[Personal] Perfect Memories

It seems there are two good ways of making me feel old these days. One is to speak to younger gamers; the other is to browse XBox Arcade. When these two things meet, it is... well, I find myself looking for grey hairs.

I met a friend on Sunday who could neither be described as old or hairy, but definitely a gamer. So naturally, while chatting about job prospects (incidentally, I've been pitching articles; hurrah? Fingers crossed for the prospective freelancer here, please) and mutual friends we also tend onto games.

They're like our war stories - "I remember when...", veterans telling each other about the where and when and how. The thing is, we talk about different generations of gaming; he looks back at the N64 as his starting point whereas I remember it as the flashy gadget that made my NES look even more like a breeze block. At least it was good common ground, remembering the brutal unforgiving nature of PvP in Perfect Dark where respawning involved returning empty handed, ready to be gunned down by the fully-armed guy who'd just tagged you before.

It's weird that we miss that, when things have moved on. At least, we think we miss that - years of Halo/Call of Duty/Epic Testosterone Shooter have changed what we expect from a game (largely to expecting something easier); and we both have the cartridge and console to hand if we wanted to play. We talk of the game fondly, and could go back and relive it whenever we choose. Consciously or not, we choose not to.

I cannot deny having some great memories of filling an Easter holiday running and re-running the game on Agent and Secret Agent difficulties (before hitting what felt like a wall with Perfect Agent - though I've seen videos of people running missions and just ignoring enemies... it makes me feel like a fool in retrospect!), but I'm not sure I'd be able to do that again. I won't deny that there is something about old games that appeals in a way new ones don't, but at least part of that I'm sure is the "I remember when..." moment. If we try to relive them, we may find the experience bitter-sweet if the memories turn out to be wrong.

We both had that, veterans remembering weapon functions and snipe points and how bizarrely natural the trident shaped joypad actually was. But at the same time... To me, Perfect Dark seems like too "new" a game to have on XBA* - I'm used to browsing around at Golden Axe and Final Fight, things I remember paying 20p to play in dubious establishments on the route home from school (the best place was at a cheap restaurant which twice had people thrown through the window. Never when I was there I should mention, but I feel it establishes the general quality of venue for arcade machines locally at the time). In my mind something from the 32/64 bit era has kept that buzz of being "advanced", and somehow isn't old enough to be retro for me.

I think he didn't feel surprise in the same way, and it was more the surprise at having a blast from the past return instead... yes, I feel old. But the memories are nice, so it's old in a good way.

* = And with that said - yes, my mind blew when I saw that Resident Evil 4 is available now too.

[Random] What's the story? Tell me another...

How many plots are there? Lots of minds greater than mine have queried this, and come back with a lot of different numbers - there are three proto-stories, or seven, or a different seven, or... ok, I say greater minds than mine, but the lists of 20 and 36 story ideas seems to be reaching a bit. The fewer you can think of, the more I can respect, else it becomes like when I watched Big Trouble in Little China as a 12 year old and decided there were about 30 different groups all fighting each other (just because I recognised Lo Pan, the Three Storms and the Wing Kong as separate entities didn't mean they were different sides. No - it just followed basic narrative, good guys and bad, and now I want to watch it again...)

Story telling is such a fundamental human trait - we use it to entertain ourselves, to inform ourselves (the news is, ultimately, telling us stories about what has happened in the world), and even to make ourselves better people (at least, that's the hope - parables try to mark out "right" and "wrong" actions, but the value of the story is entirely down to the story teller. Or the news organisation). But this isn't a writing blog. It's a gaming one. But after writing my last (admittedly less interesting than hoped) entry, I realised how stuck on rails the narrative is in games.

The Six Plots of Gaming

1) Player vs enemy force

The easiest one to identify - success is simply down to being the last one standing. It worked for Space Invaders, it worked for Street Fighter, it works for pretty much every boss fight ever - challenge your ability to deal damage. When LotRO wants 10 orcs dead from an area, this is all you are doing. 

Less obviously, it is also the other cars on the track in Virtua Racing or Ridge Racer - winning is about overwhelming them at their own game. Assuming it is racing and not time-trialing (see Plot 3 there), all you are hoping to do is be the one that succeeds at their expense.

