Well you can, but is such a view illuminating?ĭoes it shed new light on what a Video Game is?ĭoes it allow us to design better Video Games? “Video Games are entertaining things you can do with a computer.”Ĭan you can think of the ‘computer’ as the equivalent to ‘paint’ in painting, or ‘sound’ in music, or the ‘written word’ in poetry?

So, whilst I did enjoy reading Bogost’s ideas to some degree, I felt I was just left a bit speechless by the end, and wanting to say “But Video Games can be anything, they can do anything, that’s the beauty of them!” When I think about all the different forms a Video Game could take, well it really does seem unlimited, and with Virtual Reality now available as well, I honestly think if there is one single art form that could be truly unlimited in scope, then Video Games must be the one. If you’ve played a lot of story based games, and enjoyed them, then its only natural you might think of making one yourself one day.Īnd conversely, if you played story games, hated them, but played Match-3 games, and loved them, then no surprises in what kind of game you are more likely to want to make next. No, because its a project that is constantly evolving, I doubt we’ve really even the start of what is still to come, because if you really want to be in a story, and you want the other characters in the story to adapt to your interactivity then presumably we need to be able to simulate their Agency.Īnd even the super computing AI successes of today still can’t quite do that yet, but its heading in that direction at least.Īnd every week these technologies will be trickling down, becoming optimised, less memory intensive, more applicable to gaming, until suddenly there it is, on the Unity asset store, an AI Agency Plugin, waiting to be downloaded.Īs in all the Arts, a common motivation for actually making something is often simply because you’ve appreciated something similar already. Is the great project finished? Has Bogost finally announced the end of this grand non-linear narrative on computational devices project? So given these limitations, the Video Games industry didn’t give up, but went forth and invented many many ingenious ways of escaping those limitations, like all good artists do when you put them in box. Video Games can take Agency away from the player of course, oh look, the controller isn’t responding, and suddenly there are these black borders on the screen, this must be some sort of cutscene !Īnd when Video Games remove Agency, in whatever ingenious ways they can, then for those moments they stop being truly interactive. Every time I’ve seen the movie, he always goes off to look for Nemo, at exactly the right time, every time. Whichever Pixar artist had made the models or animated all those Fish from the Aquarium, they would have been so pissed at Nemo’s dad for that decision.īut of course Nemo’s dad doesn’t have any real Agency, so its not a problem for him. If Nemo’s dad had decided not to go and look for Nemo, and to just stay at home instead, then just think how many Art assets would never have been used. Now, as everyone knows, when you put stories in video games, the interactivity screws them up a bit doesn’t it. If developers want to make story based games, then so be it, let them make as many as they want. Yesterday I read this piece by Ian Bogost : įirstly I don’t believe there is really any problem here that needs addressing, if people have enjoyed playing games with strong stories, then let them play more of them.

Pixatool palette alpha