Let me make this abundantly clear: I want you to read this, eventually, if you have any interest in the gaming industry, or even any entertainment industry.
And by all means, utopians, please read. Be sure to watch the video that the author tells you to watch, then continue on.
As me and Demi were talking about on Tumblr roughly a week (?) ago, admist others topics, we talked about the game’s worth. I said that games with worth are the ones that aren’t equivalent to an action movie. Indeed it does appear that even some of my favorite games are designed as action movies, but I’m not sure how upset I am over that fact.
I woke up today - a rest day - and I played some Starcraft singleplayer. I had a decent amount of fun, but I didn’t take much away from it. So? I don’t expect to be introduced to new theories and views of philosophy while playing Starcraft, nor am I sure that I want to be. I’m sure there’s folks who only play action movie games, however, which is unfortunate, but the author requests pretty much that game developers be more intellectual. There’s a big difference between “people who are smart” and intellectuals. The fact that there’s usually only a few (or no) writers on board only hurts the author’s request.
There was a post on Destructoid telling developers to “play the player”, this is what I want to see. They gave an example: you’re wandering the wasteland, you come upon a small shack with a female raider who immediately starts firing at you. You kill her, and then go in to the loot the shack and there’s a baby in a cradle. (wasn’t the exact example) You killed a mother trying to protect her baby. You monster.
So it’s situations like that that I’d like to see more of. I don’t necessarily want every game to be like The Path, but small stints of genius dialogue (DAO) or scenes (bioshock’s “would you kindly”) are what I want.
Turns out tomorrow won’t be a day off after all; emptying a storage unit. That’s okay, though, since storage units are awesome, give me free stuff, and they only last about 3-4 hours to clean up. Unless he wants me to do something more. x.x;