We count down to the 2011 Electronic Entertainment Expo with a series of features about the issues affecting the future of the games industry.
In our first Road to E3 feature we looked at the future of multiplayer gaming and its impact on the development scene, and in the second feature we examined the rise of mobile gaming and its influence on the wider gaming industry. Our final Road to E3 feature focuses on four burning issues currently affecting the global game development industry: the importance of player agency; the need for more complex human emotions in games; the reason digital distribution models are the future; and finally, the need to accept that games cannot yet be compared to high art.
Guiding us through these four topics are some of the biggest names in game development, whose presentations at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco earlier this year helped drive discussion around these four topics. Former Ubisoft creative director Clint Hocking used examples from Splinter Cell games as well as games like Far Cry 2 in his presentation to illustrate the need for developers to give up authorship and find new ways to let players feel in control. He argued that giving players more agency in games will push the boundaries of game development and take the industry in new directions.
Similarly, the founder and co-owner of French game development studio Quantic Dream and the creator of last year's Heavy Rain, David Cage, argued for the need to build more immersive game experiences that challenge the current standards of characterization. From Cage's point of view, the industry can move forward only once developers learn how to re-create more complex human emotions in games and successfully transform these into better-quality titles.
Design director at Epic Games and industry rockstar Cliff Bleszinski talked about a more practical issue: the need to embrace digital distribution. Bleszinski used examples from his own career to show that what consumers want now is a more seamless game experience that embraces social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the iPhone.
Finally, former LucasArts developer and game design lecturer Brian Moriarty presented a panel on the games-as-art debate, comparing current video games to kitsch art (that is, popular, mainstream art as opposed to high art) and declaring that currently, games do not, and cannot, display the same artistic value as works of high art.
So, while game design models still rely heavily on sets of predetermined rules and outcomes, the gaming industry has begun to question whether it can do more. The idea that gaming experiences can diversify to the point where there is no longer a "standard" is a seductive one, driving innovation and creativity further and further ahead of the demands of fiscal success. Grappling with new ways of distribution and an increasingly growing audience, the video game industry is at a critical turning point. The question is, just how will it use this momentum?
Clint Hocking embraced player agency in Far Cry 2.
Why Player Agency Counts: Clint Hocking
The question of how video games can be used to create meaning is a popular discussion topic at the Game Developers Conference. Eight months ago, Clint Hocking, creative director at LucasArts and former creative director at Ubisoft for titles including Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Far Cry 2, began writing a series of articles for his blog that focused on the idea that games could reach across platforms and genres and build a relationship with the audiences via gameplay that borrowed elements from core, casual, social, and mobile gaming.
"For the past six months, I have been writing about ways to build connections between different games, and by extension, their audiences," Hocking said on his blog. "How could developers--constantly understaffed and struggling to make every deadline--ever find the time to build a Facebook or iPhone game that would meaningfully link casual players to their 50-million-dollar Christmas release if they couldn't find the time to make their beta? I've imagined fashion design games for portable platforms that feed clothing designs to open-world games where avatar clothing customization matters. I've imagined social world-building games whose player-authored environments become playable levels used in action adventure games. I've imagined players of organization management games popping on to their mobile devices intermittently throughout the day to allocate resources and assign missions that are then subscribed to by real players playing action games."
Doing this, Hocking argues, would give players more of that which imbibes games with meaning: agency. In other words, letting players have control in a game is the essence of games themselves; it is what ties players to the gameworld and thus gives meaning to the game as a cultural artifact. Interconnecting game genres and platforms would create new ways for players to feel in control, allowing them to take the same set of skills and emotions from one type of game to another. This, Hocking believes, is what the games industry should be striving for.
At GDC 2011, Hocking presented a panel on the importance of agency and how it can be used to shape meaning in games. Like a film's meaning can be crafted through the process of editing, a game's meaning can be crafted through its dynamics--the run-time behaviour of the gameplay system. When designing a game, developers are faced with two choices: one, heavily author the game by placing meaning in the game's mechanics; or two, abdicate authorship completely and let each player create his or her meaning through the act of playing. It's not hard to guess which Hocking favours. When working on the first Splinter Cell game for Ubisoft, Hocking heavily authored the gaming experience by forcing players to make only the decisions that he planned for them. In his mind, the game was about three things--sensitivity, proximity, and fragility--and he wanted all players to extract the same three things from playing the game as he did. As the so-called author of the game, Hocking forced a set of dynamics onto players.
This was not the case with Far Cry 2, in which he completely relinquished authorship to let players create their own meaning in the way they played. In his original pitch for Far Cry 2, Hocking told his team it was about the idea of human social savagery being more disturbing than simple teeth and claw savagery.
"This message was embedded within the dynamics of the game: shooting people in cold blood, euthanizing allies, and so on," Hocking said during his GDC 2011 panel.
Developers can either heavily author the game by placing meaning in the game's mechanics or abdicate authorship completely and let each player create his or her meaning.
So, while two different players might play the original Splinter Cell and get exactly the same meaning out of it, Far Cry 2 was designed to give individual players the freedom to extract their own meaning out of the experience, as opposed to a predetermined one. For example, one player may come to the realisation that although Far Cry 2 rewards murderous actions, it never celebrates them, thus reminding players that they may be no better than the people they kill, while another player may stay out of trouble and protect his life inside the game as much as possible, thus coming to the conclusion that the game is actually rather dull.
Narrative also affects how meaning is constructed in a game. During his discussion, Hocking asked the audience to imagine playing a game of Tetris in their heads. He then asked the audience to imagine the same thing again and this time to pretend that the game is taking place in a field outside a Warsaw ghetto during Nazi Germany and that the player's job is to pack as many Jewish people into a train as possible--anyone left behind will be immediately shipped to a concentration camp. While the rules and mechanics of Tetris have not changed, the layer of narrative now means players think about playing the game in an entirely new way.
"By changing the fictional skin, the game has new potential meanings that the game didn't have before; these meanings come from the player-imposed narrative. So, narrative might not touch mechanics at all, but it does impact meaning and can lead to changes in how the game is played."
