story I experience from the eyes of a writer, not those of a general audience member. And as a writer, I started writing as a coping mechanism. I put the things that hurt or upset me down on paper and I solved them in ways that real life couldn't provide. I solved them in ways I wanted to see them solved, but couldn't accomplish. And as I wrote these stories and as I read others like them, they ended up influencing my real life, my behaviour and my personality. When stories showed me characters who were good, kind and heroic, I wanted to be like them. When stories showed me jerkass bastards, I wanted to beat the shit out of them and swore to never do the same. Good stories gave me hope - in my heart, if not in my mind - that I can be a better person. If you think I'm a jerk right now (and I wouldn't blame you), consider that I've grown much calmer and much more pleasant as the years rolled on and I perfected this utopia of nice people through my stories.
I share all this so I can say the following: Happy endings to fictional stories made my life better and happier. Take that for what it's worth.
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One of the most common put-downs of happy endings that I see is "that's so cliche."
Except that it isn't cliche when it is mythic and archetypal. The difference between cliche and archetype, 99 times out of a hundred, is in the skill of the writer, not in the concept itself.
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One of the most common put-downs of happy endings that I see is "that's so cliche."
Except that it isn't cliche when it is mythic and archetypal. The difference between cliche and archetype, 99 times out of a hundred, is in the skill of the writer, not in the concept itself.
And personally, I like a good cliche if it's well-presented anyway.
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yeah.
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I'm one of those people who play games to "succeed". In most cases this means a positive of "happy" ending.
I don't want to hit the end of a game and find out I've been
- Hallucinating on my way to death
- Been responsible for the whole thng
- Doomed to fail
- displaced into "hell"
- raped by an evil zombie girl
I mean, an occasional twist ending, great. Breaks the monotony. But the majority of games nowadays are all "bummer" endings.
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The overall tone of the story may shape the ending but it doesn't dictate it. Moreover, an ending does not have to be a perfect Disney-style fantasy to be positive or optimistic.
Me, I like having the protagonists victorious - but not unharmed. You don't get to win at every turn, and neither do they. But they stood up to the challenge, survived it and still have a future ahead of them. And sometimes, a little bit of hope is all we need.
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I'm one of those people who play games to "succeed". In most cases this means a positive of "happy" ending.
I don't want to hit the end of a game and find out I've been
- Hallucinating on my way to death
- Been responsible for the whole thing
- Doomed to fail
- displaced into "hell"
- raped by an evil zombie girl
I mean, an occasional twist ending, great. Breaks the monotony. But the majority of games nowadays are all "bummer" endings.
God, I can almost name the games you're referring to right down the card :)
But yes, I agree with you. Yanking the "happy" from me right at the end is just bad storywriting, in my eyes, especially when your whole story has revolved around a hopeless struggle to succeed. "Our brains want [a happy ending]" is a good sentiment, but having slept on it, I think I can do one better. We want to see the underdog succeed. We want to see an unfair situation made fair even though in real life it couldn't be. It's why the Romans enjoyed putting heavily armoured gladiators against smaller, nearly naked opponents and cheered when the little guy won. It's why stories of the protagonist rising to the occasion and triumphing against all odds are so popular.
Here's my reasoning: When you put a weak character in a tough situation, the expectation is that this character will crumble and fail, or at best flail helplessly and fail anyway. This is what "should" happen were the story real life. This is what happens in real life all the time, in fact. People get lost in the woods and die, fall into canals and drown, lose their jobs and homes and die a miserable death as transients and so on. It's what we're wired to expect to see when bad things happen to good people. As someone mentioned before, if it happens all the time, it's not news. A good story is one which shows us something different, something other than what we'd have called just by a sideways glance at the setup. A good story takes us places real life wouldn't have.
So here's my problem: When I've spent an hour and a half watching a movie or 10 hours playing a game, watching the protagonist struggle against the odds, fighting and pushing on, and then see him lose anyway, I ask myself this: Why the fuck did I just watch this? What kind of pointless waste of my god damn time was that? Yes, I tend to use profanities a lot when talking to myself. The point is that the whole story was set up to have the protagonist fail. To see him fail is to make the entire movie/game/story worthless. Why? Consider something like FEAR. The Pointman spends so much time trying to stop Alma, and then she goes free anyway. If the Pointman had stayed in bed and not moved a muscle - and, by extension, if I'd never played the game - would anything have changed? No! Nothing would have changed, it would all have been the same and I just wasted my time playing what is, in all honesty, not even all that good of a game to begin with. Fail.
The overall tone of the story may shape the ending but it doesn't dictate it. Moreover, an ending does not have to be a perfect Disney-style fantasy to be positive or optimistic.
Quite true, and I want to use the worst, most despicable, horrible TV show it's ever been my rotten misfortune to watch as an example - Avatar: The Legend of Korra. How the same people who made the excellent Avatar: The Last Airbender could make this betrayal of anything decent is still beyond me, but let's look at why that's a good example.
The Legend of Korra tells the story of Korra - the new incarnation of the Avatar - as she learns to master all elements. The plot revolves around a Villain Sue who's always right, always succeeds, never so much as takes a single hit until right at the very end, is always ten steps ahead of the characters and is a dirty bastard besides. Korra, our heroine, fails to succeed at a SINGLE thing past a pointless fight with lowlife thugs right at the start. In nearly every episode since then, she is either kidnapped, knocke out or tied up, often all three and always humiliated and never taken seriously. The good guys always lose at everything they try, and whenever it looks like they scored a win, it was a trick by the bad guy. It's the worst, most depressing, most soul-crushing story I've ever experience in my life, and I say this with no exaggeration (I haven't read many old novels, keep in mind)... And it ends in a sunshine and puppies happy ending! Here's the breakdown:
The bad guy is "taking the bending" away from people, and by the end he's done this to nearly everyone, including Korra. Every time a person's powers are taken away, it's treated as a massive tragedy, basically amounting to taking their whole life away and leaving them a broken-down wreck. In the whole series, we think this can't happen to Korra because, well... Then there wouldn't be a series. At the end it does, and her response is - as with everyone else - to break down and cry in helplessness. Then she magically gets her bending back and gets the ability to give people their bending back and they all lived happily ever after!
Fuck. You. Movie!
This whole thing the show was busting my balls, dragging me face-first through the worst, most depressing story I've ever seen, giving me glimpses of hope only to yank them away just before they pay off, torturing me mentally all the way through and then BAM! Out-of-nowhere super happy ending! And worst of all, it's a happy ending with no closure. The bad guy was never beaten in any real way. He just got chased off and another character committed suicide to kill him. Korra never proved to deserve the title of the Avatar because she accomplished NOTHING! She failed at everything she tried and it's like the GM finally showed pity on her and had her powers magically return. This series did not deserve a happy ending because it handled itself so badly I have to wonder if the creators weren't contemplating suicide while listening to Papa Roach while writing it. Or maybe went through a divorce or a death in the family and suddenly everything seemed hopeless or something, and their publishers forced them to square-peg-in-a-round-hole a happy ending.
This is bullshit. Not only is this happy ending undeserved in any way, shape or form, but it serves to render the entirety of the drama preceding it pointless. The Legend of Korra was the first show in years to make me physically punch my desk hard enough to hurt my hand, so can you imagine how stupid I felt at the end when I realised none of the drama had even mattered? Drama or no drama, the spirit of the old Avatar showed up to Korra and just handed her her powers. She accomplished nothing, she learned nothing, she simply existed within the story long enough for a literal Deus Ex Machina to show up and resolve the plot. A terrible end to a terrible series, and I hope to the high heavens it never receives another season, because I'd be obligated to watch and review it...
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I really enjoyed Legend of Korra up until the end. It felt like it was rushed to a conclusion that needed more buildup and then more time to properly play out (undoubtedly because it wasn't certain to have any more episodes and they didn't want to leave it open if it wasn't going to get more). But nowhere along the way did I find it particularly depressing, much less soul-crushing. Heck, there were far more depressing bits in The Last Airbender - usually involving Zuko and/or his uncle, though Aang had his moments. Actually, a depressing tale to generate sympathy and attachment to one of the characters in Korra would have been a boon.
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Having a protagonist who consistently fails at everything in a spectacular, humiliating fashion and getting captured more often than Princess Peach and an antagonist who never loses at anything ever right up until he's basically cheated at the end is, to me, depressing.
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I really enjoyed Legend of Korra up until the end. It felt like it was rushed to a conclusion that needed more buildup and then more time to properly play out (undoubtedly because it wasn't certain to have any more episodes and they didn't want to leave it open if it wasn't going to get more). But nowhere along the way did I find it particularly depressing, much less soul-crushing. Heck, there were far more depressing bits in The Last Airbender - usually involving Zuko and/or his uncle, though Aang had his moments. Actually, a depressing tale to generate sympathy and attachment to one of the characters in Korra would have been a boon.
Is that an IPhone game ?
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Having a protagonist who consistently fails at everything in a spectacular, humiliating fashion and getting captured more often than Princess Peach and an antagonist who never loses at anything ever right up until he's basically cheated at the end is, to me, depressing.
God, 1000x this.
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Is that an IPhone game ?
Uhh.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Korra
Nope.
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I don't know what Korra you were all watching but I don't remember her failing at everything she tried (other than airbending) or being captured constantly (other than that one time at the end). You have to remember that most of her life she was secluded from the world so she had a bit of an ego problem and what follows is what normally happens when your ego gets splashed with the cold water of the real world, suddenly realizing that "your aren't all that" you made yourself out to be.
As for the chief big bad, yea, he really shouldn't have shown off his bending but it was that or death/serious injury (IIRC he was blown out of a high window). I would say it was an instinctual use than a choice on his part.
Please correct me.
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Having a protagonist who consistently fails at everything in a spectacular, humiliating fashion and getting captured more often than Princess Peach and an antagonist who never loses at anything ever right up until he's basically cheated at the end is, to me, depressing.
To me that's just an average day in Shonen land. There has to be actual sadness to depress me. What you describe sounds more like disappointment or perhaps a lack of satisfaction.
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To me that's just an average day in Shonen land. There has to be actual sadness to depress me. What you describe sounds more like disappointment or perhaps a lack of satisfaction.
Or he was focusing on the villain's point of view. Which if I take his snarky description of the story told as truth, I also find kind of depressing. No other defeat tastes more bitter than when you throwed all the way like a god, and in the end you fumble like a noob.
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I don't know what Korra you were all watching but I don't remember her failing at everything she tried (other than airbending) or being captured constantly (other than that one time at the end).
Well, what did she succeed at? Like, anything at all that can be attributed to her own actions?
Also, getting captured: Once right at the start by the city police - tied up and brought in. Then again in her very first meeting with Chi-Blockers in an alley, just incapacitated. Then again in her dream, but I guess that doesn't count. Then by the big bad who strings her up, insults her and lets her go. Then again at the "bending championship" finals - tied up below the stage. Then again, in Sato's underground base - shocked, tied up, loaded into a truck. Then again by the bloodbender guy - tied up, tossed in a truck, taken to a shack in the woods, thrown in a cage. I think I'm forgetting one before the end, but right at the end several times. Once when she's hiding from the big bad like he's a frikkin' Slasher villain, then pulled out by the wrist and incapacitated, then once more when he takes her bending. Honestly, I think she gets captured more in 12 episodes than Aang did in three 24-episode seasons, and HE got captured a lot! And where Aang would usually break out, nearly every time Korra had to be saved.
And what kills me about the big bad is throughout the entire series, he never fails at anything. Not a single time. It gets ridiculous after a while, to the point where the fat guy (Sokka's stand-in) had to comment about how "Every time we come up with a plan, he comes up with a better plan!" I mean, seriously, just how anachronistic future technologies can Sato invent? He invented the automobile, giant electorwhip robots, WW2 divebombers, invisible electric fences, portable shock gloves, underground superfactories, giant three-feet-thick walls of pure platinum impervious to Metalbenders, airships, regular ships, submarines, night vision goggles. Basically, every time the plot makes it look like the good guys have done something right, Sato pulls out the GM's trick card of having secretly invented exactly what it takes to destroy the heroes' advantage.
I mean my god! Throw them a bone! Because if you don't, it won't take me long to figure out that Korra will always lose and Amon will always win, and then the entire show becomes predictable. After about Episode 6 or 7 - whenever the "Korra kidnapped and taken to the woods was" - I could pretty much call it right down the card. You give me the set-up, I give you the results, and I was almost always right. In fact, when those window-washers with the power gloves attacked Tenzen at the start of the rebellion and he DID'T get knocked out and taken hostage, that threw me for a serious loop. It didn't last.
The Legend of Korra has everything I never wanted to see in a story. It's an endless parade of failure that started off dramatic, went into pathetic and then rolled over into fetish-creepy by the end. I was seriously getting the feeling someone was getting off on torturing the poor girl. Ew!
Or he was focusing on the villain's point of view. Which if I take his snarky description of the story told as truth, I also find kind of depressing. No other defeat tastes more bitter than when you throwed all the way like a god, and in the end you fumble like a noob.
My description may be snarky, but it's not too far from the truth. Korra is given some minor victories here and there, usually against foes that don't matter or against her own attitude, but Amon - the big bad - never, ever, EVER fails at anything he attempts the entire season. Not a single thing. Whenever he engages in hand-to-hand combat, he always wins clean and never suffers so much as a hit. When he has plans, they always succeed. If they look like they're failing, that's just what he WANTS you to think, and he was playing the heroes all along. Whenever Korra gets involved, she either freezes in fear or is forced to run. And even when he loses, he hasn't really lost. He takes ONE hit that knocks him through a window and reveals his scam, but he's fine. Unhurt and pissed off, as a point of fact, but retreats without anyone being able to do anything to stop him. The only way he's finally defeated is by a person he trusts who's so emotionally broken that he commits suicide and kills them both in a fiery explosion.
Even Lord Nemesis doesn't have that kind of track record and his whole thing was that his losses were just diversions.
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Well, what did she succeed at? Like, anything at all that can be attributed to her own actions?
Also, getting captured: Once right at the start by the city police - tied up and brought in. Then again in her very first meeting with Chi-Blockers in an alley, just incapacitated. Then again in her dream, but I guess that doesn't count. Then by the big bad who strings her up, insults her and lets her go. Then again at the "bending championship" finals - tied up below the stage. Then again, in Sato's underground base - shocked, tied up, loaded into a truck. Then again by the bloodbender guy - tied up, tossed in a truck, taken to a shack in the woods, thrown in a cage. I think I'm forgetting one before the end, but right at the end several times. Once when she's hiding from the big bad like he's a frikkin' Slasher villain, then pulled out by the wrist and incapacitated, then once more when he takes her bending. Honestly, I think she gets captured more in 12 episodes than Aang did in three 24-episode seasons, and HE got captured a lot! And where Aang would usually break out, nearly every time Korra had to be saved.
And what kills me about the big bad is throughout the entire series, he never fails at anything. Not a single time. It gets ridiculous after a while, to the point where the fat guy (Sokka's stand-in) had to comment about how "Every time we come up with a plan, he comes up with a better plan!" I mean, seriously, just how anachronistic future technologies can Sato invent? He invented the automobile, giant electorwhip robots, WW2 divebombers, invisible electric fences, portable shock gloves, underground superfactories, giant three-feet-thick walls of pure platinum impervious to Metalbenders, airships, regular ships, submarines, night vision goggles. Basically, every time the plot makes it look like the good guys have done something right, Sato pulls out the GM's trick card of having secretly invented exactly what it takes to destroy the heroes' advantage.
