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Darth Windu posted:That is some terrible bullshit tarot. I'm pretty sure all tarot readings are terrible bullshit.
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Sep 27, 2014 02:39
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Bioware fans are by and away the worst thing about bioware games
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Sep 27, 2014 02:40
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NeurosisHead posted:Bioware fans are by and away the worst thing about bioware games The worst thing is the company that cultivates them.
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Sep 27, 2014 02:46
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Opposing Farce posted:I'm pretty sure all tarot readings are terrible bullshit. Yes. Lotish posted:This comes dangerously close to sounding like the Bioware writers did some basic research on symbolism and poo poo before they made their characters/painted these cards. I'm very hungry, so not thinking straight right now, but are you saying it's a bad thing that the artists maybe did research into something that they were basing their artwork on? There are A LOT of different tarot card decks, all with the same suits or whatever you call them, but with completely different artwork. Did I miss the part where the person describing the meaning of the cards mentioned a specific deck? Or were you saying it sounds like the artists are competent? Because artists tend to do a lot of research when creating things for world building. Bored fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 03:08
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Bored posted:I'm very hungry, so not thinking straight right now, but are you saying it's a bad thing that the artists maybe did research into something that they were basing their artwork on? There are A LOT of different tarot card decks, all with the same suits or whatever you call them, but with completely different artwork. Did I miss the part where the person describing the meaning of the cards mentioned a specific deck? I'm pretty sure he's being sarcastic. As in, "I can barely believe Bioware actually did some background work," which, based on that Gaider anecdote about Morrigan, seems like a fair thing to be skeptical about.
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Sep 27, 2014 03:12
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Bored posted:I'm very hungry, so not thinking straight right now, but are you saying it's a bad thing that the artists maybe did research into something that they were basing their artwork on?
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Sep 27, 2014 03:13
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Drifter posted:(really we only talk about the writers, I got mad props for the programmers). And the art directors, really it seems like the only aspect of modern gaming that's still stuck in the stone age, quality-wise, is the writing. So many hames have great art and solid gameplay, but with story and characters that are sophomoric at their very best.
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Sep 27, 2014 03:16
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AngryBooch posted:If it follows the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer scheme, those are the available abilities for each character period. But they can be leveled up and improved. More than likely additional characters with different skill combinations will be added over time although I don't know what the Dragon Age equivalent of a Volus is. 
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Sep 27, 2014 03:16
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Drifter posted:He's sarcastically saying that it's uncharacteristic of the quality and standards of Bioware to put forth legitimate effort (really we only talk about the writers, I got mad props for the programmers). Thank you.
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Sep 27, 2014 03:26
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Skippy McPants posted:And the art directors, really it seems like the only aspect of modern gaming that's still stuck in the stone age, quality-wise, is the writing. So many hames have great art and solid gameplay, but with story and characters that are sophomoric at their very best. Good writing is considerably more difficult than either of those things.
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Sep 27, 2014 04:39
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Darth Windu posted:Good writing is considerably more difficult than either of those things. And tends to be far more subjective to boot.
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Sep 27, 2014 04:41
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Well that's just not true at all.
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Sep 27, 2014 04:43
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Subjective maybe, but I wouldn't call it more difficult than art direction and game design, neither of those are easy to do well. I really think it's more that most companies just don't invest in finding or developing good writing talent. The best known "Story Guys" in the video game industry are probably Chris Metzen and David Gaider, that's how low the bar is in this medium.
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Sep 27, 2014 04:45
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Flagrant Abuse posted:Genlocks, obviously. Rock, rock, rock like a genlock! 
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Sep 27, 2014 05:04
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Skippy McPants posted:The best known "Story Guys" in the video game industry are probably Chris Metzen and David Gaider, that's how low the bar is in this medium. i guess avellone gets added as a stretch goal for every other kickstarter just for bein a cool dude thats down to drink hella booze also nvm the houser bros
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Sep 27, 2014 05:10
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Blue Raider posted:i guess avellone gets added as a stretch goal for every other kickstarter just for bein a cool dude thats down to drink hella booze I said best known, not only known. There is some talent in the industry, just not nearly enough when compared to the depth of talent in other relevant disciplines.
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Sep 27, 2014 05:30
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Skippy McPants posted:I said best known, not only known. There is some talent in the industry, just not nearly enough when compared to the depth of talent in other relevant disciplines. I never understood why the movie and TV industry is able to hire amazing writers but not the gaming industry - especially since the gaming industry makes more money than Hollywood. Is it a matter of writers preferring their work to be more widely known or something (as in, more people know Breaking Bad or True Detective than Dragon Age or Mass Effect) ?