It was tempting to add Halo here too - it seems an obvious choice... then I realised that Halo is part this, but more a part of -

2) Player journey

... you see, a lot of the fights in Halo are actually avoidable. This is something learned playing the original in legendary difficulty- if in doubt, leave the soldiers to die, and keep running. Yes, some fights are essential (so, taking Plot 1), but ultimately the game wants you to make it from Point A to Point B, and confuses you by putting a gun into your hands.

The same could be said for R-Type, or Vigilante, or Shadow Complex (one of the best games I've played in recent years - but ultimately, it's still about gaining ways of moving from Point A to a previously inaccessible Point B).

You are ultimately fighting the environment - or not fighting if you can (and choose to) avoid it. These get disguised in a lot of ways - to speak to someone at a different location, whether it be next to them or on the other side of the world; to collect an item out in the wilderness; or just not get blown up as the screen scrolls you ever closer to the end-of-level boss.

3) Player vs the clock

A classic - just needing to do as much as you can before a timer ends. This can be achieving set goals, or merely staying alive. Think of Gauntlet - for all the running around, for all the monster generators, there was only one thing that mattered, your "health" constantly depleting. But it wasn't health - it was a portable timer, raised with food and lost with everything else... and disguised as Plot 2.

(and of course, let's not ignore the flip side - working to beat those best lap times in Sega Rally or Gran Turismo. It's not about the cars, it's not about the track - it's about the clock. Success is measured by it)

It's always been a staple of arcade gaming, where the need to get one person off a cabinet to allow another paying customer a go is key. You don't want an expert who can maintain eight hour at the controls, if only because they don't have the same facilities as astronauts and the clean-up required will be disgusting.

Yes, multiple Plots meet here - a "kill Tim the Accountant of Doom in the next 5 minutes" quest will involve Plot 2 and Plot 1 as well. But the involvement of a timer in so much of gaming means it is a content Plot device.

4) Player vs logic

Perhaps a harder one to categorise - this is solving puzzles. When you worked out what to do with that chicken with a pulley in Monkey Island, it was this. When you worked out how to avoid being shot in Portal, it was this. Success is measured in overcoming puzzles, rather than going out guns blazing - it's more like playing solitaire, knowing how the deck is arranged and so working out where to place the cards. You can learn how to win, rather than train for it.

A lot of games fit in moments of logic - those puzzles that you have to solve somewhere between Point A and Point B - but often these are moments tacked onto other plots. Others pose themselves as logic puzzles, when in truth they are linear (for example,  you do not have to actually work out who is poisoning the mine in Baldur's Gate - just follow the steps the story tells you. You cannot lose the game by getting the wrong culprit, or failing to find the problem at all).

5) Player recognition

... Tetris. See shape, fit shape, repeat. It's not an issue of logic, it's about making something happen almost faster than you can consciously realise. It's how you fit colours together in Columns, or pop those bubbles in Bust-A-Move, or generally prevent your head from exploding while playing Warioware... Things may try to cause you pressure - getting faster, getting closer, getting bigger - and you can't stop and consider a move (otherwise it'd be Plot 4).

At its heart, this is all that drives the craze in music games like Rock Band - they are a form of Quick Time Event, just like those driving so many fight scenes in Shenmue - where you know you have to perform an action at just the right time... Stop and think, and you'll likely fail. It needs to be intuitive. Like fitting tetrominoes together.

6) Player aquisition

Success measured by getting something... It may be money, it may be items, it may be slightly more convoluted by making something, it may even be that poxy Amulet of Yendor which I never even got to sniff in years of playing Rogue-likes. Not that I'm bitter.

It could even be pursuing something more in the meta-game, such as points, or XP. Most RPGs do not rely on saying "you must be this level to enter" - rather, they are Plot 1 and Plot 2 cases, more pressing you to gain levels so you are able to survive and fight better. But not every fetch-and-run quest is about travelling; the crafting quests in games like Atlantica are completed when the key item is made, whether the materials involved looting bosses or simply visiting the market. The same goes for LotRO, and I suspect many, many other MMOs I've never had the time to experience...

... so are there others? Perhaps. I hope so. It would be a shame if a passive form of entertainment - story telling - could have more forms than an active one - gaming. We are supposed to be involved after all. Though perhaps the comparison is itself flawed. Games do need, and have, a sense of narrative, but the experience is obviously something different from being told a story*.