I mean my god! Throw them a bone! Because if you don't, it won't take me long to figure out that Korra will always lose and Amon will always win, and then the entire show becomes predictable. After about Episode 6 or 7 - whenever the "Korra kidnapped and taken to the woods was" - I could pretty much call it right down the card. You give me the set-up, I give you the results, and I was almost always right. In fact, when those window-washers with the power gloves attacked Tenzen at the start of the rebellion and he DID'T get knocked out and taken hostage, that threw me for a serious loop. It didn't last.
The Legend of Korra has everything I never wanted to see in a story. It's an endless parade of failure that started off dramatic, went into pathetic and then rolled over into fetish-creepy by the end. I was seriously getting the feeling someone was getting off on torturing the poor girl. Ew!
My description may be snarky, but it's not too far from the truth. Korra is given some minor victories here and there, usually against foes that don't matter or against her own attitude, but Amon - the big bad - never, ever, EVER fails at anything he attempts the entire season. Not a single thing. Whenever he engages in hand-to-hand combat, he always wins clean and never suffers so much as a hit. When he has plans, they always succeed. If they look like they're failing, that's just what he WANTS you to think, and he was playing the heroes all along. Whenever Korra gets involved, she either freezes in fear or is forced to run. And even when he loses, he hasn't really lost. He takes ONE hit that knocks him through a window and reveals his scam, but he's fine. Unhurt and pissed off, as a point of fact, but retreats without anyone being able to do anything to stop him. The only way he's finally defeated is by a person he trusts who's so emotionally broken that he commits suicide and kills them both in a fiery explosion.
Even Lord Nemesis doesn't have that kind of track record and his whole thing was that his losses were just diversions.
I very much enjoyed Korra, and I found the story to be inspirational. Just as you said, she is given absolutely no quarter. She's a seventeen year old kid. What advantages does she have? She was a child prodigy of sorts, given her mastery of the first three elements. But as the story quickly explains, all that really does for her is give her an edge over a couple of thugs and the Lieutenant. The plot was never designed, at least I think, to test her skills or intelligence. Everything Amon threw at her was testing her determination and challenging what she knew about the world. Only when she felt truly and fully defeated could she actually change and win. The Avatar has the power to do anything they set their minds to, as evidenced by a twelve year old's ending of a war. Korra's true enemy was herself, and I felt the first thirteen episodes captured that beautifully.
Again, I agree with the facts. Korra never won, Amon was always a step ahead. But I like how that was used, and how it was resolved. I thought it was done with great precision. What I don't like about the series is how little Bolin was fleshed out. But I guess I can wait for more to see what happens. Also, in case you are unaware, Korra was meant to be confined solely to the thirteen episodes that have aired. It's got a total of 40ish more coming, not sure how it can stay as good as it was.
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Also, getting captured: Once right at the start by the city police - tied up and brought in. Then again in her very first meeting with Chi-Blockers in an alley, just incapacitated. Then again in her dream, but I guess that doesn't count. Then by the big bad who strings her up, insults her and lets her go. Then again at the "bending championship" finals - tied up below the stage. Then again, in Sato's underground base - shocked, tied up, loaded into a truck. Then again by the bloodbender guy - tied up, tossed in a truck, taken to a shack in the woods, thrown in a cage. I think I'm forgetting one before the end, but right at the end several times. Once when she's hiding from the big bad like he's a frikkin' Slasher villain, then pulled out by the wrist and incapacitated, then once more when he takes her bending.
You sure they didn't channel James Schmitz for that series? Seriously, Schmitz's heroines get tied up more than Penelope Pitstop.
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And what kills me about the big bad is throughout the entire series, he never fails at anything. Not a single time. It gets ridiculous after a while, to the point where the fat guy (Sokka's stand-in) had to comment about how "Every time we come up with a plan, he comes up with a better plan!" I mean, seriously, just how anachronistic future technologies can Sato invent? He invented the automobile, giant electorwhip robots, WW2 divebombers, invisible electric fences, portable shock gloves, underground superfactories, giant three-feet-thick walls of pure platinum impervious to Metalbenders, airships, regular ships, submarines, night vision goggles. Basically, every time the plot makes it look like the good guys have done something right, Sato pulls out the GM's trick card of having secretly invented exactly what it takes to destroy the heroes' advantage.
Pretty much like Slade in Teen Titans without all the filler episodes to distract you from it. I like that kind of villain, but I did feel like his defeat was a rip-off.
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Pretty much like Slade in Teen Titans without all the filler episodes to distract you from it. I like that kind of villain, but I did feel like his defeat was a rip-off.
A lot like Slade, yes, but at least Slade was a manipulator and his plans were FOR Robin. It's been a while since I saw that series but I remember most of his plans being him farting around playing mind games and not actually achieving world domination. And yes, I do believe his defeat was kind of crap. And, to be honest, by Season 3, I was sick to death of the guy. There's only so much smug self-entitlement that I can take before I cry foul. He was a cool villain with a solid voice actor, but geez man! The Joker called - he wants his ham back.
And you do have a point about that kind of villain in general. A good story needs a good villain that feels like a threat, but it's a careful balancing act to pull off. If you don't make the villain menacing enough, he ends up a joke like Hector Con Carne. If you make the villain TOO menacing, he ends up a Villain Sue like Amon. If the villains' too weak, defeating him has no meaning. If the villain's too strong, then defeating him feels like cheating.
It's such a fiddly balancing act, I really believe only the best of writers can pull it off. But the thing is, this only happens if you make the story ABOUT the villain, which I frankly think is a mistake. A good story needs a good villain as much as it needs a good hero, and said good hero can be a very good damper on the fine balancing of the villain. The more of the story's conflict that you shift onto the hero, the less the villain has to carry the tone. That's why everyone remembers that one scene where Spider-Man has to lift something heavy to the point it keeps being reused over and over, and why "with great power come great responsibility" has endured for so long. When you give the hero his own story arc, he can carry much of the story and you end up with a clash of equals, in storytelling terms.
To my eyes, the best hero/villain stories are the ones that set both hero and villain on an adventure of their own, such that their paths cross inescapably into a climactic confrontation. Avatar: The Last Airbender does this expertly, both with Aang vs. Zuko, then Aang vs. Azula, then finally Aang vs. Ozai... Even if Mark Hamil's Ozai really isn't a "character." There are a number of "storyline crossovers" along the way with the various other non-title characters, and that's what the series is built on. And that's where the Legend of Korra fails completely. Despite carrying her name, the series really isn't "about" Korra. Or about the Avatar, for that matter. For much of the plot, Korra is basically carryo-on, being dragged through the plot by her hair, accomplishing nothing, achieving nothing and learning nothing. It's Amon's story through and through. You CAN tell a story that's all about the villain if you do it right, but it's VERY difficult, and the Legend of Korra tries so hard that it explodes all over the bedsheets and accomplishes worse than nothing.
I think you may have just clued me into a central source of the "fatalism" problem in modern day video game writing - it's so enamoured with the villains that it fails to give the heroes their half of the story to carry, and a villain-centric story is difficult to write when you put the player in the hero's role. And it doesn't have to be this way - look at Half-Life 2. Gordon Freeman is basically a silent protagonist with zero personality and no say over the plot, yet the game nevertheless tells its entire narrative around him. Bad guys exist - the G-Man, Breen, the Combine, etc. - but this is very clearly Freeman's story. And even THAT has suffered with Episodes 1 and 2 with the introduction of the "Advisors." All of a sudden we have these floating grubs that cause the otherwise tough Alyx to almost break down crying and eat Eli's brain, Starship Trooper's style, and then they dropped the ball and didn't make a sequel for coming on a decade.
I'm getting off track, but I think much of the problem lies in games' preoccupation with villains. They spend too much time inserting the game's villain as the source of all problems, then don't let the player solve them because we need to make the villain a menace. By the end, said villain is either a massive let-down (Bioshock, I'm looking at you!) or a Villain Sue, and it's all because they wrote themselves into a corner. A villain who's never wrong and never loses is a villain that YOU cannot write. I'm looking at you, game designers - YOU cannot write that kind of villain. Maybe someone somewhere can, but YOU can't. So figure out how to make your villain a real character, with his own ups and downs, his own wins and losses, his own moments of despair and moments of inspiration. Make the story as rough on the villain as it is on the hero. Make this a villain I can respect as much as I revile him. Make me want to defeat him not because he disgusts me, but because it's the right thing to do. Then you'll get me invested enough to both want to see him fall and not feel robbed out of closure at the same time.
Darrin Wade is a perfect example of a Villain Sue, actually, at least in the SSA1. Like Amon, everything he tries succeeds and he manages to win pretty much hands down, only for the game to basically do a 180 and go "Well, it was fun but we can't actually have him win. Go beat his ass." Through and through, it was his story, and all the Freedom Phalanx was there to do was serve as fall guys so we could demonstrate how awesome Wade is. And sure, the fight in space is cool and all, but as for closure? What closure? Rularuu beat Wade like we knew he would. What we beat was an Aspect of Rularuu. Wade lost before we ever got to him, there's no closure. And did the Phalanx learn anything? Of course not, because it wasn't their story. And the player character? Nope, not our story, either. It was Wade's story.
Maybe someone could have written that kind of story well, but Doc Aeon wasn't him. And that's not a dig against the guy - that kind of story is a bitch to write. What I hold against him is putting himself in a situation where he HAD to tell that kind of story. It speaks of inexperience, because once you've tried to write a story like this - and I have tried and I have failed - you learn pretty quickly to just not do that. If you have to have an unbeatable villain, then just don't use him as the story focus and tell the story of the other characters surviving in that kind of situation. Don't make it a fight between a Villain Sue and a Butt Monkey hero. There's no way that this will end up as anything other than fatalist, and unless you're VERY good at pulling off fatalist stories, you're going to fail.
Basically, gaming's current preoccupation of villain-centric writing is turning games fatalist.
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I don't know what Korra you were all watching but I don't remember her failing at everything she tried (other than airbending) or being captured constantly (other than that one time at the end). You have to remember that most of her life she was secluded from the world so she had a bit of an ego problem and what follows is what normally happens when your ego gets splashed with the cold water of the real world, suddenly realizing that "your aren't all that" you made yourself out to be.
That was more what I took away from the first season. The overall struggle Korra faced may have looked like it was against external forces, but almost everything was rooted in internal conflict with hubris being a central theme. That and what seemed like a more than generous dose of teen angst.
Wait... what's this thread discussing again?
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From Cracked - on movies.
Grrr! Roar! Scary! Grit! As we, as a movie-going nation, get older, it looks like we're mistaking too-cool cynicism and ironic detachment for maturity and sophistication. Everything -- everything -- is gritty now, even Hansel and goddamn Gretel, even Jack and the goddamn Beanstalk, even the Wizard of goddamn Oz. Everything.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/3-movies-they-dont-make-anymore-but-really-should/
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More or less, yeah.
Maybe I'm reading too far into it, but I've developed a habit of taking offence whenever game designers or movie makers try to "guess" what we want. It's what pissed me off so much about the original Tomb Raider advertisement - it assumed that torture porn, basically, is what we want because that's more "mature" than sexual objectification, yo! And it just makes me feel insulted that someone really thought that that's the kind of stuff I want to see as entertainment.
Enter "Grrr! Roar! Scary! Grit!" It strikes me as movie and game makers guessing that what we want is to grow up and be mature and that this means we're no longer want to watch happy movies. It smacks of a teenager's view of maturity as expressed through the denouncement of childhood in general, and to me at least, that's not mature. "Dark" games and movies have always existed. If anything, the old DOS games were even more violent more commonly than the games of today. It's this feeling I get that gamers are somehow ashamed to be caught playing a game with a happy ending because that's not "serious" enough that I find... Belittling? I've never shied away from harsh story elements like suffering, desperation and the loss of innocence. Hell, it's what I use to add drama to my own stories. It's the reverse that really bugs me - the aversion to niceness.
Now, again, maybe that's just me reading too much into gaming trends, but it seems like these days, happy is out and gritty is in. And it's hurting the diversity of new releases.
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I think its a dark age in gaming for nothing to do with dark stories.
Its because nothing good has come out in the last 5 years.
Compare Video games quallity, Difficulty and the people they cater video games to fifteen years ago to what they do today and you will see it.
5% of video games are made and catered to 100% to people who actually want a challenge
Roughly 15% to people who enjoy video games
the other 80% ?
People who cannot play video games like children or old people and people who have never played before.
Look at the trend of Infinite live games which are so abundent its sickening. ! The change the difficulty in the middle of a game session like in Elder Scrollls.
Call of Duty
Halo
God of War
Gears of War
Games like these not only exist but people claim they are the best things on the planet when they lack so much in every department of what makes a good video game its sickening....no wonder why so many squeeky voiced teenagers and Non-Gamers play it to make it so popular right?
STREAMLINING MECHANICS!
Diablo 3 much?
Take out character customization, Skill points, Skill Tree's, Limit down the skills you gain in the game but OVER 2/3 of what you could had before and opt in crappy runes to alter already existing skills. Remove the fact that YOUR WEAPON MATTERS....weapons do not matter in D3, Attack speed, Power etc...Why else does a Wizard pwn in d3 with a Giant axe larger then himself eh? Weapons do not matter for any character and never will for any class and its so sad.
SKYRIM! Take out character classes completely. Seriously? Name one reason other then race and gender you would want to make more then a single character on this game....oh wait...there are NONE!
Every Game is being dumbed down and streamlined and given things to open it to people who never played....bad thing? No....except...EVERYONE is doing it.
Every new game, Every new company, old series etc. Everyone is doing it to every game even old games that used to be very well known for something that someone who is under 18, not good at video games or never played should never even think of attempting to go near.
Fightning Games and every other genre has gotten so much easier to play too.
I played Mortal Kombat for years and only beat Kintaro once and got my ass handed to me by Shao Khan. I will never beat that game but I can beat every other MK game after it since.
...sad.
We Truly are in a Dark Ages of gaming.
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I agree that they have a tendency to go overboard in streamlining mechanics, but on the other hand I'd rather play an over-simplified game than an over-complicated game. Optimally, there should be options that allow one some degree of customisation to suit one's own perfect middle-ground of complexity.
SKYRIM! Take out character classes completely. Seriously? Name one reason other then race and gender you would want to make more then a single character on this game....oh wait...there are NONE!
Character classes weren't really a big deal to me in Elder Scrolls - ultimately, they were just a label for someone who focused on a particular set of skills in what was a skill-based rather than class-based game. The problem I had with Skyrim (other than glitchy dragons) is that in order to max out the skills I wanted I eventually had to start using skills I didn't want to use in order to advance and have the points to spend on the skills I wanted. But I finished it and Oblivion, whereas Morrowind was a dull brown tedious mess full of infinitely aggro'd Cliff Racers - I swear, whenever I start a new game in the series, one of those things is still following me... I can hear it.
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Vasarto sounds like that gaming is "serious business" and only professionals need apply. It's entertainment. It's meant to be enjoyed. If a simpler framework means more people enjoy a particular game that's good for the developer (more sales = more income) and those players (they have fun).