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Sep 27, 2014 05:42
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Actually, occasionally games will hire TV or Movie writes to write their stuff. It tends not to end well, since writing a videogame is very different from writing a tv series or movie.
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Sep 27, 2014 05:52
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Furism posted:I never understood why the movie and TV industry is able to hire amazing writers but not the gaming industry - especially since the gaming industry makes more money than Hollywood. Is it a matter of writers preferring their work to be more widely known or something (as in, more people know Breaking Bad or True Detective than Dragon Age or Mass Effect) ? I think it's because games, especially those where good writers shine like big RPGs, are huge writing projects. Also, I'd guess there are probably decent writers working on most games, but they're part of a writing team, and that tends to muddy things up. A lot of the issues with games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect have to do as much with voice work, editing, and time schedules as just poo poo writing. Like the bizarre exchange between Shepard and Cortez at the end of ME3 is basically a matter of them rushing that segment of the game, so it doesn't matter if the writing was decent, the actual product was edited down to poo poo.
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Sep 27, 2014 05:53
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Furism posted:I never understood why the movie and TV industry is able to hire amazing writers but not the gaming industry - especially since the gaming industry makes more money than Hollywood. Is it a matter of writers preferring their work to be more widely known or something (as in, more people know Breaking Bad or True Detective than Dragon Age or Mass Effect) ? They could hire betters writers if they wanted to, but as for why they don't, I think it's just that people don't hold them to a high enough standard. I.E. nobody expects games to have good writing, so people of even middling to low talent can shine with a modest effort. Dudes like Metzen and Gaider got in early, back when game story mostly consisted of a few fluff pages in the manual, and got themselves entrenched. It doesn't matter that they're hacks, because so long as the games are selling nobody really questions them. They're like the Rob Liefelds of gaming; Rob Liefeld posted:"I'll be the first to tell you that we [the Image collective] were never the best artists. We were never the best at anything, but just like a song or a band or whatever, we caught on and we toured rigorously." It's sad, but narrative in gaming is still enough of a novelty that most people are willing to settle for and praise any narrative focus, regardless of its quality. Skippy McPants fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 05:55
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Skippy McPants posted:It's sad, but narrative in gaming is still enough of a novelty that most people are willing to settle for and praise any narrative focus, regardless of its quality. That's probably the main reason writers don't really flock to videogames, and not just from the consumer point but on the dev side as well. Like, if you're an aspiring writer you probably won't choose the medium where your contribution is gonna end up getting axed because it didn't fit with some stuff the level designer just made this morning. I realize that this is common throughout movies and TV as well but writing is obviously not nearly as prioritized in games as in those. Also doesn't help that the stuff that does end up on screen is gonna be acted out by polygonal antihuman golems buried deep within the uncanny valley.
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Sep 27, 2014 07:00
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Skippy McPants posted:Subjective maybe, but I wouldn't call it more difficult than art direction and game design, neither of those are easy to do well. I really think it's more that most companies just don't invest in finding or developing good writing talent. I can't find it now, but a while back I read an essay arguing that the answer to better video game writing isn't "hire better writers." Game companies have tried hiring better writers, and it never works out because the fundamental flaw with game writing isn't the writing itself but the purpose that writing needs to serve for the game. To wit: it is nearly impossible for a story to be interesting or meaningful when it exists only as five-minute snippets between scenes where the protagonist shoots people in the face for half an hour. Even games like Bioware's that purport to be more story-focused and thoughtful fall into the same fundamental trap: the story needs to create an excuse for gameplay, and in Bioware games as in every other AAA title, "gameplay" is synonymous with "combat." This creates a problem, because constant violent conflict on the level you need to sustain an 8 or 12 or 30-hour experience really does not mesh with any kind of genuine human experience other than abject loving misery. The only story you can tell about killing hundreds of people that has any real human resonance is "Jesus Christ you murdered like a thousand people that's really hosed up," Spec Ops-style, and that story A. doesn't sell very well to the CoD crowd and B. would lose its power really quickly if it got repeated ad nauseum. Opposing Farce fucked around with this message at 07:57 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 07:32
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Gaming's also a really young medium, and it's hard to even get a working definition of what good writing looks like because there hasn't been much of it.
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Sep 27, 2014 07:35
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Gaming's also a really young medium, and it's hard to even get a working definition of what good writing looks like because there hasn't been much of it. But it doesn't take an aged medium to show that Gaider is a loving hack.
