It's worth a mention, I guess, that an article I wrote got selected for the Inside Xbox Monday Musing feature (03/10/2011) that appears weekly on everyone's Xbox dashboard. It was in response to an article that basically said that gamers should be able to skip sections of a game rather than have to play through a linear story in order to access all the content a game has to offer. I've heard the argument before about how all game content should be immediately accessible and I disagree on a number of levels. As such I submitted the following response:
"In response to last weeks Monday Musing about how games shouldn't be linear any more I'd have to disagree. Most (if not all) stories have a defined beginning, middle and end. Why should games be any different? And why would we want them to be any different? We want our favourite form of entertainment to stand up there toe-to-toe with other media such as movies, literature and be considered as serious thought provoking works of art.
For this to happen there has to be coherence in the storytelling and the crafting of a good plot to guide the player through the story to a conclusion. You wouldn't start reading halfway through a novel or go straight to the end of a movie, what would be the point and how could you possibly know what was going on? A great part of any entertainment experience is the journey from the beginning to the end and the emotions it evokes along the way.
Don't forget there's always difficulty settings if you're stuck on a particular level and you just want to see the story. Deus Ex: HR even says it on the settings screen: "Tell Me a Story" (Casual), "Give Me a Challenge" (Normal) and so on. Games now give us some fantastic story-lines but with the incredible bonus of being able to interact and affect the story as we play. And there isn't any other form of entertainment like it!"
The chap who submitted the original Monday Musing apparently got trolled a fair bit, had over 350 messages in his inbox and used the "Block user" button a lot and filed a lot of complaints. Fortunately I had none of this as 98% of the feedback I received was positive and it definitely reinforces my belief that the Xbox communtiy are a group of extremely knowledgebale gamers who really understand the artform and how it should develop and evolve moving forward. The couple of negative responses I received were quite happy to discuss their opinions further with me in a civilised fashion which is, again, indictative of what a great community we have on Xbox Live.
UPDATE (06/10/11): Here are just a sample of some of the responses I received from the awesome Xbox community. Thought I'd post them here as Xbox messages expire after 30 days and so they would have been lost for all time (Gamertags redacted to protect the innocent):
T###### 04/10/2011
if this is the dude who wrote this weeks monday musing.. Well Said ! couldnt agree more with your reply to last weeks musing, the person who wrote that dont appreciate true gaming
Z###### 04/10/2011
thankyou
B###### 04/10/2011
good monday musing, but both of you have good points!
T###### 04/10/2011
Nice monday musing mate couldnt agree more :)
h###### 04/10/2011
your monday musing is so true!!
a###### 04/10/2011
u owned him
N###### 04/10/2011
Mass Effect is another example of great story telling. SHEPARD FTW!!!!
X###### 04/10/2011
Great musing dude totally agree :)
i###### Win 04/10/2011
great monday musing! i couldn't agree with you more! <3
T###### 04/10/2011
Well said, dude.
f###### 04/10/2011
nice monday musing so true!!
A###### 04/10/2011
Couldn't agree more with your Monday Musing. Last weeks was ridiculous and shouldn't of been put up, though i'm glad they put up someones logical response.
P###### 04/10/2011
I gotta say i totally agree with you. Plots of games these days can be so emotional & deep and to miss any would just spoil it. I remember FF9 on the PS1 i would get stuck but persist to find out how the plot developed because the story was fantastic.
l###### 04/10/2011
G r e a t M o n d a y M u s i n g
x###### 05/10/2011
Liked your Monday Musing & 100% agree :)
V###### 06/10/2011
do u work for xbox
R###### 08/10/2011
monday musing=AWESOME
15 comments:
I agree, there's great merit in freeform and narrative stories, it's boss fights that should be canned ;)
Besides, if all games were freeform there would be about four releases / 4 thousand patches per year :D
Story makes the games so much more immersive so 100% agree with you. congrats on the musing BTW :)
@Andrew yeah defo agree with you there, good example being those boss battles that nearly spoilt Deus Ex!
@UKFClan cheers for the comment buddy :D
Somegood points and well made but we are not sadly talking about the same thing. You seemed to have missed my point.
My musing (to which this is a reply) was actually about gamers rights as consumers. The point I was addressing was if having paid our hard earned cash for a game should sections of it be restricted from us on the basis of a players skill level? In other words if you get stuck and can’t progress any further should the rest of the game, which you did pay to see after all, be closed off to you? Likewise should you be forced to replay a game multiple times just to get access to a given weapon, track or mission? With many games now taking 30+ hours to complete not all of us have the time to do this but does this mean we don’t have the right to see that contents? Certainly being able to skip ahead or unlock contents at will might ruin the storyline of a game but isn’t it our game to ruin?
Just because the option is there doesn’t mean you have to use it. Games are filled with a load of options these days to tweak just about every aspect yet the one missing is whether or not you get to see all of the contents you paid for. It is not about difficulty or skill but instead a gamers’ right to access content they own rather than being told by the developers what they can play with and when.