Sorry if that means hundreds of hours of discovering and mastering the timings needed to pull off awesomely unstoppable combo moves in fighting games or layers of stats that'll make a dedicated PnP RPGer eyes glaze over are your forte but sadly for you that there are more of us than players like you and if a developer/studio wants to make more money from their efforts it's us and not you they will be designing for.
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No wonder why so many squeeky voiced teenagers and Non-Gamers play it to make it so popular right?
I'm sorry, but that's a horrible sentiment in that it's completely exclusionist. I would quite literally rather have a dark age of gritty games than a return to the "good" old days when only "gamers" need apply an everyone else isn't worthy of having fun. You decry Call of Duty and Halo and so forth, but you're perpetuating the same "lolnewb" mentality of disparaging the less skilled. There's nothing about gaming that's unique to the hardcore. "Challenge" is not a necessary part of what makes a game good. Sure, I have no problem with challenging games - I just don't play them. But to suggest that anything which isn't challenging is bad is just not fair.
Diablo 2 is easily my least favourite game of all time, and the single overriding reason for that is the three-tier skill tree and the skill points allocation. Literally the primary reason I bought City of Heroes to begin with is it promised me that I don't need to take powers over and over again. The choice between having more powers or fewer but stronger ones is one I never want to have to make, and I couldn't be happier with Diablo 3's abandonment of that system. OK, I still feel that Diablo 3 is terrible, but this time for completely different reasons. The storyline is crap on a stick and I hate how item-driven the game is. I dislike that there is an auction house where the best stuff can usually be found, and I disliked its frankly unplayable difficulty at the higher levels. Well, now that it has scalabile difficulty levels, that at least is one problem less since I can set it to the lowest and keep playing. But even so the min-maxing in that game puts me off.
I'm with Tenzhi on this one. I'd rather play a game that's too simple or too easy over one that's too difficult or too complicated. If you look at the games I grew up on - Prince of Persia, Captain Comic, Jill of the Jungle, Knights of the Round and so forth, you'll notice that they're incredibly simple and, now that I'm going back to them, also quite easy. Sure, Capcom's old arcades are still quite difficult, but these days I play them on an emulator with infinite credits. My point, though, is I don't enjoy games that don't let me enjoy them unless I'm "this tall to ride." To me, the limited lives idea is old and has no place in modern gaming. Punishing people for doing poorly in general isn't something I enjoy, and not something I ever have. It's why I never played any of the "plane shooter" "bullet hell" games of old that made you lose all your power-up when you got killed.
To me, Ubi's Prince of Persia series is the ideal example of how death should be dealt with - by integrating it into the game. You die, you get bumped back into the game and asked to repeat the task you failed at properly this time. The Sands of Time series did this with time reversal, the new series did it by having Elika save the prince every time, but the point is that these games achieve a state of "flow" that really isn't replicable in the fits-and-stops gameplay of old. Yes, there are old games I was never able to finish. To this day, I've been unable to get to the end of Green Berets. That game's hard as balls, and you know what? I don't remember it that fondly. I tried it recently and it's still just as hard, and still just as not fun.
My point is that there's nothing wrong with easy games that isn't also wrong with hard games. An easy game is no less of a "real" game than a hard game and a hardcore gamer isn't any less of a fan than one who prefers easy titles.
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One of the things that young writers forget is that without eucatastrophe, catastrophe has no meaning and reduces everything to dust and ashes.
Let's take one of the darkest, grittiest films ever. Pulp Fiction. With the exception of Bruce Willis's girlfriend, everyone in that movie is a villain. Everyone. They all do dark, horrible things.
And yet...and yet...
We have two characters, Jules (Samuel L Jackson) and Butch (Bruce Willis) who have it in them to be redeemed. Wed actually can see that, in Jules' case from the fact that he seems to be overcompensating as a badass, and in Butch's case, where he is driven into doing bad things because he refused to take a fall in a prize fight after agreeing (and being paid) to.
And in the end, what do we get? Catastrophe: A huge smoking pile of bodies, of people who deserve it. And eucatastrophe: Jules taking his Biblical quotation to heart and "walking off into the wilderness" to find redemption, and Butch rescuing his girl and driving off to do the same. The eucatastrophe turns all that blood and spattered body parts into a redemption story, there is hope again, our subconscious is satisfied, and yet I defy you to find a darker, grittier story, anywhere.
Where there is no eucatastrophe, there is no hope. Where there is no hope, why partake in the story at all?
Even Romeo and Juliet ends in hope. The lovers may be dead, but in Shakspearian context the audience knows and feels deeply they are united in heaven, and their deaths bring peace to their feuding families.
I think that is why the shutdown of CoX hit me so hard with Bella. She never got her eucatastrophe. I never got my hope. Seven solid years of living in her skin, six of them playing someone deeply in mourning, and it ends in a whimper and oblivion? I will never forgive NCSoft for doing that to me. And I will always be grateful to Samuraiko for giving me this: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,7170.0.html (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,7170.0.html)
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One of the things that young writers forget is that without eucatastrophe, catastrophe has no meaning and reduces everything to dust and ashes.
"This." That's what I mean when I say that a story is "going somewhere" with its darkness and drama. I just apparently lacked the word for it :) It's the principle behind a Don Bluth movie, basically - you can get away with a lot of horror and darkness so long as your movie has a happy ending, in my opinion because that convinces your audience all the pain and suffering was worth it to get to where the movie is. If you can craft a story such that it ends up being more positive in the end BECAUSE of its dark elements than it ever would without them, that's a story that was "going somewhere" with its drama.
However, there is the other side of this, that you need to keep your audience until the end and the payoff. If I paid for a movie, I probably won't walk out of the theatre, but if I rented a DvD or got a book, then you bet I'll shut it down mid-way through if I think it's crap. That's why I've never managed to watch the End of Evangelion movie. It's gross, confusing and pointless so every time I try to watch it, I just shut it down by the time the flashbacks start. If you can't keep my ass in the seat long enough to see the eucatastrophe, then it might as well not be there, thus why it's important to pepper your story with either enough hints of it, or otherwise enough mini-eucatastrophes to keep people believing in the possibility of an ending that has a point.
The only trouble is that the more you egg people on with "No, really! It'll all be worth it in the end!" the higher the expectations that you set and the more spectacular the failure will be if the ending bombs. There have been very few movies that have actually caused me to get off my seat and yell "Bullshit!" but there are a few. Again we go back to the Legend of Korra. After half a season of failing miserably, Korra finally gets a shining moment of awesome when she takes a lot of beating but still utterly kicks triple-ponytail-guy's ass. It's awesome, it's spectacular, it's a great character moment! And then it turns out he's a bloodbender so he beats her anyway, ties her up and throws her into a box. That moment seriously caused me to punch my desk, and only so I could avoid punching my far more expensive electronics. If it weren't 4AM at the time, you bet I'd have been spewing obstinacies at the screen. All because the story seemed to be promising me that "No, really! All of this hardship will be worth it! See? See how awesome she is?" only to yoink that kind of closure out of my hands and replace it with even more shit.
Right at that point, I stopped caring what the story is "about," because it failed AS A STORY OF ANY KIND so spectacularly that it has become easily the worst piece of television I've seen in my entire life. Pretty much because of that one scene alone, and what it means in the context of the broader story. And by the time the happy ending at the end rolled around, I no longer gave a crap about any of the characters, any of the plot points or any of the ideas. I basically watched the latter half of the season just shaking my head and passing the time, not being able to believe the trainwreck that was happening before me in slow motion. Were I in my right mind, I'd have walked out, simple as that. Because past that point, the series basically lost me as audience. I could have been watching Twilight for all I cared. Because you can only tease people with eucatastrophe so many times before they start calling your bluffs and become psychic for how easy they can read ahead in your script. Once you know that NOTHING will ever turn out right, you basically don't need to see anything from that point on till the end, and you won't care about what happens AT the end.
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This cannot be said strongly enough: You NEED a eucatastrophe in order for a story to even have a point and in order for people to give a rat's ass about it. And yes, it's a common beginner's mistake to never deliver on that, thinking that drama itself is what makes a story good. I've been there, I've thought the same and I've produced horrible garbage, myself. I'm not too proud to admit when my own work sucks, and it does for the most part. But it kills me when I see beginner writers doing the same mistake on major commercial projects. You don't do that!
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If it weren't 4AM at the time, you bet I'd have been spewing obstinacies at the screen.
I seem to recall that English isn't your first language, and that you prefer to get the words right. If my addled brain is mistaken in this recollection, forgive me for this kindly meant correction: I believe the word you're looking for is "obscenities".
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I seem to recall that English isn't your first language, and that you prefer to get the words right. If my addled brain is mistaken in this recollection, forgive me for this kindly meant correction: I believe the word you're looking for is "obscenities".
You are correct, Tenzhi. I read what you said and I was like "But wait, that's what I said!" Then I looked at you quote and was like *headdesk*. Gah! I should have known better than that, and I think I know how that happened. I'm something of a sloppy typist, so I rely on Firefox spell check a lot. However, when I misspell a word bad enough, spell check can't figure out what I meant to say, or it simply misunderstands and tosses me a suggestion that has nothing to do with the actual word. I'm sure I typed "obscenities" but I also don't know exactly how to spell it, so I picked a spell check suggestion without looking too closely at what I was picking, apparently. "Obstinacies..." Good lord!
Thank you for pointing that out :) English is indeed not my first language, but I like to take pride in my command of it. And yes, ugly mistakes like that are well worth pointing out.
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You are correct, Tenzhi. I read what you said and I was like "But wait, that's what I said!" Then I looked at you quote and was like *headdesk*. Gah! I should have known better than that, and I think I know how that happened. I'm something of a sloppy typist, so I rely on Firefox spell check a lot. However, when I misspell a word bad enough, spell check can't figure out what I meant to say, or it simply misunderstands and tosses me a suggestion that has nothing to do with the actual word. I'm sure I typed "obscenities" but I also don't know exactly how to spell it, so I picked a spell check suggestion without looking too closely at what I was picking, apparently. "Obstinacies..." Good lord!
Thank you for pointing that out :) English is indeed not my first language, but I like to take pride in my command of it. And yes, ugly mistakes like that are well worth pointing out.
Since you can come across as being somewhat stubborn on occasion i would tend to say that "spewing obstinacies" is not completely inappropriate. ;) Nonetheless your English is generally far better than the average native user.
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Thank you! :)
And yes, stubborn is quite accurate. I guess it comes with being argumentative and a quick typist so that the actual investment in making a long-winded post isn't that great. Plus, constructing an argument is fun, especially on an interesting subject like the Fatalism of modern gaming.
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Q_Q spoilerbombed! I didn't know about D3 and Leah (I really liked her from what I played in the trial version)
Anyway... I blame the "2012 endtime" hype for the choice in theme the past couple years. Now that its blown over, maybe there will be a change.
Yeah, one of the first things I thought when I read that was "Thankfully I finished that game already!".
Anyway, more on topic - "dark" games have been on the rise for several years now, The Witcher games are pretty dark too, Fable definitely has its moments, and plenty of other games.
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It seems that from the previews of the latest Iron Man, Star Trek and Superman movies, the kiddies there are convinced that dark = deep too. /em facepalm. There's three I will be skipping kaythanksbai
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I had to bail on the new Superman film when I heard that they were not going to use the John Williams theme.
How in the name of all that is decent and good can you not use the perfect music?
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I had to bail on the new Superman film when I heard that they were not going to use the John Williams theme.
How in the name of all that is decent and good can you not use the perfect music?
Personally? I think it's because it implies high adventure, excitement and heroic imagery. That's not what sells these days, it seems. If you just have a true-blue good guy who believes in truth, justice and the American way, people will likely balk. It's not realistic, he has to have something which tortures him and makes him angry, he has to deal with the grey morality of super powers. You can't have it be a fun adventure!
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To me, the John Williams theme evokes an honest, heroic majesty born from loneliness and perforce maintaining that loneliness from on high. For sounds of heroic adventure I look to the Timmverse series.
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I had to bail on the new Superman film when I heard that they were not going to use the John Williams theme.
How in the name of all that is decent and good can you not use the perfect music?
There's no doubt that the John Williams theme music for Superman is very nice and became iconic in its own right. But remember the Superman character had existed for 46 years -before- John scored the 1978 movie. His music never was an indispensable element of the core Superman concept to begin with.
Sure I'll admit it might be weird to see a new Superman movie without Williams' involvement, but I'd hardly use that as an excuse to avoid seeing such a movie. It's not like Williams is going to live forever and be able to write new music for new movies until the end of time anyway. Besides he's probably fully locked into all the upcoming Star Wars projects for the next decade or so anyway - I doubt the people making the Supes movie can beat Disney money. ;)
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Fair enough. Actually, I'm just a bit burned out on Superman films.
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If they wanted dark, they could just do the Doomsday story. But noooOOOOOooooo.... that would make it hard to do sequels, and everything has to make sequels now.
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If they wanted dark, they could just do the Doomsday story. But noooOOOOOooooo.... that would make it hard to do sequels, and everything has to make sequels now.
Actually, I'd say the Death of Superman pretty much automatically leads into a sequel or sequels. It goes right into Rise of the Supermen, and then the obligatory Return of Superman.
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Sure I'll admit it might be weird to see a new Superman movie without Williams' involvement, but I'd hardly use that as an excuse to avoid seeing such a movie. It's not like Williams is going to live forever and be able to write new music for new movies until the end of time anyway. Besides he's probably fully locked into all the upcoming Star Wars projects for the next decade or so anyway - I doubt the people making the Supes movie can beat Disney money. ;)
Well, to be fair, any Superman movie these days is suspect after the tripe that was the last one. No offence, but when Super Man is wearing the next best thing to earth tones, we're already starting off on the wrong foot. Even if Kevin Spacey playing Gene Hackman playing Lex Luthor is a lovely sight.
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One of the most common put-downs of happy endings that I see is "that's so cliche."
Except that it isn't cliche when it is mythic and archetypal. The difference between cliche and archetype, 99 times out of a hundred, is in the skill of the writer, not in the concept itself.
And given that "dark and edgy" is now a cliche itself, it's time for a deconstruction of dark and edgy - which would be "happy". 8)
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And given that "dark and edgy" is now a cliche itself, it's time for a deconstruction of dark and edgy - which would be "happy". 8)
Or, potentially, "dark and edgy" that's self aware enough to not take itself seriously.
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Or, potentially, "dark and edgy" that's self aware enough to not take itself seriously.
I presume this could easily take the form of a Twilight style setting where the characters are presented with angsty drama and just shrug and go "Oh, OK. Cool, let's do that." Lead female wants to be turned into a vampire? Cool, let's do that. Vampires are awesome and immortal and super strong. Lead female caught in a love triangle? Cool, let's do that, as long as the dudes are cool with it. Let's be swingers, why not? You know, that sort of thing. I mean, I'd watch it.
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And given that "dark and edgy" is now a cliche itself, it's time for a deconstruction of dark and edgy - which would be "happy". 8)
Sadly, that doesn't seem to happen usually. Maybe with cliche story arcs, but not with overall attitudes or styles. I remember hearing a short interview with Rhianna on the radio, around the time that infinitely annoying "Umbrella" was being aired every 5 minutes. She talked about the new album, and she brought up the title, Good Girl Gone Bad. And she talked about how badly she wanted to imply that it was breaking new ground by being rebellious, naughty, and sexy. She treated it all like she was being some kind of an original pioneer with those concepts.