So, these individually or in combination together make up gaming. Except for whatever I may have missed... and if you see what that is, let me know! :)

* My original analogy was comparing games with stories to the small smile felt on seeing the sun for the first time after heavy rain... with a brick. Nothing to do with each other. But the difference isn't that severe - they also have a lot in common.


EDIT: I shall undoubtedly edit this as thoughts occur, opinions change, and games (hopefully) give me new experiences I never foresaw. The first two are more likely.

EDIT: ... and removed two unneeded paragraphs from the intro. Wow, I write too much.

[Personal] A Taste of the Epic

I was unwell the weekend just gone - I'll spare you the details, but I will say I found myself grinding harder into various games than usual to keep myself distracted from some discomfort. Well, "various games" is an overstatement. I was playing LotRO with more dedication than I have in months.

I seem to have drifted into MMOs over the last couple of years, when (and if) I have time to play - RPGs have always appealed to me, perhaps due to an interest in seeing how to use probability to recreate the world around us, and perhaps due to simply being able to disengage any sense of boredom if I see progress... Fighting huge numbers of easy-to-beat monsters isn't a problem if I can see an end goal of a few extra XP or some crafting materials... I am probably the key audience for most of the generic MMOs going right now.

MMOs work by drawing you in, getting you to do repeated tasks over and over, always promising better rewards. Really, quests are just a structure to keep us focused on the what, where and why. If you stop and consider what it is you're doing... Well, in LotRO, whenever you get to any new area, the first set of quests run like this:

"We're cold - can you go and get us some boar/wolf/bear/kitten hides?

... while you're at it, we're hungry, can you get some meat from those animals too?

... also, we are under threat! Can you go and kill some bandits/goblins/orcs/door-to-door salesmen?"

Don't get me wrong - I'm enjoying the process of doing these things; but when you think "Lord of the Rings", you think of long journeys to remote places, and epic battles, and... well, Peter Jackson's movies have a lot to answer for. Watch the trailer for the trilogy, and on the whole you want the experience to be this. Frodo didn't take a break to make a lynx-meat sandwich; Aragorn didn't stretch his legs in the morning by taking broken daggers from goblins. It wouldn't have made good viewing.

But anyway... I finally did something in game that had that feeling, something Epic! My guy was ready for his class's level 50 legendary skill quest - I spoke to the quest giver, and was basically given four goals to achieve, monsters to find in all four corners of the world. Yes, they were still "kill these things and loot items", but journeying to the most remote corners of the world, places I hadn't seen yet, fighting or avoiding monsters that were generally bigger and nastier than anything I'd dealt with before... Yes. This was my adventure.

The sense of satisfaction when I returned, after several hours of working away at it all, spoke to the quest giver, was huge... although slightly dampened when he essentially said "Ok. Well, here's the second quest...". This was further dampened when it turned out this involved looting monsters who were in an area that I couldn't reach, due to the inconvenience of instantly dying when passing a key spot on route. Still, the good news was a different quest chain let me survive... so, spend a few more hours doing that one, feeling that bit more special for doing so.

More monsters. More grinding. More loot. More victory. All with that end goal in mind - all this work for that Legendary skill! How special it must be! Several hours later, I return...

"Not bad. Ok, here's the third quest." So be it, I have a hero to help ascend to further awesomeness...

When, best part of a day later I handed these items in, I did feel I had really worked to achieve something. It was something that had more of a sense of direction that just helping hungry hobbits eat to excess (seriously, there seem to be so many "hobbits want food" quests that I'm surprised there is a single animal left in the Shire. I also noticed a lack of Elves in the area, and have my suspicions).

It was pretty much the experience I hoped I'd have from a game like this. Seeing new places, facing new challenges...

... obviously, it is impossible to sustain this sort of content for every player for all of the time, which is where the mundane grind comes back in. But having this sort of experience, something that gives a sense of personal achievement rather than just a few silver coins, some XP and a few crafting materials... Yes. More, please.

Addendum: Oh, the skill - useless. I tried it once, realised it was rubbish (at least, for the way I play), haven't bothered using it again. So, that's what all the effort was supposedly for...

... at least I can appreciate the journey, if not the destination.