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Sep 27, 2014 07:37
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Mordiceius posted:But it doesn't take an aged medium to show that Gaider is a loving hack. Yeah, this is a good point. I think it's partly that combat is so much easier to simulate than human interactions and characters, and so games tend to be about combat because it's what they can do. "Does bullet hit baddie" is something a computer can work out. "Is person happy" isn't, beyond a really crude level.
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Sep 27, 2014 07:43
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The traditionally "game-y" games* that have the most effective storytelling are the ones who embrace the fact that they're operating as genre fiction and strive to tell a really interesting genre story, with all of the heightened stakes/emotions and fantasticality that allows. Transistor comes to mind as a game that, while you can argue how successful it is (I personally really like it but that's neither here nor there), tries to take its sci-fi cyberpunk genre setup and tell a story that's thematically interesting with creative worldbuilding, genuine human emotion, and nuanced conflicts both within and between its characters. (Bastion does too, but it's a little more straightforward and not quite as focused on the human element.) Bioware games are unapologetically genre fiction, but their goal has never really been to do something interesting or thematically complex within that framework; their motivation is a pretty transparent "we think fantasy/sci-fi stuff is cool so we want to make a fantasy/sci-fi playground where YOU can be the fantasy/sci-fi hero." It's wish fulfillment/power fantasy storytelling executed on a scale and with production values that, if we're being perfectly honest, does not really exist elsewhere in the industry. (Obsidian is the closest, but they trade Bioware's scope/budget and uncomplicated Hollywood flash for depth and more interesting writing, which is why their games are better but don't sell as well.) What I'm saying is, I enjoy Bioware games for what they are, but they're not and never were the standard-bearers of hope for video game writing. *What I mean is, excluding indie experiments like Dys4ia or Gone Home that try to approach the medium from a different, non-combat focused angle. Opposing Farce fucked around with this message at 08:06 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 07:56
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And in the case of "gone home" you have a tonne of nerds going "But this isn't really a game at all!" Because they are incapable of playing a game where you do not murder every living human around you. I just wish more games would integrate the "talking battles" section from Human revolution, that would make things a lot more interesting, and be proof that you don't need shooting to be a viable game. Like if you had a medieval castle management game where you are in charge of leading people from a first person perspective, but are crappy at actually swinging a sword and instead need to convince, lie and wheeler deal your way to success. A "littlefinger/ tyrion lannister" simulator basically.
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Sep 27, 2014 08:10
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Part of the problem may be that games by necessity are not about stories. Devs have to fit their plans into the paradigm of "the player must feel like he's making a choice." So instead of creating one unified vision of the game's tone and plot and themes they have to make something that accomodates a bunch of different playstyles. It's not like a book, where everyone argues over a single source. Games are a bunch of different sources jammed together where players are encouraged to pick and choose what they like and discard the rest. What was nice about Gone Home and The Dark Descent and A Machine for Pigs and even nerd bait like Final Fantasy VII (vanilla 7, not this compilation nonsense) is that while they weren't the best written stories, at least they were stories about a protagonist and the relationships between the protagonist and the people around them. They were unified, they had a story to tell and in order to keep playing you have to interact with that story. Bioware games aren't about that and while it isn't really bad to consume pop culture junk food it does become a problem when there isn't an alternative.
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Sep 27, 2014 09:09
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I guess I'll have to stick to Obsidian games and the like then. Mask of the Betrayer, and even KotoR2 were great. I didn't catch half of the topics and meanings of the game because "meh, games" until I read the LPs.
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Sep 27, 2014 09:24
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HIJK posted:Part of the problem may be that games by necessity are not about stories. I mean, you sort of figured this out yourself a paragraph later, but that's not really true of all games or all types of games. Video games are or at least can be about stories, they just aren't about stories in the same way films or novels are about stories--that is, they don't go about stories in the same way as other types of media, because video games are their own medium with their own language. That language is still in its infancy, the same way film first started codifying most of the cinematic conventions we recognize now 100 years ago, and right now the medium is very much in an uncomfortable growing pains stage, but that's kind of what makes this a really exciting time for video games in spite of all the bullshit. Opposing Farce fucked around with this message at 09:44 on Sep 27, 2014 |
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Sep 27, 2014 09:38
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HIJK posted:Part of the problem may be that games by necessity are not about stories. Devs have to fit their plans into the paradigm of "the player must feel like he's making a choice." So instead of creating one unified vision of the game's tone and plot and themes they have to make something that accomodates a bunch of different playstyles. It's not like a book, where everyone argues over a single source. Games are a bunch of different sources jammed together where players are encouraged to pick and choose what they like and discard the rest. So I take it you didn't play Baldur's Gate?