Seriously? Are you f'ing kidding me? Being a bad girl in the aptly named 00's is rebellious? Um, no. That's just being ordinary. Rebellion these days would be a modest, monogamous, Care Bear.
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I presume this could easily take the form of a Twilight style setting where the characters are presented with angsty drama and just shrug and go "Oh, OK. Cool, let's do that." Lead female wants to be turned into a vampire? Cool, let's do that. Vampires are awesome and immortal and super strong. Lead female caught in a love triangle? Cool, let's do that, as long as the dudes are cool with it. Let's be swingers, why not? You know, that sort of thing. I mean, I'd watch it.
Right. Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, only with more guns and pouches or something.
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Right. Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, only with more guns and pouches or something.
Gosh, just imagine the amount of material Joss would have had for parody if Buffy had been done post-Twilight.
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Sadly, that doesn't seem to happen usually. Maybe with cliche story arcs, but not with overall attitudes or styles. I remember hearing a short interview with Rhianna on the radio, around the time that infinitely annoying "Umbrella" was being aired every 5 minutes. She talked about the new album, and she brought up the title, Good Girl Gone Bad. And she talked about how badly she wanted to imply that it was breaking new ground by being rebellious, naughty, and sexy. She treated it all like she was being some kind of an original pioneer with those concepts.
Seriously? Are you f'ing kidding me? Being a bad girl in the aptly named 00's is rebellious? Um, no. That's just being ordinary. Rebellion these days would be a modest, monogamous, Care Bear.
I find that the hallmark of someone who is entirely unoriginal and sans clue is that s/he is passionately convinced that what s/he is doing is 100% BRAND NEW AND ALL ORIGINAL AND WHY AREN'T YOU PAYING ATTENTION?
Someone who actually is creative and original is someone who knows very well that what s/he is doing is something that has been done before, but has been working hard on the project and hopes that what s/he has brought to the table this time is different enough that it is entertaining.
The difference? The first one is concentrating on his/herself. The second on his/her audience.
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IMO, you definitely have a point.
Thinking about it, even the Pokemon franchise took a darker turn.
EDIT: Here's the bad guy trying to kill the player, which has never even come close to happening before.
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=4chandata.org%2Fimages%2Fthreads%2F87155_134443967321.png)
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Recognising that "there are no new ideas" is something that comes with experience, I think. I've written a lot of stuff by this point, and there hasn't been an idea I've had that I thought was original which I didn't later find others having done pieces of before I even thought of it. And it's not always me overtly stealing with people as it was with Sam Tow (who's based on I think four of my favourite characters), because a lot of the time it's just different people coming up with the same idea. I find that "originality" isn't so much about coming up with new ideas as it is about making old ideas fresh again... And covering your tracks very well :)
The trouble with writing, as with most other "skills," is that if you set an inexperienced writer to it, it REALLY shows in the end product. We're all fans of the genres we write for so we know what we like, but we very rarely know WHY we like it. The trouble with that is it leaves a story sort of "weak" and unable to impact us because we're being told it's cool with no setup or leadup. I know I've said this before, but inexperienced writers tend to bite off more than they can chew.
I've had A LOT of issues with Doc Aeon's writing, but I think most of it stems from his inexperience as a writer. He was a good mission designer back then, but he wasn't experienced enough to be a lead writer and set the pace, and so what he wanted out of his stories sort of overshadowed his ability to pull it off. And what he wanted out of his stories was pretty edgy and required quite a bit of work to get away with, which I think he only really learned to do towards the end. Someone described his work as "all payoff, no buildup" and that's really where experience makes the difference.
All of this is a roundabout way of saying that it feels like gaming has sort of jumped a generation and many new games are manned by all young developers that may not always have the experience necessary to pull them off. You can sort of fudge gameplay and graphics and come up with something decent, but you really can't fudge story for those that care. Tomb Raider: Underworld is a game with actually quite terrible gameplay and uninspired graphics that nevertheless still works as it's still competent. But when I'm fighting the controls and getting a headache from the bad camera, all for the reward of a story that's not worth seeing? That's just a fail all around. I don't know that Underworld was actually the result of a new developer as I'm pretty sure it was just a BAD developer, but the example stands.
So, how much of that do you think is down to writer inexperience putting the theme before the execution and how much is it down to just "that's what sells?"
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I'm gonna weigh in on this one.
First, Samuel, I don't think "inexperienced" is the issue so much as untaught. I know talented novice writers who, having studied the right books, produced fine work. I strongly advocate aspiring writers ruminate upon the texts below.
TV Tropes names the mood-choice we're discussing "Darker and Edgier." It is, in my opinion, the default choice of untaught writers. It's easy.
I appreciate "dark" material. I also enjoy "lighter and softer." It all depends upon the theme the writer is developing or the effect he's communicating.
In Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing, the playwright offers theme as a tentpole or central pillar. Characterization, plot, setting and mood support this pillar, forming a stable structure. "Darker and Edgier" is a mood. The theme you're trying to communicate determines what choices you'll make for mood.
By contrast, Edgar Allan Poe in his Philosophy of Composition adds the goal "the emotion you're trying to convey."
Sadly, few video games have a theme. Let's examine the excellent Arkham Asylum games. The plot's solid, the mood is palpable and dark without being offensive or oppressive (which I appreciate.) What's the theme? There isn't one, is there? It's all just an excuse for Batman to pound the Joker. And that's a shame, Paul Dini offered memorable themes in Batman, the Animated Series.
However, Arkham succeeds by Poe's criteria. The finale of Arkham City is startlingly melancholy. (To be fair, City did offer the rudiments of a theme with "Protocol Ten," contrasted against Batman's Code Against Killing. But it's underdeveloped.)
Consider the older, now almost-legendary game Alpha Centauri. The game's theme is humanity would reach its full potential if we humbly accept our place in the larger environmental context rather than fighting to dominate and exploit nature. Of humanity's other pursuits (international peace, martial valor, wealth and prosperity,) only scientific investigation is even tacitly endorsed. Tyranny and religious bigotry are soundly condemned. Big themes! If that game was remade today, much would be made of the settler's hardships, the suffering of soldiers defending the settlements against "mind worms..." emotionally effective, absolutely. But the grander theme would be lost amid all that doom and gloom.
Following this logic, we'd expect fantasy games to gravitate towards the bloody-handed action-adventure of Conan more than to the thematically heavy Lord of the Rings. And indeed, this is so.
In my opinion, "darker and edgier" makes emotional effects easy, even cheap. Yes, a story is stronger with potent emotional effects. But when writers don't pick that gloomy mood, they have nothing to hide the theme-shaped hole in their stories, and the emperor stands revealed in his nudity.
To demonstrate the alternative extreme, let's examine the polar opposite of dark, oppressive, dystopian fiction: the Utopia, or the "sugar bowl" of children's fantasy. Star Trek has always been utopian, even in its grimmest incarnations (such as Deep Space 9.) Each episode ended with Kirk and crew on the bridge summing up what they'd learned from their latest planet. The audience responded by making it a mega-franchise. My Little Pony is almost cloyingly sweet, each ending with another letter to dear princess Celestia. It shows every sign of growing into another mega-franchise. Both rely upon ideas and themes because they can't hide behind mood.
City of Heroes did not hide behind "darker and edgier," either.
"Rebellion these days would be a modest, monogamous Care Bear."
Indeed! I'd go so far as to say there's a cultural revolt underway against grim 'n gritty.
So in my opinion, video game producers apparently commission "darker and edgier" content in the (correct) belief that such material sells, but have no understanding of theme at all. From a writing perspective, that's brass-ackwards. Until they take storytelling seriously, they will continue to produce beautiful, grim, emotionally effective but thematically pointless gaming experiences that, as Damon Knight put it in Creating Short Fiction, end not with "The End," but with "So What?"
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First, Samuel, I don't think "inexperienced" is the issue so much as untaught.
Well said, though I still feel experience and having gotten it wrong helps you see where all the strings are attached. You do make a point, though, and I think City of Heroes' Doc Aoen era content shows precisely this problem of being untaught, or rather unguided. I don't think the Doc was a bad writer, but I do think he had very little experience in how his stories affect his audience, and because of Matt Miller's policy of "let the writers write whatever they want," nobody was there to reality-check his writing. Nobody butted into his job to ask "Are you sure this is a good idea?" or ask "OK, why are you going down this way?" Nobody made him think about what he's doing and ask the hard questions, nobody told him his baby was ugly. And I'm not saying his baby IS ugly, but that being told so is valuable. It forces you to defend your baby, and it forces you to fix your baby.
I myself have been writing for many years now, and I can tell you one thing for a fact - nothing, but NOTHING, is as valuable as a person who's read your story and wants discuss it with you. Nothing as valuable as a person who gives you feedback on both the good and the bad. This sort of guidance is what experience is born from, because it teaches a writer what he can and can't do, how he can do what he can do better and how he can avoid doing what he can't do more covertly. I, for instance, can't write love scenes to save my life. Just can't, I'm shit at it. The very few times I've painted myself in a corner of having to write one, I've found outs to skim over it, because I'm trash at the things. Fair's fair.
I really do feel the studio needed an editor, by which I mean a person whose sole job was to read what the writers have written and then speak with them about it. This includes fixing basic errors like leftover HTML tags, "diffusing bombs," the department of redundancy department, etc. It would, however, also include checking the writers for continuity, theme and basic skill and making them think about what they're doing. Aeon, for instance, had the consistent tendency to write in vague terms. Remember my rant about Roy Cooling's "tech" that's referred to as a chip once and a circuit board another time? How it can't be copied except when it can? A write is his own worst editor.
So in my opinion, video game producers apparently commission "darker and edgier" content in the (correct) belief that such material sells, but have no understanding of theme at all. From a writing perspective, that's brass-ackwards. Until they take storytelling seriously, they will continue to produce beautiful, grim, emotionally effective but thematically pointless gaming experiences that, as Damon Knight put it in Creating Short Fiction, end not with "The End," but with "So What?"
Funny you should mention that. One of my favourite games of all time is THQ's Darksiders (the first one) because it's almost singularly based around theme before it's based around plot, setting or characters. Yeah, the theme is a bit derivative - WoW meets Wahammer 40K - but it's still omnipresent in every single part of the game, from the art style to the voice cast to the gameplay to the story. If you happen to like that theme - and I do - there are few games as good for it, and it ends in precisely the opposite of "so what."
To go back on my word, I don't really find "And they all lived happily ever after!" endings to be very satisfying because I'm basically being told "We're done, everyone's happy." Darksiders has the sort of "I want more!" ending that really works for me, because it's a cliffhanger ending without being a cliffhanger ending. It's the sort of awesomeness that makes me, at least, stand up and cheer and feel everything that's taken part in the game has been worth it... But man would I want to see a sequel because what's being suggested is just awesome! It's satisfying in the sense that everything in the game has been wrapped up, and it's exciting because it leaves the door open for a new story.
Shaman King had a similar ending. The evil shaman has been defeated, the world is saved and everyone's sort of going back to their normal lives. You're almost sad to see these characters fade into the background and... Well, "grow up." BUT THEN! Their manacles flare back up and they are all summoned again! New adventure awaits! New foes to battle, new friends to make and new discoveries to make! And that's how the show ends, and it's awesome. We've seen the story we were following through to its end, but we're reminded that more stories will be told, just as more stories have been told already. This isn't THE end, it's just a very good place to stop.
To turn this back around to City of Heroes, I was actually really happy with the original theme the game started out with, which is "You are a hero, you do the right thing and you should feel proud of yourself for doing it!" Yes, it's a bit simplistic and childish, but so what? It works. It makes me feel happy to be part of it and it keeps me engaged. Villains took it up the ass with Launch content because their theme was more along the lines of "You are a horrible person and you should be ashamed of yourself1" That sucked. It sapped all the fun out of the game because it was actively making me regret playing it. That was its theme. However, it hit its stride with Dean McArthur and his "You're a big bad villain and you don't take shit from nobody! Go show the world how awesome you are!" Yeah, it's childish in just the same way as the hero version, but again - it put a smile on my face and it made me fist-pump to myself, and that's a win in my book.
It wasn't until Aeon's "darkity" storytelling that I started feeling like shit again because that seemed to be his aim - make the story deep via emotional manipulation. Show a dog getting shot and we'll react because that's disturbing, but that's not a theme, it's just a story element... After story element after story element. I'll always remember a quote from Bennett the Sage's review of Grave of the Fireflies (http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/bt/the-sage/anime-abandon/35418-anime-abandon-grave-of-the-fireflies): "We're not sad that Sata and Setsuko are suffering, we're sad because we're watching kids die." That's precisely my problem with SSA1 in its entirety, and with much of modern gaming's "edge" these days. We're not sad on an emotional level from sharing in the pain of characters we care about, we're sad on an instinctive level because we're being shown depressing imagery. And you need look no further than Tomb Raider's ad campaign which tried to disturb us not by making us sympathise with Lara and wanting to see her survive against nasty odds, but by watching a young woman stabbed, crucified, nearly drowned and nearly getting raped.
Far too many game writers these days ignore having a theme of their own for the sake of beating us over the head with a specific mood they want to exude, completely forgetting that THAT specific mood is a means to an end, rather than the end itself. Whether that end be fun or emotional impact or just telling a story with a unique angle, "angst" and "drama" are tools to achieving it and nothing more. To linger on them to the detrement of the story's theme is to shoot yourself in the foot. I think Jim Sterling said it well in his Crying Through the Laughs (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6281-Crying-Through-The-Laughs) video. Yes, his main point is that you need levity in order for drama to be effective, but the deeper point is that both levity and drama work together to a greater end result than just wallowing in base emotions.
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Here's where I get a tad controversial, but to me the angsty games of today are no better than porn, say something like Sexy Beach Zero (I can't share it, please don't ask), in that... Well, porn may masquerade as a movie or a game, but that's not the point of it. Let's be "decent" and say it's about "sex." It may dress itself up in different settings, give itself different themes and even try to tell a story, but all of it is just window dressing to provide variety for the sex. It's not trying to be a story. Angsty games are very similar, in that they pretend to have a plot, a story and a theme, but simply use those as a backdrop for the mood they're trying to convey. They don't expect you to seek them out for the storytelling, they expect you to seek them out because they're going to show you emotionally draining imagery in much the same way that you go to a porn because it's going to show you titties.
I'm not saying that every sad story is "like porn," of course not. I'm merely suggesting that games which overfoucs on being darker and edgier are targeting a similar base emotion to that of porn, which is something we want to see even if it ruins the story it's presented in. And that's my key problem with the course of storytelling in gaming - this need to be darker and edgier is ruining otherwise good stories.
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Only a few comments, as I agree with most everything else.
Not to be contrary, but the more I've read and written, the more I find I am my own most demanding audience. The work must please me first before I will dare inflict the thing upon my long-suffering readers. I'm at a stage now (thank heaven!) where mostly the audience, pleased with the overall effect and structure, merely tinkers.
