The Trajectory of an Exploding Barrel

People love stories. Your first hit was most likely the bedtime kind then you went eyes wide at comics, books and movies. We gravitate to people who can entertain us - we usually don’t call the introvert to meet up at the bar for kicks and giggles; they may sometimes remark with snap crackle pop, but they are not an exploding barrel of laughs.

In the next couple of years - perhaps even months - the majority of gamers will find themselves gravitating to the games that tell a good story. Pulling way back, gameplay has evolved at a much slower rate than graphics (a topic I’d like to discuss further in a future post). This yearly growth spurt is not necessarily something we should look down on since killer looks captures the masses. The Game Industry embraces the blockbuster and it, too, is infatuated with Hollywood style. “Look at my cut scenes, all lean and cinematic can I have your phone number?”

Interactive storytelling is another way developers/publishers try to capture the masses. Bad storytelling outweighs the good, and the good still suffer from moments of dissonance between story and gameplay.

Sometimes it feels like a story is an afterthought, sometimes it feels like the gameplay diminishes the story and its purpose. If people - me included - are hell-bent on game writers trying to take our emotions to paradise, then how bout we have games where the gameplay and its limitations are central to the story. Then we can start making games like:

- The Curious Case of the Immovable Trees
- I See You, Mr. Invisible Wall
- Sim Explodable Barrels
- Re-Spawninator: Didn’t I Just Kill You?
- The World Ends With You In A Sewer
- The Sims Explodable Barrels: Explodable Barrels Expansion Set
- Bullet Sponge presents The Amazing Adventures of Kevlar and Clay
- > Help I’m Stuck

Confrontations over Coffee and Cigarettes

Conversation, it’s the craziest game you’ve ever played.

Game designer David Cage said in an interview, “If we can make simple scenes from daily life interesting to play, like two people just talking, then we have a whole new world in front of us. Then we can do anything.”

In an industry obsessed with running and gunning, this quote sounds absurd. “Bullets and blood, not tea and biscuits!” cries the typical gamer. With each next generation, processors become more powerful, outputting more textures and smartifying AI. We’ve gone from sprites with three frames of animation to polygons expressing a ballet of 3D motions. And with games mirroring the production values of Hollywood blockbusters, it makes sense that part of the next generation will be emotional display through motion-capture performances and facial expressions. An exclamation mark was the old-school way to convey loudness, but now we can squint the eyes, furrow the brow; the curving of lips can be just as sexy deadly as muzzle flashes.

Film Producer Todd Eckert says, “Today, the greatest potential for meaningful interaction between the entertainer and entertained exists in videogames.” The Writers Guild of America has also recognized this potential by creating a new award category for best videogame writing - though it’s nothing monumental since the best writing of 2008 came from people who weren’t WGA members. Says Ken Levine, “I’d never even heard of it. I don’t even know where to start to get involved.”

And while Bioshock was widely recognized more for its writing than gameplay, let’s mention its extreme, Shadow of the Colossus, an epic story masterfully told through visual cues and a silent protagonist; a game that, as we play we ask ourselves how does killing the colossi bring my loved one back or what do they represent. But the most important and disturbing question: “who is the bad guy - the colossus living a peaceful existence or me, the person slaughtering them?”

The industry has proven it can handle action opera. I’m wondering if we’ll ever see a game described as the interactive version of Before Sunset.