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Sep 27, 2014 09:49
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Most games that are trying to get the 'fans of story' have to make an actual game aspect to that feature. Eg; a branching story line. Which is something that generally degrades the quality of any narrative. Stories thrive on structure and the more complexity you add in regards to choice, the worse that story does. It also has to do with who won the business war and how they did it. Studios that prioritized gameplay and graphics were the ones that ended up with all the money when the 'casual' game market started to open up. They were the ones who ended up dominating the industry. Activision, Blizzard, ect. Companies that phoned it in on the stories and so continue to do the same. Comparatively, the companies that were known for really good writing are all went bankrupt or otherwise were effectively ended. BIS, Looking Glass, Troika, Lucasarts. Great IPs like Fallout got sold to studios that are uncomfortable writing anything that isn't dry emotionless exposition. The only ones still alive are Obsidian and Remedy but they are barely making ends meet. Bioware is the only 'story focused' company that ever made it big, and as others have noticed they are more about cliches and self-masturbatory wish fulfillment. Granted other writing focused studios have started to show up in the past few years. Valve hired some good writers. Larian is kickstartering stuff. CDPR is probably the only studio making tons of money and making big AAA games with quality writing. And that's mostly because of what I call the HBO effect. Subsidize good stories with titties and gore to lure in the plebs.
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Sep 27, 2014 10:37
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Didn't Lucasarts stop making point and clicks to just churn out star wars games? And didn't Troika become infamous for releasing rushed/broken games? As for Bullfrog, that is honestly a great big shame. But I do not think people wanting to have fun shooting at things need to be criticised for it, it's just separate from story games.
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Sep 27, 2014 12:12
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Point and click adventures were dying anyway, and to be fair some of the Star Wars games they developed / published were fantastic.
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Sep 27, 2014 12:19
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Torrannor posted:So I take it you didn't play Baldur's Gate? The only baldur's gate that i have played was Baldur's Gate Dark alliance II. I loved playing it coop with my best mate.. Kinda want to play it coop on pc but i doubt it'll happen
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Sep 27, 2014 14:03
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The two big strikes against writing for games are: 1) Because the the size of the project, it pretty much has to be a collaborative effort with all the risks and problems that that implies. It's the same reason movies and TV shows trend towards mediocrity much harder than novels: it's harder to stick to a single vision when you're at the beck and call of directors, producers, and production budgets. 2) It's really, really hard to write well when you don't control the way that the user experiences your content. It's like writing with both hands tied behind your back. It isn't just branching decision trees, although those are hard too, it's stuff like pace and visual direction. Ever watch a movie and notice how they deliver meaning to the viewer by quick shots focusing on specific aspects of the scene? A glimpse of a hand drawing a gun, a lingering view of someone's face as they experience unexpected emotion, etc. You can't do any of that if the viewer also controls the direction of gaze, which is something the player expects from most games. That's a huge storytelling toolbox just chucked out right off the bat. Even in something as on-the-rails as an adventure game, which not-coincidentally are usually held to have much better storytelling than more freeform action games, you can't control things like pacing or, in most cases, sequence of events. You have to make room for the player to play the game in your game. The best you can usually hope for are staggered action/cutscene/action/cutscene plots, which usually feel chopped up and poorly paced because they are chopped up and poorly paced by definition. There are more immersive ways to deliver story in game design, but they are really, really hard. Crack open the Director's Commentaries in the Half Life Episodes or Portal and see all the things they subtly did to make the player experience the story in the way they intended by guiding the viewpoint to scenes of significance the same way a director would in a movie; it's a level of behavioral conditioning that hardly anyone outside of Valve has been able to afford to do.
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Sep 27, 2014 15:04
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Look, I just want a game in a Neil Stepheson setting, with characters written by Terry Pratchet and dialogues by Kevin Smith. 
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Sep 27, 2014 15:31
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You maybe had me up until Kevin Smith, but I think I'll pass on that one.
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Sep 27, 2014 15:58
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Furism posted:with characters written by Terry Pratchet Ohhh, I don't think his characters would be very...memorable these days.  
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Sep 27, 2014 16:15
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Too soon  But hey his daughter's a decent game writer, so there's that.
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Sep 27, 2014 16:20
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