A creator is his own worst critic, in general, just because being the creator blindsides you to its flaws born of your own personality and style. This is true with any story, and indeed any creation. Even a perfectionist creator will still end up with something that can benefit from an objective eye which interprets things differently. The thing of it is that a story writer is the god of the story and is all-knowing. To him, certain things make sense because he knows how they fit into the broader narrative. However, an unaware reader may find them confusing, dull or even disturbing without knowing the the full scope of the story. That's why I'm saying that a writer is his own worst editor - because he's editing a work that he already knows and has done all the editing before he even finishes it.
To my eyes, a story published without a fresh set of eyes passing over it is a story published unfinished. No matter how good the writer may be, the story still needs to be proof-read by someone else just as no matter how good a game designer is, a game still needs to be playtested. No better example of this exists in modern gaming than Double-Fine's "The Cave," which to my eyes was never thoroughly playtested, if it was playtested at all. Within half an hour of gameplay, I managed to break the game three different ways doing nothing out of the ordinary, before I finally gave up althogether.
My point is that "a fresh perspective" is something a writer is incapable of having, unless you write a story, then file it away for five years and go back to it when you no longer remember it.
Well, pornography of both the erotic and the violent variety occupy a special level in Artists' Hell. But one may be creatively inept without being morally bankrupt.
I didn't actually mean to bring up pornography as an example of morally and creatively deficient form of expression. Far from it - some of my most favourite games of all times have been the various Bishujo titles of the 90s, "True Love" probably most of all. However, those mix narrative and pornography in an attempt to make a coherent, sometimes even touching story. They aren't as gratuitous as damn near anything published by Illusion, though their Sexy Beach franchise is probably the least gross.
My point was that most contemporary porn - good or bad - is focused on its own... Well, porn. You don't go to it for anything but what's on the cover, which is usually women holding their titties, surprisingly enough. It's not going anywhere with it, it doesn't have a point, it's not trying to say something. It's just porn. To me, that's what wangst has become these days. You don't buy a game for its story or its gameplay or its message, you buy it because you can be pretty sure it's going to be damn depressing. Or, at least, that's what game developers think you're doing, if their advertisments are anything to go by.
Watch an ad for a porn movie and then compare it to, say, an older ad for the new Tomb Raider game. The former will advertise pretty much one thing: This movie will have sex in it, plus good-looking women and optionally good-looking men. So what does the latter promise us? In this game, Lara will be stabbed, drowned, crucified and molested. That's WHY I'm expected to buy this game. It tells me jack shit about its gameplay, it tells me nothing about its story or characters, it tells me nothing about the game, other than it has Lara Croft in it and she gets tortured. A lot. I mean, what else would I need to know?
That's why I draw this parallel. The wangst games of today aren't using their wangst as a tool to create something greater. They're simply wallowing in their own self-pity because we're expected to enjoy that.
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"To my eyes, a story published without a fresh set of eyes passing over it is a story published unfinished."
Oh, granted! There's no doubt that a new set of eyes and fresh perspective absolutely improves a work. Preachin' to the choir there. However, as I said, I've heard common complaints with my earlier work and repair them as I go nowadays. Benefits of experience.
My objection to pornography in any form is more visceral. If a creator shows a loving emotional bond forming between interesting characters, I love every minute of the teasing and flirting. I'll even allow a moment's peek confirming that, yes, they're in bed together. If the story requires us to know that a character has a particular sexual quirk or hangup, (establish narcissism by having a big mirror in the room, establish bisexuality or homosexuality by their choice of partner, establish a cruel or masochistic streak by showing some painful toys left lying around) that's all fine.
I do not need to see the plumbing. That's not characterization or erotica, that's objectification and exploitation, and also an unforgivable lapse in taste. I hope you'll forgive me this -- exposure to pornography may well interfere with a writer's ability to create a good romantic scene. This is a bit of a tangent, so moving on....
"In this game, Lara will be stabbed, drowned, crucified and molested."
I will go pretty far with a creator in this direction, but no farther. A villain becomes truly memorable when he manages to hurt the hero. The Borg became memorable when they captured and assimilated Picard. The Green Goblin became Spider-Man's biggest menace when he killed Gwen Stacy. Discord horrified me when he repeatedly used the "Mind Rape" trope in what I'd thought was a childrens' cartoon. Iago utterly destroys Othello. Vader "executes" Han Solo. Norman stabs Marion Crane. The Joker shoots Barbara and kills Jason. Ratched fries McMurphy's brains. Beatty burns down Montag's house. Cthulhu drives Johansen mad. AM virtually tortures five people. The list goes on.
But yes, there comes a point where it becomes exploitative rot, and even the best writers aren't immune. Shakespeare did an early play called Titus Andronicus where the characters' suffering goes so far for so long as to provoke laughter rather than horror. He falls prey to bathos again in one of his last plays, Cymbeline, where his romantic lead wakes up next to a beheaded corpse wearing her husband's clothing. That's why these are obscure Shakespeare.
It comes down to bad writing. Computer games are subject to Sturgeon's Law, same as any other art form.
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I, myself, am much more open to pornography than is probably reasonable. I don't say this to sound weird, merely to explain that when I said what I said, I wasn't trying to condemn. There's a reason I can quote titles like Yuusha or Nocturnal Illusions off-hand. I think it's important to explain this so that you can see my stance more clearly. I have no real problem with objectification or exploitation as a general concept, be it in porn or in tasteless gaming. Some of the most entertaining movies of the 90s were exploitative, for instance. Say, Arnie's Commando. You don't watch that movie for the acting or for the story, you watch it because Arnold has pecks and he looks good shooting dudes. That's fine - it's mostly harmless, bloody violence aside. Much in the same way, you don't watch Girls Bravo because of the plot or setting. You watch it for the fanservice - that's all it really has. I'm reminded of the time when we all got on David Nakayama's case for the Gunslinger and Barbarian costume sets - and rightly so - but my problem was never the fact that the costumes were exploitative. That's fine. I was bitter that the options I wanted which really should have been there were missing.
What I'm trying to say is I don't mind a movie or a game that's basically about exploiting a specific theme with the impression that it's good or cool or contemporary or what have you. Hell, I don't even really have a problem with Twilight like so many seem to. It's a movie targeted at a specific audience that that specific audience enjoys. Oh, no! What I dislike are the Twilight knockoffs that crowded cinemas a couple of years back. More to point, I don't dislike that angsty games exist, but rather that there are so overwhelmingly many of them. I don't have a problem with a game being to angst what Debbie Does Dallas is to porn. After all, I played Limbo. But to see this "pollute" existing franchises and change THEM into angsty titles? Why? It's just homogenising what used to be a variety of themes.
Actually, I have a very good objective example - DMC: Devil May Cry. I'm not familiar with the prequels to this remake, but the game itself is pretty dark, brutal and vulgar - exactly the thing for someone who isn't into "care bear games." It's kind of heavy at times, it has a lot of F-bombs, it has a protagonist who doesn't give a shit about anything but his own carnal desires... And yet when all is said and done, this entire parade of ugly sex, puke, blood and bloated corpses still manages to be incredibly hopeful, uplifting and inspirational. It proves me right when I say that it's OK to be dark and brutal if you're going somewhere with it, and if you want to know what I mean, play DMC. That's almost exactly what I was talking about word for word.
And yet the whole thing is exploitive. It has abandoned its predecessors' emphasis on over-the-top glorified action and gone with a more "gritty" look of crude, vulgar and disgusting themes, almost revelling in how "wrong" everything is. It's exploitive, an the exploitation is very effective, but it's still an enjoyable experience because it exploits those themes for a reason, and cashes it all in towards the end.
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My point? There's nothing to be ashamed of in storytelling but doing a bad job as a writer. If you can make otherwise reprehensible themes work, then more power to you, but you have to be VERY good to pull it off. And if you use reprehensible themes for the sake of wallowing in the grit, all you'll end up is looking dirty. Have a point, sir! Or at least be honest about what you're writing.
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Right now I'm playing The Secret World, which also came out last year. While I love it, it is really really dark, and so I don't think it will be to long until I start playing Champions for something more upbeat. I noticed at christmas time that ALOT of the sci movies coming out this year are really dark.... usually dealing with zombies, alien invasions, or the end of civilization. Even Star Trek which is always optimistic about humanity's future looks dark.
Personally I blame two factors:
1) The Mayan Calander: It was on everyone's mind and was suppose to be the end of the world after all.
2) The Great Recession: Many people are still facing financial hardship and the futures market isn't too good.
However, it's more than that. Media and fiction is a reflection of the times that create it. There is this feeling in the air to me, it's almost palapable. As if America and thus Wester Civilizations greatest days are now behind us. That use to be nutter talk, but now its as though everyone is thinking it, but no one wants to really say it. That in of itself is bound to create some "dark" times ahead.
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Personally I blame two factors:
1) The Mayan Calander: It was on everyone's mind and was suppose to be the end of the world after all.
2) The Great Recession: Many people are still facing financial hardship and the futures market isn't too good.
However, it's more than that. Media and fiction is a reflection of the times that create it. There is this feeling in the air to me, it's almost palapable. As if America and thus Wester Civilizations greatest days are now behind us. That use to be nutter talk, but now its as though everyone is thinking it, but no one wants to really say it. That in of itself is bound to create some "dark" times ahead.
I've been getting that feeling for a long time. It'd be very hard to pin it on any one thing. But certain things that we used to think were just temporary BS in humanity's development are starting to look like things we''ll never be rid of. General war is just one example of that. Greed keeps finding new ways to dig its way into everything and shape our future into something bad. And even if that weren't the case, it almost feels like we're being set up for a global meltdown. Pollution is reaching the breaking point, oil reserves are low, populations continue to increase at an exponential rate even as the amount of arable land is in a decline (as are the jobs, as automation/globalization eliminates more and more of them).
And then, it's impact on sci-fi? The general populous has given up on the future, more or less. Human progress, which was once running forward at an unbelievable speed, seems to be hitting a plateau. If you asked anyone in the 60's what we'd be doing right now, they'd say we would be cruising around in fusion-powered personal aero/space jets. They'd say hunger is no longer an issue, and neither is disease. They'd imagine awesome communication systems that would bring people closer together.
What do we have? The same internal combustion cars that we've been using since the beginning. Sure, there's some hybrids, but since they're reliant on electricity that comes from power plants, they're still reliant on a limited resource. Flight has become more expensive instead of less. People are not only hungry now, but even the thought of improving one's life is gone because there's no jobs. Medicine? An industry that would kill itself if it actually discovered cures. The awesome communication system? Facebook, giving people all sorts of wonderful new ways to bicker over the most meaningless crap and hate one another - a tool that has further polarized society to the point where having a differing opinion is equivalent to insulting someone's honor. There's a struggle to get rid of the gods too, which (while I fully admit has had the negative impact of war) are also a source of hope. A hope that is now being called infantile.
Our exploration of space has revealed a much less life-sustaining universe than what we once expected. Any "Earth 2" that might be out there is so distant that we will probably never get to see it. A sad reality is setting in that the light speed barrier may be unbreakable.
To summarize, the general consensus is: It all sucks, it's getting worse, and to top it all off, we're stuck here.
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Predictability is an ugly thing. So much that someone decided to change things up and it worked like a charm. They cashed in the "Happy" endings for pain and misery. Maybe it was so gamers could identify with the emotions of the characters, maybe it was just to change things up. Problem is in my opinion, they take a good thing and ruin it. I do think games are a little too dark, and too edgey. How much blood is too much? Do we really need another Anti Hero? Maybe. I think there is a place for happy endings and traditional heroes. At the same time, dark and edgey is what sells. The Dark Knight series worked wonders for the Batman comics. Spawn was new, and raw and it sold well. Look at Graphic novels such as Sin City, History of Violence, and The Watchmen. As far as games go, Mortal Kombat took the edge and re-defined it. When edgey is done right, I think it works well. When it's done as a last ditch effort to save a crappy game, re-vitalize a series, or just because, it makes us hungry for the old days of Mario saving Princess Peach.
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Hee hee! Y'all hafta excuse me. I'm not laughing at you. Just I've seen some years now, and have perspective.
I've been through economic "hard times" before, and this is really no worse. I remember the gloom of the millenium, when everyone was wearing black leather trenchcoats like in The Matrix and predicting armaggedon via the Y2K bug. We just survived the Mayan apocalypse. Year before, some church guy started taking out billboard predicting the end in May of 2011. (He later claimed there was an error in his calculations. I wonder if anyone made him show his work.) So all my life, hysterics have been predicting the End of the World, or the Fall of Western Civilization or the Birth of the Antichrist or the Kali Yuga.
Hasn't happened yet.
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However, it's more than that. Media and fiction is a reflection of the times that create it. There is this feeling in the air to me, it's almost palapable. As if America and thus Wester Civilizations greatest days are now behind us. That use to be nutter talk, but now its as though everyone is thinking it, but no one wants to really say it. That in of itself is bound to create some "dark" times ahead.
Please excuse me for saying something that might seem inflammatory at first, but "America" is not synonymous with "Western Civilization." It may be, for the American continents, but Much of Western Europe is just as "western" and just as much as much a world power as the US, it's simply split up into more independent nations. Again - I don't want to be a US-hater, but I do have an issue with equating the US with the world, and you see this done a lot, usually unintentionally. Hell, I love the Nostalgia Critic and I wanted to slap him with his own hat when he talked about the US president as "the leader of the free world."
I realise that times now may seem bleak, but when have they not? I live in a country that used to be part of the former Soviet Block. We were a USSR member state until 1989, and we've been in a steady, unending decline both politically and economically since then. I live in a country that's defined by corruption, class inequality, crime and no opportunities. I've lived in this never-ending reformation nearly all my life - born 1984. I'm a child of "democracy" and I've seen every last way in which it can be abused. I've seen ethnic hatred and violence, I've seen economic collapse, I've seen alarmist attitudes portend the end of our nation. I'm not old by any stretch - don't even have 30 yet - but I've seen my fair share of end-of-the-world predictions, and they consistently fail to come true.
Remember back in the 80s when it seemed like Japan was about to take over the world? Remember back in the 90s when it seemed like gang violence was about to tear the US apart? Remember the 2000s when it seemed like terrorists were going to kill us all? I remember a study which found that every generation felt that their world was much worse than that of the generation which came before, and usually felt that things were finally getting unmanageable, but the world has persisted for quite a while now, and I've no reason to believe it won't persist for a while yet. We find ingenuity in adversity.
I guess my broader point here is that, as a child of "communism meets democracy," and as someone who sees corruption and social unrest in my everyday life, I see no practical reason to look at more of that in my games. If I wanted dark, depressing thoughts, I'd walk out my front door or turn on the news. I can get that elsewhere, I don't need games to do it for me. What I CAN'T do is save the world or fight aliens or save a princess. THAT I would like to do more of in my games :)
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...I guess my broader point here is that, as a child of "communism meets democracy," and as someone who sees corruption and social unrest in my everyday life, I see no practical reason to look at more of that in my games. If I wanted dark, depressing thoughts, I'd walk out my front door or turn on the news. I can get that elsewhere, I don't need games to do it for me. What I CAN'T do is save the world or fight aliens or save a princess. THAT I would like to do more of in my games :)
Yeah. I'm with you on that one.
Games=enjoyment. Well at least still to me. I think the current definition and purpose have changed a bit it seems.
On the other hand, I dont like mind violence or dark undertones as long as they have an actual purpose. Many games just throw the dark undertones and some gruff anti-hero in there just for the hell of it and or just because it's the "cool" thing to do now.