Oh and if you are interested you can find out more about what happened with my Monday musing and my inbox as mentioned above at the link below:
http://bobkingofbobs.blogspot.com/2011/10/xbox-live-monday-musing.html
Thanks for commenting Bobkingofbobs, I didn't read it all though I just skipped to the end ;) Seriously though, some good points there, perhaps the whole game should be completely unlocked right from the get-go but surely the whole point of playing a game in the first place is in order to progress the story or the sense of achievement in unlocking the next area or unlocking the next weapon? Surely the act of playing the game is its raison d'etre? The argument that content is restricted based on our skill level doesn't hold water in my opinion either, and I think it does an injustice to the majority of gamers who can quite easily progress through a game, and experience all the content, on a normal difficulty setting. For casual gamers or players with lower skill levels there's always the "Easy" option.
You seem to slightly contradict yourself because in the top paragraph you say "...should sections of it be restricted from us on the basis of a players skill level" but then further down you say "It is not about difficulty or skill but a gamers' right to access content". Well I agree, we all have the right to access the content irrespective of skill level and we do this by playing and experiencing the game, which is why we bought the game in the first place.
I wrote a Monday Musing a little over a year ago on colour blindness and how developers don't consider it when making games. I provided statistics to back up my point, to prove that it was worthwhile considering when making a game. Despite making a fair point, I was quite surprised at various responses I received. I did get a lot of positive responses from people who are also colour blind to some extent (I can see all colours but struggle to differentiate between a few) and also from those who had simply never thought about it before. I also received messages that didn't agree with it being a worthwhile thing for developers to consider, yet I think the statistics say everything. Most of these people I responded to and some accepted what I had to say while others were quite immature and used a lot of curse words in their responses. And then of course there were those who sent me a message to ask if I worked at xbox, those who wanted to know how I had Halo 2 achievements and those who accused me of having a hacked gamerscore. So unfortunately I have to disagree, there are a lot of cool and knowledgeable people out there in the xbox community, but there are plenty of idiots as well.
I'm with you on this one Bickle77. As I remarked on BobKing's site last week, I personally would not like to have an option to skip a potentially boring or challenging level. To even know that this option was available would likely tempt me and 9/10 times I'd probably succumb.
A skip option would also take a lot of the fun out of many gaming experiences. Take Portal as an example - I got horribly stuck countless times whilst playing through and a skip option would undoubtedly stopped me pulling my dreads out. However, I would have missed out on the huge sense of achievement when you finally crack that puzzle using nothing but my own mind muscles.
Ultimately, it all depends on the individual though as we all play our own way. We have to put our trust in the developers to give us the best experience possible, they are the experts after all.
A well crafted musing and I couldn't agree more. I find it reassuring that you received such a positive response from the community. They're a good bunch really...
Thanks for the comment Fraser. Developers should definitely start to be more inclusive. Assassins Creed 1, no subtitles, what's that all about?! Thankfully rectified for later games.
Thanks James, a brilliant example with Portal 2 there! Who could honestly say they wouldn't have used a skip option had Valve included one! Finally figuring out how to beat the puzzle you've been stuck on for ages is what makes the game so great!
Yeah, felt pretty smug after completing all test chambers without the aid of good old Mr. Firefox!
Need to get round to co-op at some point...
I'd definitely be up for co-op. Having not yet conquered the single-player game though I fear I would be dead weight compared to your superior intellect :D
@Bickle77 re: Deus Ex - Yes! Totally agree, in fact I more or less said exactly the same thing in my review a couple of weeks ago! If DXHR were a lesser game I would have stopped @ boss number two. Stupid cloaking bint.
http://tiredbutwired.com/2011/08/30/deus-ex-human-revolution/
@James Portal 2: Great narrative, great stress, great accomplishment, great game ;)
Great review mate, I pretty much agreed with everything you said. Oh, except for the "ridiculous goatee" bit, his goatee rocks! ;p I'm trying to sculpt mine in a similar fashion but I'm failing miserably!
I can see your confusion. Between the "...should sections of it be restricted from us on the basis of a players skill level" and “It is not about difficulty or skill but a gamers' right to access content". Maybe I didn’t explain it very well. What I meant was my original point was not about games being too hard or too difficult. I got lots of messages about being a noob which was very funny getting flamed by 14 year old boys when I have been playing games longer than they were alive. There is no standard of easy or hard settings between games. For example Ninja Gaiden is renowned for how hard it is even on the most easy setting while something like Halo 3 is a walk in the park on easy. Gamers come in all forms from those of us who have been playing for decades to those who are picking up the controller for the first time. We forget how over years of playing we have learned skills and tactics which we transfer from game to game. For example my girlfriend has never been much of a gamer but started to get more into it after she met me. I introduced her to FPS games. Now when I play an FPS I have years of experience to fall back on from Doom, through Golden Eye right up to COD. I know to check the corners, to strafe around cover and not to burst into rooms without looking first. She didn’t. These were all skills that came naturally to me because of my experience but for her it was a steep learning curve. My point is what is easy for one person is difficult for another so simply saying stick the game on easy is not going to fix the problem. Easy will always be hard for someone.
Crikey, you're determined to have the final (as well as the first) word on the matter aren't you lol. Let's agree to disagree and call it a day.
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