The Utopia of Nothing in Videogames (do not read if you are suzy)

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I have an idea for a thought, which is very vague at the moment and so I thought I'd bounce some ideas off people who know a lot ie you lot.

I have noticed that in some cases genre development of games can be charted as a function of consecutive concessions to realism... The grand example being the First Person Shooter. So the latest Killah Ap is a fantasy adventure based 500 yrs in the future - but the features, the base to the superstructure of the plot, are realistic. Prime example, the two-gun limitation. Cf. with for example Goldeneye/Half-Life - where the character might as well have been called Mighty Arsenal!

The little touch of small enemies shouting "See, it was me, I killed him" when in fact there bigger cousins did so... All conspiring to create the effect that yr playing an intelligent being. Why do this? Answer this is to answer, why is multi-player gaming such a thrill?

I have some more ideas - and these aren't very well put here but I'm throwing it to the wind...

― david, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

New "the Sims" is the biggest selling game in history - I think this perhaps supports yr theory answers.

I've always said that the games industry is working towards pooling every game ever into Real Life Simulator.

― david h(0wie), Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Alright, I know these thorts are very fleshy at the moment... But, it all makes sense in my head. Cf. the Tom Clancy series. GTA3. PES. Aaarggh, I can't find the words for my thoughts.

― david h(0wie), Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

DG and Dan Perry to thread.

― david h(0wie), Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

caution?

my favourite is california games: I cannot help. footbag multiplayer IS better than footbag single-player, though. I could never get the hang of the halfpipe event.

the above might be lies since I just remembered I was very often the TOP DOG playing tekken 3 and goldeneye in my sixth year common room. although I never had+don't have any of the machines that make them play.

― RJG, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

This is the same thread we're reading, right?

― david h(0wie), Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Insanity Effects in Eternal Darkness - mutation of whole game environment, even options and menus are contorted => tactic employed by programmers to immerse player in game - fool player into frightened-dom = realism.

Rather - insanity effects = realism as by disrupting the menus and not just the game they redefine the game-player interface - again this makes sense in head but might not on e-paper

― david h(0wie), Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Cf. attempt a few years ago to release a football game wherein you controlled just one player throughout the whole game (cue: mad split- screen FOOTBALL GAME madness in two-player). (Called Libero Grande).

The whole Sims series, as well.

― david h(0wie), Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

You're not sure what I'm on about are you?

― david h(0wie), Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

my favourite event after footbag would have to be the flying disc.

― RJG, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

This discussion is being played out on another forum (1 person has answered so far, confusedly) - here was my attempted clarification:

I was reading an article about webcams (that's yrsel sinker) and how in this hypermediated world that we live in no corner is in shadow. That is, "if the 20th century is remembered for anything it will be its archive frenzy - nothing too boring or dull to be archived".

"People doing nothing, watching people doing nothing - and money's changing hands".

So this got me to thinking - is there sufficient evidence of a theme of successive appeals to realism in videogames. Could by historical analysis I piece together a train which leads towards suggesting that the ultimate game - a hypothetical - is one in which we live Real Life.

Is there a movement, however incremental, in gaming towards realism! I'm not just talking deformable scenery, (but I am talking about that) I am talking celebration of the banal - Real Life.

[sub-thought: Obv. there are arguments - it'll never follow as games need an entertainment value, an interaction... but are these valid?]

― david h(0wie), Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

no confusion.

definitely:
1. footbag
2. the flying disc

― RJG, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

You fool, the BMX event is obviously the shit. "Louie Louie" through the PC speaker beats the entire Tigerbeat6 catalog.

― adam, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Chris Crawford: Computer games are closed formal systems that represents a subset of reality. Computer games are objectively unreal in that they do not physically recreate the situations they represent.

Ergo, I was right abt insanity effects. They physically recreate the situations they represent. Take Perfect Dark, when you are punched the screen blurs and it takes a while to recover. Pause the game and the menus are clear. The blur is a representation, a fiction, part of the game. However, with Eternal D there is no respite, the menus blur, are manipulated. The closed system now opens and closes at far difft points.

― david h(0wie), Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

online multiplayer games succeed cos they are the modern-day boardgame....today nobody has time to set aside four to five hours just to sit down to play a game...plus computers and consoles offer much better graphics/realism....parker brothers will fold one day, trust me

― jack, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Why is it better shooting a human soldier than shooting a bot? Why do people play multi-player Unreal when they could play the bots on Shit Hard?

― david h(0wie), Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

you can't gloat to a computer when you win.

the next step in tech. evol.=a computer that can be put down and sulk and.

― RJG, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Unlike most people I prefer playing the bots, it's less humiliating than being beaten by some spotty 14 year old. And your opponent is always thousands of miles away too, you can't lean over and give them a DEAD LEG like you could when playing on a console.

― DG, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yr mad.

― david h(0wie), Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

What happened to Ramosi?

― david h(0wie), Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

DG ate him.

― Graham, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

He's around, he e-mailed me the other day. Sez he's taking a break from ILX for a while until the trolls get bored, I gather.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I didn't eat anybody.

― DG, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

So... now yr all awake... anyone want to read the 800 shittin' words I've wrote on this today? I'm a sorryass for ego-stroking.

― david h(0wie), Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

But DG, what about LAN Houses, of course there cant be FITE! like what i do when i lose in GoldenEye or soccer games but normally in there are at least some 6 ppl on LANs adn grupal beating is way better than solo

― Chupa-Cabras, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I own this thread.

― david h(0wie), Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

There aren't any LAN houses round 'ere. All the PCs would be stolen then sold to raise funds for the local charvers' Argos jewellery habit.

― DG, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Why don't they just rob argos?

― Graham, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I wanna be yoshi?

― jel --, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I went to school with a kid called rob argos.

― RJG, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

This demand for realism is not just limited to comuter game development. I keep noticing it these days whenever I go to the cinema. In sci-fi films set in the future, directors are concerned with presenting a level of technological development that, in the eyes of the audience, appears plausible. The ambitious visions of the future that filled 60s sci-fi novels and 60s and 70s films are no more.

In Austin Powers 1 there's a great joke concerning this. In the 60s sequence of the film, Austin is racing along in his Triumph sportscar when Basil Expedition appears on his video screen. Basil issues his instructions concerning the whereabouts of Dr Evil in crystal-clear smooth motion video.

Cut forward 40 years to the present day section of the film. Here, Austin is told again to go and kick Dr Evil's butt by his bouffy- haired boss, but this time Expedition is shown as a pixelated and jittery figure on the screen of Austin's laptop.

― bert, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Throw yr'books and go out! Try to do something without cliché (like guns). I want to play "nouveau-roman" video games.

― The Hegemon, Sunday, 14 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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