"You know, I feel like being depressed today." *flips to the news station.* "Ah same ol crap that been going on for the past 100 years. I'm depressed."
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Yup, with you both on that one, though I'm less depressed.
This may sound odd in the face of all the suffering y'all perceive, Sam, Jag. But I own a newspaper my parents kept from when I was born in the US. It's horrifying reading! Red Scare. Race riot. Nukes. Bra burning. Draft cards. Scary, scary stuff! I look at CNN.com today. Global warming is scary. The Taliban are scary, and kinda pathetic. Lunatics shooting in schools. Don't wanna make light of any of that. But not the-world-could-end-and-maybe-we-deserve-it scary.
So I look back at the post-Stalin Soviet hegemony over countries like Sam's, and I feel like we've seen improvement. I'm sure the former Bloc countries are no Utopias, but at least now they can chart their own destinies. I look back two centuries and see slavery, the various hateful "isms," and exploitation from our worst nightmares. Go back two thousand years and you see ruthless warlords fighting each other and oppressing everyone, unopposed.
We do seem to be making slow moral progress. And that makes me feel better.
Even the modern archetype of the hero that City of Heroes celebrates, it didn't exist in any recognizable form if you go back. Look to Achilles, Gilgamesh, Siegfried or even recent takes on the type like Howard's Conan, and the so-called hero looks pretty self-absorbed and brutal.
The modern hero unites these archetypes with enlightened spirtuality and morality, (of whatever faith, whether the disguised Jewish Samson of Siegel and Schuster's Superman, Buddhist boddhisattvas, Tolkien's Catholic kings and hobbits or whatnot.) The merger can be difficult and uneasy sometimes, but I still see progress. We hold our heroes to far higher standards these days. I think that is also cause to be optimistic.
So I don't even see Grim 'n Gritty as realistic, more... atavistic.
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Yeah I think the definition of hero also changes with the times. As mentioned what was considered heroic during say Achilles time was to be able to be brave in the face of death during war, the ability to slay opponents without mercy, and strike fear into the hearts of ya enemies and doing this with a near god like ability. Hmmm kind of sound like the modern anti-hero. Come to think of it it seems that it just went full circle. Atavistic is a good term to apply to it.
To me many golden age and modern heros didnt just up and decide ot become heros because they had the ability but because something happened close to home, for some literally, and then they decided they wanted to do something good. If Batman's parents were never killed I doubt he would have been driven to become batman. He probably would have been just another son of a billionaire with a good heart but probably wouldnt have taken the hands on approach. It's like they are heroes due to a slight vindictive nature instead of doing just for the sake of it. And i see it in modern society all the time. Millionaire's wife die from cancer they start up a cancer foundation after her death in her honor but in reality, why didnt they start one up years ago or before he knew his wife had cancer? Or better question is would they have even bothered to start a cancer foundation if his wife never suffered and died from it?
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"...kind of sound like the modern anti-hero. Come to think of it it seems that it just went full circle. Atavistic is a good term to apply to it."
Exactly! It's just one more reason not to take GrimDark so seriously, I like The Dark Knight as much as anyone, but as a steady diet? Nooo thank you!
"It's like they are heroes due to a slight vindictive nature instead of doing just for the sake of it."
In many cases, like Batman, Spider-Man, Edmond Dantes, Dirty Harry... But Campbell's "call to adventure" comes in many forms. Luke Skywalker's burning homestead is a potent image, but it's by no means universal. Superman doesn't remember the destruction of Krypton. What tragedy propelled Wonder Woman? Does Buck Rogers have a dark past? Don Quixote? Frodo? Captain Kirk? Twilight Sparkle? When you grow up in Smallville, Paradise Island, the Shire, the Federation or Canterlot, gnashing your teeth and whining about how grim life is just makes you a drama queen.
Sometimes, the hero even emerges from the "dark past" as starry-eyed-idealistic as ever, like Jean Valjean or Harry Potter.
And in real life too, for every "millionaire's wife" crusading against cancer, there're people who became activists, doctors, firefighters, paramedics and teachers for no more reason than they felt the call to do so.
Hopefully, the Utopias and Sugar Bowls of fiction don't seem so far-fetched after all, when seen in this light, eh?
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Ah yes, but Superman probably wouldnt have ever been sent into space if wasnt for destruction of his home planet, although right about not being vindictive. But Wonder Woman, if goodl ol Steve never came to her island off a plane crash I doubt the Queen would have sent here to fight the evil of "man's world". Buck Rogers before his radiation incident he was just a mere worker for a company. If he never been exposed would he just up and one day to save the world? Maybe but probably not he would have been just another worker.
But I did overlook Don Quiox who seemed to become a hero just for the hell of it and because he believed it was right. Not sure who the hell is Frodo, never heard of him or twilight sparkle, and really didnt consider Captain Kirk a hero per se, just a protagonist of Star Trek but then again I never did watch too much star trek and only read a little of the early materials.
And yeah in real-life I'm sure there are people that do those things just because it right and they are usually outright ignored by the public as just everyday people that just so happen to have a helpful job and ignored by the media mostly while the one with a "sad" back story gets the attention and raised up as a hero.
Harry Potter, doesnt seem out much to save the world as much as to ensure his own survival and attempot to ensure safety of his friends while on the quest to vanquish a villian that just so happen to murder a family member or members and find out about his own past.
yeah RL is a hodgepoge mixture of it all. That is what make it real life I suppose. Fiction being a reflection and imitation of life with add fantasy kinds of simplify how real life works and thus you have heros that can do no wrong and villians that do nothing but evil when in reality just about everyone is a mixture of good and evil based on their experiences views and what they believe is right and wrong.
Very good point you made there, Colette
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I've been through economic "hard times" before, and this is really no worse. I remember the gloom of the millenium, when everyone was wearing black leather trenchcoats like in The Matrix and predicting armaggedon via the Y2K bug. We just survived the Mayan apocalypse. Year before, some church guy started taking out billboard predicting the end in May of 2011. (He later claimed there was an error in his calculations. I wonder if anyone made him show his work.) So all my life, hysterics have been predicting the End of the World, or the Fall of Western Civilization or the Birth of the Antichrist or the Kali Yuga.
I think you're comparing speculation to 'fortune telling' now. These end-time predictions, based on ancient civilizations that had no way to know anything that was going on today, is fortune telling. To compare what people are actually experiencing today, to Harold Camping, is rather disgusting. And by the way, not only did that guy's prophecy not come true, but he even shifted his date to Oct 21. Things in the Bible that he talked about to justify his claims, weren't even in the Bible.
You're actually going to lump him in the same category as something like shifting weather patterns, where we can take the data we have now, compare it to the data of previous decades, and see the obvious trends?
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Heya Tim,
I'm so there with you reviling jerks like Camping. Folks like him give the Christian faith a bad name. But yeah, he's trivia, not in the same category by any means. As I said, I certainly don't want to seem to be making light of the very real problems we face today, and you'll note I put ecological damage at the front of my little list.
But despite these problems, the world does seem to me brighter than the days I remember when everyone seemed to be fighting everyone else, and nuclear annihilation hung over our deserving heads like Damocles' sword. I'm happy that kids today just can't relate to it.
Moving on...
Yes Jag, even the brightest heroes have their stories set in motion by evil. I remember Alan Moore once writing a memorable story in which he muses that good actually needs evil to define it, and to keep it strong. Wow, can I remember...? "the strongest, brightest flowers grow from the darkest loam." Something to contemplate.
Heh! I'd forgotten about Rogers' radioactive gas.
"...really didnt consider Captain Kirk a hero per se, just a protagonist...."
Hmm... they're dated, but several of Kirk's outings are properly heroic. Here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsQ3mm0Tm08
"Not sure who the hell is Frodo, never heard of him..."
Whaa...?! You're kidding! No, you're having me on.
...Seriously? The Lord of the Rings! John Tolkien, huge book, big movie franchise! The Hobbit in theatres now. Where have you been hiding? No one who speaks English is allowed to not know who Frodo is! Forth, Eorlingas!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy5DwFI_WsQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_788493&feature=iv&src_vid=l8yOdAqBFcQ&v=8Tgi-j56ueU
"...or Twilight Sparkle..."
:: Wipes spittle away, recovers composure. :: Ahem! Alright, you are allowed not to know My Little Pony. I'm slightly embarrassed, m'self. But... here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-LACN46a7E
"...just about everyone is a mixture of good and evil based on their experiences views and what they believe is right and wrong."
More good than evil, I'd say. Good wins because evil is stupid.
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So I look back at the post-Stalin Soviet hegemony over countries like Sam's, and I feel like we've seen improvement. I'm sure the former Bloc countries are no Utopias, but at least now they can chart their own destinies. I look back two centuries and see slavery, the various hateful "isms," and exploitation from our worst nightmares. Go back two thousand years and you see ruthless warlords fighting each other and oppressing everyone, unopposed.
You'd be surprised. Boris Eltsin's legacy of using organised crime money to fund his campaigns and thus letting them get their foot into government is growing ever stronger, to the point where people have all but lost faith in government as a concept, and with good reason. That's not to say that's better than the old stories of gulags and the "midnight knock," of course, it doesn't seem to be THAT much better, socially speaking. Plus, Europe is kind of facing a crisis of its own Greece is just about broke and subsisting on Eurpoean funding that the EU doesn't really have much to spare of, and last I heard Spain is going the same way, though that was a while ago and things might have stabilised. All the while I live in a country with some of the highest prices across in Europe for everything across the board and simultaneously some of the lowest salaries. I hear Americans lament earning $20 000 and realise I couldn't make half that in a good year, and I have a fairly stable, decent job.
But again - that stuff doesn't make me depressed. It is what it is, and we make the best of it. Sure, the economy isn't great. Sure, one of our ministers was recently almost shot on national television and just yesterday, a guy was sniped coming out of a courthouse like out of a frikkin' Tarantino movie. Sure, we're facing ethnic pressure and violence and I'm sick to my stomach of asshole "nationalists" using that as a poor man's excuse for racism. But like I said - it is what it is. We do what we can to support our country and survive and we look to the future. Not much else to do, after all.
But that's my entire point - I don't NEED grim and gritty and depressing. I have that in spades, if I cared to look for it. I don't need fiction to provide it for me. What I need is something to take my mind AWAY from these things, something to show me the better part of life. I remember playing City of Heroes in the days before Doc Aeon took over. I remember finishing a story arc - I think it was Missing Melving and the Mysterious Malta Aliteration. I recall hearing Indigo sort of break character and talk about how it was nice to have someone who isn't a double-agent or trained to murder you when he hears a buzzer or some kind of ruthless murderer. Melvin was a fool, that much is clear. He fawned over her, he drew pictures of her, and even though she knew it was a bad idea, she kind of got to like him back. Here is a woman whose entire life has been basically nothing but hardship finding someone she just enjoys being with and... Well, I found that to be very touching and I found it made for a good story. Yeah, I don't like Crimson being a dick and basically ensuring Melvin's civilian life is ruined forever, but hey - the guy took it in stride. He even shows up later as a "crack agent" and does a good job. I guess if he took to that kind of life, who's to blame? The perfect True Lies ending, I suppose.
Really, these are the stories I want to replay over and over again because these are the stories I enjoy experiencing. Maybe they're not realistic, maybe they're too romantic, or maybe it's just me burying my head in the sand. I'm fine with either. My point here is that if I feel good, I have a much easier time making something of myself. If I'm depressed - as I left after very much every SSA1 arc - then all I want to do is sleep and never wake up, and that's not conducive to a productive work day. Especially when I have to get up early in the morning.
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Wow Sam, where are you? Sorry you're having such troubles. All I can do is repeat what the fictional Sam said -- the dark times pass.
"...it looks like one of those fantasy elf quest movies... it takes more than special effects to catch my attention."
Hooo! The Pinis would be flattered if someone would compare ElfQuest to The Lord of the Rings.
"...a creature with fuzzy hands and feet that is not technically an elf."
Elves are Nordic, leprechauns are Celtic. Different mythology.
Jag, Tolkien was an Oxford don. The films feature terrific effects, sure. They also offer serious performers acting their hearts out in the story that invented the Fantasy genre. This isn't like Harry Potter. Dr. Who, Superman, or Star Trek. This is a whole 'nother animal.
An educated person is allowed not to like The Great Stories after giving 'em a fair hearing. But they're not allowed to not have some passing familiarity with 'em. A life without Moby Dick, Quasimodo, Don Quixote, Jack Falstaff, Frankenstein, Clarisse McClellan, Achilles, Sherlock, Alyosha, Levin... why, it's scarcely worth the living! Frodo and Sam stand alongside them. And even in their company, they bow to no one.
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Wow Sam, where are you? Sorry you're having such troubles. All I can do is repeat what the fictional Sam said -- the dark times pass.
"...it looks like one of those fantasy elf quest movies... it takes more than special effects to catch my attention."
Hooo! The Pinis would be flattered if someone would compare ElfQuest to The Lord of the Rings.
Jag, Tolkien was an Oxford don. The films feature terrific effects, sure. They also offer serious performers acting their hearts out in the story that invented the Fantasy genre. This isn't like Harry Potter. Dr. Who, Superman, or Star Trek. This is a whole 'nother animal.
An educated person is allowed not to like The Great Stories after giving 'em a fair hearing. But they're not allowed to not have some passing familiarity with 'em. A life without Moby Dick, Quasimodo, Don Quixote, Jack Falstaff, Frankenstein, Clarisse McClellan, Achilles, why, it's scarcely worth the living! Frodo and Sam stand alongside them. And even in their company, they bow to no one.
Yeah I know who those guys/gals are. F. 151, excellent literature same with Henry IV and King Richard the Second. Not sure who Sam is though. But alas, must be many lost souls out there as I know more than a handful of people that never heard of any of those people let alone read any of their works. They know who Lady Gaga is though.
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Ten years from now, no one will remember Paris Hilton, Justin Bieber or Bella Swan. Proof -- no one here remembers Vanilla Ice, Gabe Kaplin or Marie Osmond, any more than they remember the Pointer Sisters, Milton Berle or Smokey Stover. I'm sad but not shocked when people don't remember John Lennon or Jim Henson. Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn?
On the other hand, Jean Valjean is a hundred and fifty years old, and just starred in a major film nominated for best picture.
There is a difference, my friends.
And this is starting to be a threadjack. Sorry, all. I get carried away.
:: Wanders off grumbling. :: "Doesn't know who Frodo is. Movie's only ten years ago. Kids these days, only care about what the mass media just shoved in front of their noses. Mutter mumble grumble gripe...! Lucas and JJ Abrams raped my childhood grumble...."
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uhmm I remember Ice, Kaplin, Osmond, The Pointer sisters, Milton Berle (RIP 2002), and Smokey Stover (been trying to get my hands on some of those comics for years now) and the actual Smokey Stover (albeit from conversations with an old football buff).
But by nature I'm more of the classic writers, Stephen King, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stuff as far as fiction books go. Usually I stick to non-fiction, psychology, sociology, and biology books. The rest, I have my own imagination and own work that I create and read for myself. One day may get something published but I mostly just write for myself to read on average about 3-5 years later.
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"...Smokey Stover (been trying to get my hands on some of those comics for years now)."
Foo.
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Ten years from now, no one will remember Paris Hilton, Justin Bieber or Bella Swan. Proof -- no one here remembers Vanilla Ice, Gabe Kaplin or Marie Osmond, any more than they remember the Pointer Sisters, Milton Berle or Smokey Stover. I'm sad but not shocked when people don't remember John Lennon or Jim Henson. Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn?
On the other hand, Jean Valjean is a hundred and fifty years old, and just starred in a major film nominated for best picture.
There is a difference, my friends.
And this is starting to be a threadjack. Sorry, all. I get carried away.
:: Wanders off grumbling. :: "Doesn't know who Frodo is. Movie's only ten years ago. Kids these days, only read what the mass media shoves in front of their noses. Mutter mumble grumble gripe...!"
You're must just the wrong generation to remember Mr. Kotter (and his hot wife). Or the Donny and Marie show. I'll give you Vanilla Ice. :P
Pointer Sisters? Really? I'm So Excited, Jump (For My Love), Fire? Neutron Dance?!
Kids nowadays, no respect for the classics. ;)
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*wanders in, stands there coughing pathetically, trying to muster some breath to say something*
Been watching the hubby play Borderlands 2, which could give all the darkity dark games out there a lot of stern lessons in how you really SHOULD write antiheroes.
Seriously. If you gave me the terse description of what this game is about (a severely dystopic world full of pain and betrayal in which me-first Vault Hunters scrabble, kill, and destroy to beat The Mother Of All Corporate Jerks to the acquisition of a super-mech-warrior that will grind the last rebels under his heel) I would have said, "No thanks."
This game is fun to watch. The storylines are fantastic. The dialogue is hilarious. They took darkity dark dark and turned it on its ear. And they are making gazillions of money and more power to them.
Let's hope Borderlands 2 helps reverse the trend.
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*wanders in, stands there coughing pathetically, trying to muster some breath to say something*
Whoa there! Careful Misty. You're just gettin' over the flu, remember? Don't overdo.
"They took darkity dark dark and turned it on its ear."
Ahhh... the Deconstructor Fleet trope, one of my favorites. A good sign that we're not the only ones sick of GrimDark.
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Wow Sam, where are you? Sorry you're having such troubles. All I can do is repeat what the fictional Sam said -- the dark times pass.
Well, we kind of already live in a dystopian future here as it is, but is like Weird Al said - "Well doncha' know that kids are starving in Japan so Eat it!" It could be worse, it has been worse and we do what we can. I really didn't mean to wallow in self-pity so much as to say that I don't see how dark times call for dark stories. I'd have honestly thought it would be the reverse. I honestly thought people made stories to FIX what they thought was wrong with the world. I could get the "dork" age of comic books in the 90s. Yes, there were gangs back then, but the world seemed to be going from strength to strength and we were starting to get fed up with first world problems. We felt like "there were no more lands to conquer" and we didn't like that. We wanted to be edgy and cool and find our own brand new fights to fight. It's the generation of entertainment that lacked a its own "war," so we picked a fight with whatever was the most prominent at the time, which was authority.
Well, America did, at least. I really can't say "we" here because my own country really didn't HAVE much in the way of entertainment at the time, other than bland pop-folk music. No real movies, definitely no real video games, other than Tsar: The Burden of the Crown. So when I say "we," I'm just attaching myself to the then overwhelming effect of American culture, cinema and entertainment on us, and my impressions of what drove these tendencies. The thing is... I'm not American, though, and that may skew my impressions. My English is pretty good, if I do say so myself, and I've been part of predominantly American communities for over a decade now, so I give the impression of being one just because I know my way around, but I really do come from a vastly different culture. If it seems like some of what I say makes no sense, it's probably because my understanding of the fiction, culture and entertainment values is still limited. I can "get" only so much :)
I don't know... It just seems to me like games of recent times have all been mean-spirited. The games of the 90s and early 2000s were still gritty, but they had a... "Positivism" to them. They were trying to be dark and violent and all that, but they were still "feel-good" games at heart, just dressed in poseur clothing. You could pick up a game like Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and laugh at its over-the-top violence and silly emoness, but it's still a kind, heart-felt story masquerading as tough. Games in the recent few years, though, have been different. They may look the same, but their heart is in another place. They feel malicious and spiteful, even when they are ostensibly a lot less gritty than your average Mortal Kombat or Silent Hill.
Used to be that I could take solace in the believe that, no matter how grim things may have looked, they would always be OK in the end... Because that's what I came for. Because no matter how gritty a game may have been, it still had a kind heart. But the games of today are just mean. They give me quite the opposite impression - that no matter how good things may be, they would always go to shit in the end. And that... Just isn't a good sentiment.
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Bulgaria, huh? Neat. And your English is excellent. You write it better than some native speakers.
(Though when the verb "believe" becomes a noun, it mutates to "belief.")
"...it's still a kind, heart-felt story masquerading as tough. Games in the recent few years, though, have been different."
Aha! This is useful.
I have long believed that a creator's true nature permeates a work, and that no work of any size can escape the creator's nature. If, for example, the creator suffers from avarice, then the characters will be materialistic, stand in awe of those who enjoy a great income, and other values will suffer accordingly.
One could never mistake a Bradbury tale, even at its darkest, with an Ellison. Bradbury, rest his soul, was a playful Peter Pan with a charming guilelessness. Ellison by contrast has seen the dark side of life close up, and even at his brightest expresses his world-weary snark. Neither could one ever confuse Capra's, Hitchcock's or Kubrick's films. Each bears an unmistakable imprint. Every artist has their own "voice."
Let's go back to the Egri model. Theme is supported by mood, plot, character, and setting. Up to now I've been talking about "darketydark" as a mood. What you're describing is a darkness of theme, a kind of despair and hopelessness, and meanness of spirit. That isn't an artist's choice in mood, but a fundamental moral trait (or perhaps weakness) of the creator(s) in question.
Well, I have found the same phenomenon in other media. There was a "dark age" in comic books and graphic novels, where creators struggled to capture the dark magic of Miller's The Dark Knight Returns or Moore's The Watchmen. Unfortunately, they were lesser talents like Mark Millar, Joe Quesada and Rob Liefeld who confused mood with theme (among other failings) and created mean-spirited, tacky comics with all sense of fun and whimsy replaced with wangst and stupidity.
But even in this dark age, more optimistic voices rebelled, giving us Ordway's Shazam!, the Moy's Legion and finally Waid's Kingdom Come, which directly pitted the idealistic silver-agers against their shallow dark-age progeny, and put an end to that era.
All I can advise is to remember that Sturgeon's Law applies to computer games as well, and be more discriminating in what you spend your time and money on.
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Well... To some extent that's the creator showing through his work. For all the bile I've thrown at Doc Aeon, I can never bring myself to criticise his passion for telling those stories. That was his view of the world, that was his way to tell stories and I can respect that. I don't like it... In fact, I HATE nearly everything he wrote, but it's not for lack of trying, and he did get better once we yelled at him enough :)
I guess my vitriol is more reserved for the poseurs who go for "darkity dark" because it's "in," especially when it comes to Marketing. "Who will die?" Really? You're telling me that you, as Marketing people, thought that I want to see people die and that if you advertised your arc by trumpeting this death, I'll be MORE interested? No. Quite on the contrary. I DON'T want to see a story that's expressly designed to kill a character, and I take offence at the assumption that I do.
What's funny, by the way, is how fast Tomb Raider Marketing people learned their lesson. A long time ago when their developers were still allowed to give interviews, the game's primary advertising was "Come see Lara get tortured!" Game designers lined up to list all the ways in which she would be tortured, all the ways people should feel bad and want to protect her, we saw that AWFUL "almost rape" trailer and so on. People found it revolting and made a big stink. So out it comes on Steam for prepurchase, and it has a video. NOT the old one, however. Nope. This new video makes it feel like an adventure game. It has Lara climbing, swimming, shooting a bow, kicking ass and, yes, waking up crucified and crawling through a muddy cave. But the context has now changed. The "tone" of the advertisement has now changed. It's no longer "Come watch Lara get tortured!" and more "We have a gritty adventure game! Come have fun!" I'm still not buying it. I saw the original trailers, I heard it from the mouths of people making it. I have no interest in this game, and changing trailers on me NOW is a bit too late. My $60 goes to Devil May Cry: Devil May Cry.
When it's just an author being dark, I can still respect the author while disliking his work. When it's a whole INDUSTRY being dark, that's just tacky.
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IMO, the US is facing the End of Empire, and I don't think we're going to do so with as much grace and dignity as England (likes to claim it) did. The ego of a person or nation in decline may drive them to do irresponsible things, to try to stave off the creeping despair.
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I honestly don't know enough about the US to tell either way, but this is actually an interesting point to make, as a tangent. I've always felt very "iffy" about the concept of nationalism as a personal ideology. Maybe it's just because I don't feel I have a country that has much to be proud of but ancient history, or maybe it's just that I've lived essentially my entire life in a global society... Seriously, I was watching the Cartoon Network when I was 7. I watched and still watch the Discovery Channel. I've spoken English well enough to play American video games since grade school, and those were the only games there were for many, many years. Certainly the majority of the 90s. Well, not necessarily JUST American, but foreign, let's say.
I guess that's part of why I don't get some of the world's problems of today. If you come at it from a "globalist" mindset - i.e. it doesn't matter where the other person is from, what colour his skin is or where he goes to school because I wouldn't know these things over the 'net anyway - it the kind of fear and animosity which can drive "a nation" is just something I don't get. I can see in practical terms, say money and opportunity and such, but the actual nationalistic pride of living in a country that's "the best" just doesn't resonate with me. Even if I were from a major world state... I'd be proud of it, sure, but I wouldn't derive personal pride from it. I didn't make that state, and that state's achievement can't stand in for my own. Hell, I can brag about being from a state with tremendous ancient history extending all the way back 681 AD, but so what? How does where I was born make me better or worse?
I know it seems like a tangent, but what you say does seem to resonate with what I've noticed. US video games seem to be the ones getting darker with consistency. Japanese games are actually doing quite the opposite. I mean, look at Resident Evil, for example - that has been less dark and gruesome as time goes on, and by this point it's basically ego-stroking. Our protagonists went from having to look for keys to a screen door to flip-kicking zombies bulldozing platoons of armed zombies, one-man-army style. Even Silent Hill: Homecoming gave the player much more control over the game's mechanics, and it was the least scary of the bunch. So, yeah, I hear what you're saying loud and clear.
I'm hoping games can rediscover that happy medium between wrist-slitting depression and self-parodying satire that made games like Darksiders so much fun. Because really, there WAS a time when playing games was fun. That was the whole reason I played City of Heroes to begin with - because I could not believe how much I was enjoying it. Pinch me, for I must be dreaming, that sort of thing. There was a time when I'd play through a game, at 4AM on a work day, and then have to drag myself to bed so I don't start it again. Games would leave me with so much energy and enthusiasm that I couldn't sleep. Now I finish with a game and I feel drained, like I want to go to sleep and just not go to work, at the very least. And I don't know when, or even why, that happened.
It just... Doesn't feel right that a game should leave me feeling like I've been beaten up.
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I can't find the info anymore, but I remember reading somewhere, that nearly every nation in history that has had a system resembling America's, collapsed in on itself within 200 years. America is older than that now, but that may just be due to the credit system and insane borrowing.
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"...we saw that AWFUL "almost rape" trailer and so on...."
Y'know, rape is a particularly tricky trope, and in my opinion, using it in any but the most serious work is the mark of a poor writer. Y'see, some members of the audience may have been through it, so they will not be entertained.
I stay away from rape. I stay away from Nazis as well. Unless I have something serious to say and a justifiable reason to use 'em, I'd rather not invoke such a tragedy. It feels like grave-robbing. Hope that makes sense.
"IMO, the US is facing the End of Empire."
I'm going to respectfully disagree, in that I've heard that since the gas crunch of the seventies. The US is going through a demographic wave as the baby boom reaches retirement age. As we in the US, by and large, do not throw our elders to the wolves, we're facing some expenses. I myself am helping my old mom with some ten-thousand bucks in medical debt right now. That's family.
China, by contrast, has a young and vital populace. In twenty years, that position will reverse.
My opinion. Mind, macro-economics is not my field.
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Y'know, rape is a particularly tricky trope, and in my opinion, using it in any but the most serious work is the mark of a poor writer. Y'see, some members of the audience may have been through it, so they will not be entertained.
I stay away from rape. I stay away from Nazis as well. Unless I have something serious to say and a justifiable reason to use 'em, I'd rather not invoke such a tragedy. It feels like grave-robbing. Hope that makes sense.
To my eyes, every storytelling tool has a "cost" associated with it, which basically defines how good the story needs to be in order to justify it and how necessary it must be in order for that story to work for people to not feel exploited. Concepts like rape, torture, grotesque violence and such tend to have a very high cost, hence why it's best to simply never use them unless you have no other choice. If your story absolutely, positively cannot work without a rape plot AND you're a good enough writer to pull it off so it doesn't feel icky, then and only then would I support going for it.
The trouble is that most writers with enough skill to pull it off also have the good sense to not do it, and most writers who do use rape use it callously and irresponsibly. I think it was Lewis "Linkara" Lovhaug who said that the worst thing you can do to a story involving rape is to treat it as "something which happens to women" and nothing beyond that, to use it as a simple shock factor because everyone knows it's bad. The worst thing you can do is when you sideline the woman it happened to and simply examine the man who perpetrated it and the man whose significant other was hurt. To do this is exploitive, because you're exploiting something reprehensible for the sole purpose of making your audience feel bad, and to make them mad. And they will be mad - AT YOU.
The best "dark" stories are ones that manage to horrify us while still being in good taste. They're the ones who recognise the power of certain storytelling tools and use them carefully and responsively. They are the stories who horrify us not by using examples, but by constructing settings which put us in that mindset. They are usually not stories which involve just dropping rape casually to make sure we hate the bad guy, because that's crude writing. It's replacing a writer's skill to tell a story with simply saying something you know will upset people. It makes for a bad story that makes a mockery of something for which there isn't much room for tolerance.
Some things you just don't write about, and it galls me how many writers don't think about that. I keep wanting to ask them "Who the hell do you think you are just dropping a bomb like that? You don't deserve to say these things." And it's true. Some things, writers don't deserve to just say. They need to earn them, and very few seem aware of this. They just drop these horrible things because they know they'll make us horrible with no control over mood or atmosphere, convinced like a girl I knew that it's more effective if you just rub people's faces in uncomfortable truths. It isn't. It simply makes people recoil at your story and walk out mid-way through.
All of this is to say that I don't trust Tomb Raider's writers to handle the rape and torture undertones with any sort of taste or dignity. You don't handle these things well when you set out to put them in your game for the sake of making it gritter. "Dark" elements are not a solution to your inability to tell a story without them, writers. A Hollywood pyrotechnician once said that anyone can throw a stick of dynamite into a car and blow it up, but only an expert can make big, cinematic explosion that's also safe for the stuntmen around it. It's the same thing with storytelling - anyone can say there's rape in their story, but very few can use that theme while actually crafting a good story around it, and most of THEM tend to know better than to try that anyway.
I guess, to a large extent, that's a problem I can point to. Video games are a big business now - bigger than they've ever been. They're as big as movies and music now. And because of this, everyone's trying their hand at writing for games, and not everyone has the experience, skill or - let's face it - good taste to do it. Basically, I'm back to my previous argument of doubting the abilities of people making games. "Dark" simply seems like an easier tool for coolness than it actually is.
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"To my eyes, every storytelling tool has a "cost" associated with it, which basically defines how good the story needs to be in order to justify it...."
That is an intriguing theory.
Rod Serling dazzled me with two of his Twilight Zone episodes. One had a young demagogue haunted by the ghost of Hitler (He's Alive!) and another followed an SS Captain as he revisits Dachau (Death's Head Revisited.) Both are simply amazing, not least because I'd expect these stories to crumble. If I was to guess why they work when they shouldn't, I'd say first, because he was a superb craftsman and a man of taste and refinement, and second, because he really meant what he was writing. He wrote with conviction against an evil he genuinely hated and feared.
If I ever dare call up that ghost, that's the kind of story I'd aspire to.
"I think it was Lewis 'Linkara' Lovhaug who said that the worst thing you can do to a story involving rape is to treat it as 'something which happens to women...'"
I enjoy Linkara, but I'm gonna disagree with him there. I understand Devin Grayson did some disastrous story in which Nightwing got raped. Maybe it's simply too toxic? the TV Tropes site ruminates on this a bit, concluding that the great villains show some refinement, and at worst leave rapine for their petty thugs to do offscreen. "Rape is a Special Kind of Evil."
A writer ought to strive to break new ground. But If one sought to write a great rape story, where's the example to work from and compare against? M, I suppose? Streetcar? There's a Shakespeare poem. A scene in Lawrence of Arabia.
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I enjoy Linkara, but I'm gonna disagree with him there.
I think you misunderstood, and I don't remember which of his billions of videos he said this in.
What Linkara meant is that it's a mistake to treat rape as just "something that happens" without addressing the consequences of it TO the person it happens to. This is criticising such practices as raping the wife or daughter of the lead character not to address what this does to her, but to make the lead character angry while basically sidelining the woman herself. He spoke about this in relation to Dr. Light doing this to I think Sue Dibney and how the story never really focuses on her, only on the men who are outraged at it.
Rape, torture, disfigurement and so on are not things you can just "drop in" because they're bad. If you're going to use them in a story, you better damn well treat it with respect. I maintain that these themes have a cost and that you only use them when you absolutely have to. I consider these like nuclear weapons, in the sense that they're very, very powerful buy you never want to resort to them unless you're literally out of all other options.
Sadly, unlike actual nuclear weapons, you don't need special permission to write stories about rape, torture, mind-fuckery and other such nastiness, so the irresponsible and the inexperienced keep trying to.
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Rod Serling dazzled me with two of his Twilight Zone episodes. One had a young demagogue haunted by the ghost of Hitler (He's Alive!) and another followed an SS Captain as he revisits Dachau (Death's Head Revisited.) Both are simply amazing, not least because I'd expect these stories to crumble. If I was to guess why they work when they shouldn't, I'd say first, because he was a superb craftsman and a man of taste and refinement, and second, because he really meant what he was writing. He wrote with conviction against an evil he genuinely hated and feared.
There are a lot of good old Twilight Zone episodes, but those are two stand-outs for me as well. Mind you, I'm not averse to simply having Nazis in a story just because they're recognizable Evil that most people don't mind if you punch, shoot, or blow up in droves. They are a classic pulp action villain.
On the TV-torture front, I'd say one of my favourite examples is the Star Trek TNG episode where the Romulan (David Warner, who is one of those actors that inevitably makes a great bad guy) is torturing Picard for info. Of course, it does it without needing to get graphic.
And on a related note, in my mind it seemed to me when Picard went home after the Borg made him Locutus that they were treating the experience as analogous to rape.
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"What Linkara meant is that it's a mistake to treat rape as just 'something that happens' without addressing the consequences of it TO the person it happens to."
Ah! Yes. Quite right. And Linkara's review of Identity Crisis is suitably devastating. Mind, I actually think there's a great story hiding inside Identity Crisis, and a great editor could have helped :: pops up wikipedia :: ...Brad Meltzer tell it.
Someone wrote that a story (a feature, not a serial) should be about the most important day of the protagonist's life. For many people, a rape would be that day, and to simply blow it off is insulting to those who have endured such an ordeal.
"I maintain that these themes have a cost and that you only use them when you absolutely have to. I consider these like nuclear weapons...."
"Literary plutonium?" Yes, that's a good metaphor.
"I'm not averse to simply having Nazis in a story just because they're recognizable Evil that most people don't mind if you punch, shoot, or blow up in droves."
As a personal choice, I maintain that, even as the Nazis pass from living memory, they should be treated as "literary plutonium" as well. Consider the Indiana Jones series. It treats them rather flippantly, until the brilliant scene where the Joneses visit Berlin. Suddenly we're reminded that these weren't merely pulp bad guys twisting their mustaches and cackling, but a cancer to be expunged from humanity's soul.
"...after the Borg made [Picard[ Locutus that they were treating the experience as analogous to rape."
Yeah, I mentioned that earlier, and the follow-up where Picard breaks down was one of my favorites.
"...where the Romulan (David Warner)"
Cardassian, and not one of my favorites. More "literary plutonium."
A lot of this falls under "triggers." Those who have been exposed to violence, oppression or crime will likely not enjoy stories that employ literary plutonium. I myself experienced a PTSD trigger when I made the mistake of seeing Saving Private Ryan unprepared, (an excellent film, but one I'll never watch again,) so I fully sympathize with those who do not appreciate triggering material employed lightly.
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As a personal choice, I maintain that, even as the Nazis pass from living memory, they should be treated as "literary plutonium" as well. Consider the Indiana Jones series. It treats them rather flippantly, until the brilliant scene where the Joneses visit Berlin. Suddenly we're reminded that these weren't merely pulp bad guys twisting their mustaches and cackling, but a cancer to be expunged from humanity's soul.
Interesting. My interpretation of that scene was that it merely reinforced the moustache-twirling image while providing a devil's-cameo.
"...where the Romulan (David Warner)"
Cardassian, and not one of my favorites. More "literary plutonium."
A lot of this falls under "triggers." Those who have been exposed to violence, oppression or crime will likely not enjoy stories that employ literary plutonium. I myself experienced a PTSD trigger when I made the mistake of seeing Saving Private Ryan unprepared, (an excellent film, but one I'll never watch again,) so I fully sympathize with those who do not appreciate triggering material employed lightly.
Curse my traitorous memory. I remembered it was Gul something, and for some reason associated that title with Romulans when I absolutely should have known better.
"Literary plutonium" for me is brutally killing a dog. It's perhaps strange that I can read stories and watch movies where people are killing each other and getting killed left and right without batting an eye, but all it takes to put me off a story is brutality against an animal.
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"Literary plutonium?" Yes, that's a good metaphor.
I could have used that quote from Other People's Money that says "Lawyers are like nukes. I have 'em, the other guy has 'em, and when you use 'en, they fuck up everything!" But yes, like that.
I think writing is really the only side of game design where this simple fact is so easy to miss. If you're doing programming or graphics and you try something ambitious, it's pretty evident very early on that you're going to fail. Sure, slip-ups like those do occasionally surface: See Heroes of Might and Magic 4 (butt ugly) or Steel Battalion: Heavy Armour (it just doesn't work). It happens, but it's not frequent because the "cost" in most fields is actually quite evident.
Not so with writing. If you can think it, you can usually write it, no matter how bad of an idea that might be. And since most of your colleagues will be too busy doing other things and you WILL NOT face an editor, there really is no apparent cost to using these "literary nukes." That, to me, is where skill and experience can really save a writer's ass. It can alert him to the fact that that big gun he was given won't just kill the enemy, it will blow him up, too, and alert him to this fact BEFORE he uses. A skilled and talented writer is a godsend to a game developer... Or should be, at least. But the sad fact is that such people aren't valued very highly.
If I had to point to one SEVERE problem with modern-day gaming, it's that it's still treated like gaming was in the 80s and 90s, which is to say we only value game mechanics. Certain games may SAY they're about the story and the characters, but for the most part that just means graphics and gameplay. Rare exceptions exist, like Mass Effect right up until the writers shot WAAAY past their own skill level, but these are rare and they are exceptions. As such, the people who are most suited to telling these stories don't receive the recognition they deserve, and you end up with an industry without any real market for professional writers. You can apply as an artist or a programmer or any of a zillion project management jobs, but how many people can apply for the job of a "writer" without needing to also do a bunch of other things, as well? The sad truth is you don't have "writers," you have people who are specialists in other fields who also moonlight as writers when they don't have other things to do. Hell, how many people can find a job at a game company as an EDITOR? How funny would that be to go and apply for?
So really, how CAN writers have any experience? How, when the gaming industry doesn't respect them? You'll see this a lot with "expert developers," and I've even seen this problem with Extra Credits. It's this belief that you can't start with a story, that because games are an interactive media, you have to focus on game mechanics and tell mood through them. To my eyes at least, there's wanton disregard for having a solid fictional world with compelling characters and interesting stories made for a game to draw on. So OF COURSE you have these writers trying their best and often failing - because they pretty much have to.
Even City of Heroes, much as I like its lore, ended up falling into the same trap. Once the game ran out of Rick Dakan's original content after Jack Emmert replaced him, the game started struggling. Still, Jack ran it like a GM, and he tried to keep story on the surface. Once Jack Emmert left, though, Matt Miller just lost it completely and tossed it over to whoever was willing to write to do with as he pleases. That's why Doc Aeon got so far in over his head - because I don't think anyone at the company really appreciated his skills AS A WRITER and nobody sat him down to critique his work. We did, but by the end, I'm pretty sure he saw the players as his enemies, based on his comments.
Until games recognise writing as a skill as important as artwork or code, then we're going to keep handing amateur writers the keys to the nuclear subs, handing them a pair of scissors and letting them run around unsupervised. And that's a problem.
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"A skilled and talented writer is a godsend to a game developer... Or should be, at least. But the sad fact is that such people aren't valued very highly."
WARNING: INCOMING RANT.
As physical printing declines, creators of books continue to struggle. But even decades ago, writers have never received respect. Bradbury lived in poverty. Lovecraft died in poverty. A Faber Press reader rejected Lord of the Rings for being too long. After a year of heartbreak, Faber himself called up to ask, "where's my Hobbit sequel already?"
The movies deliberately bury writers. Stephen King -- big writer, yes? But it's John Carpenter's Christine, Stankey Kubrick's The Shining, and Brian DePalma's Carrie. It's never David Goyer's The Dark Knight, Lawrence Kasden's Star Wars, or Jules and Philip Epstein's Casablanca.
Find someone not a comics reader over thirty. Ask what League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell, V for Vendetta and The Watchmen have in common. You will not hear "Alan Moore." Folks, I was on the set of League. Not only was I the only person who had read the graphic novels, I was the only person who'd read Stevenson, Stoker, Wilde, Verne and Wells. I am not exaggerating.
Only when the author's long dead can it be Shelley's Frankenstein, Shakespeare's Merchant or whatever. If writers started commanding their own audiences, then they'd wield some clout in Hollywood, and that must never be allowed!
If writers had power, producers would have to pay Ozuma's estate to make The Lion King, or Koushin Takami to make The Hunger Games. Unthinkable! What, Neil Gaiman thinks our "Death" screenplay sucks? Meh! Just change the name to Meet Joe Black and cut him a severance check.
Occasionally a writer plays it smart and puts a producer credit in his contract, like Rod Serling, Gene Roddenberry or Lauren Faust. Still won't stop 'em from firing you. It does make you famous, at least.
So Sam, don't hold your breath for computer game companies to start respecting writers and their literary output and skill.
End rant.
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The movies deliberately bury writers. Stephen King -- big writer, yes? But it's John Carpenter's Christine, Stankey Kubrick's The Shining, and Brian DePalma's Carrie. It's never David Goyer's The Dark Knight, Lawrence Kasden's Star Wars, or Jules and Philip Epstein's Casablanca.
They've gotten the occasional credit on television, though. It was Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, for instance. I believe Stephen King got his moniker on his made-for-TV movies as well. That's not a defense, just an observation.
I was the only person who'd read Stevenson, Stoker, Wilde, Verne and Wells. I am not exaggerating.
I read quite a bit but I don't believe I've read any Stevenson (assuming you mean Robert L.) or Verne. I think the only Oscar Wilde story I've read is The Picture of Dorian Gray (mainly due to the character in League of Extraordinary Gentleman). I've barely read any Wells. And the only Stoker I've read is Dracula. I've also missed some oft-referenced literary classics like Catcher and the Rye or Animal Farm. And I'm someone who considers reading as a viable entertainment option. Given that in my experience most people consider reading a tool at best and a chore at length it therefore would not shock me that a select group of people hadn't read any of those authors.
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So Sam, don't hold your breath for computer game companies to start respecting writers and their literary output and skill.
Hope springs eternal in the human heart, as it were :)
This really pisses me off, though. Unless you're making PacMan or Shoot Many Robots or some such - i.e. if you game has a story AT ALL - then writing is an important part that you cannot overlook. It's just as bad as completely ignoring gameplay and making one of those "walking games" that critics have been so fond of. A good writer can make a good game great and a bad writer can make even a great game terrible. It's an important position, and yet game companies just stick whomever they can find in there.
Imagine you were a starship captain. You had engineers, weapons officers, tacticians, soldiers... And then you grabbed some kid off the street who played StarFox and stuffed him into the pilot's seat because, meh! Who cares about pilot skill, that just gets us there, and we only care about what we do once we arrive. Then your starship flies off course and skids into a black hole and you find me there going "I told you so!"
Stupid metaphors aside, if your game has a story, it requires writing. If you don't care about who does that writing, you're creating a mighty liability for yourself, and you'd think a game company that spends eleventy billion on the Frostbite 2 engine might want to spend some lunch money on hiring someone who can actually spell correctly.
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"It was Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, for instance."
Just so, and I eagerly applaud the exceptions.
"...it therefore would not shock me that a select group of people hadn't read any of those authors."
Yes, but when making The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, it behooves people to read Alan Moore, and also the sourcework he in turn drew from. They didn't. Everyone on set thought this guy James Robinson wrote the thing. The film deserved to founder.
Contrasting example: Viggo "Aragorn" Mortenson had not even heard of The Lord of the Rings. He read it in the plane to New Zealand. That's doing one's job.
"Imagine you were a starship captain."
We're in agreement again, Sam. And Star Trek is a particularly good example of a property demanding good writers.
Edit: Hey, whatta'ya know, I finally got the last word! 8)
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They've gotten the occasional credit on television, though. It was Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital
*SCREECHING BRAKES and the smell of burning rubber*
Sorry, I cannot agree with that, as it is Lars von Trier's "The Kingdom" that was Americanized by Mr. Stephen King into "Kingdom Hospital". Kudos to Mr.King for bringing it to a wider audience but it is STILL Lars von Trier's work!
Edit: Sorry Collette I think I flubbed your last word :(
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And then you grabbed some kid off the street who played StarFox and stuffed him into the pilot's seat because, meh!
Hold on there, bucko. StarFox championship from the original title game here. I can fly anything you can figure. :P
Or at the very least, I promise I won't drift into the doorway and scratch the paint while exiting space dock.