Edge Magazine – Nov 2007
Biffovision (Grumble Feature Enabled) author -Mr Biffo
Quoting Terry Pratchett to say
‘Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.’
Although not a fan of Pratchett he was lamenting the loss of creativity in games in the pursuit of greater and greater levels of realism in. In essence all games are in some way fantasy although not in the
‘dragons/elves/ breaking-into-peoples-cottages-to-smash-their-vases sense of the word, but in the more general sense of being transported to somewhere that isn’t real.’
‘The more real our gameworlds become, the more mundane we risk them becoming.’
I don’t think this is an argument that is exclusive to videogames, painting was forced to some extent to re-invent itself and its methods of conveying ideas with the advent of photography, it was no longer required to represent the world with as much realism as possible. Some would argue that this gave painting a ‘shot in the arm’ and forced the medium down routes that may have otherwise never been taken. However for games at least there are some genres that by definition will always strive for greater realism, for example the ‘Gran Tourismo’ series relies on recreating real world racetracks and cars as accurately as possible, does this make it a better game then say ‘Burnout’ which takes a far more unrealistic line on the driving experience? Also surely there must be a stage at which a simulator game, whether that be driving, football or wargame, becomes so realistic that by definition it could only be played successfully played by the top F1 drivers, professional footballers and soldiers. At that stage Biffo hopes that;
‘…once they’ve decoded the genome of realistic physics and animation then all of that will take a backseat to the fantasy.’
Of course there are bigger questions to answer, what is reality? for example. Maybe if we do ever get to the stage where games are photo-realistic and played with VR helmets and some sort of sensory suit so that games become a reality of sorts, then of course it all comes down to smell. Yeah you read it right, the last sense to be recreated in entertainment, so maybe they invent some sort or olfactory generator. Could people spend their entire lives in a game? And then later would that be the idea? Matrix anyone?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
As I see it simulations of reality only provide a virtual world in which games can be played, the simulation itself is not a game.
Also as you have appreciated if the simulation of reality extends to the player then the virtual world will become inaccessible to the game player except insofar as the player can only do things in the virtual world that they can do in the real world. Hence a contradiction, what is the point!
Consequently, the virtual character and the virtual world cannot rely on either the real world nor the real player. The world must be distorted in some way to accommodate the game to be played in the virtual world. This distortion will affect the behaviour/abilities of both the player character and the NPCs within the game (assuming that the simulation is able to properly represent the behaviour of living organisms; movement, emotions, speech etc).
If the game is a simulation of some story with NPCs playing the part of key characters in the story and the player playing the part of the ‘hero’ then the simulation would have to know the story and be able to dynamically adjust it to the behaviour of the player (controlling the hero). It seems to me this is pretty much in the realms of Science Fiction as that level of computing and programming will not be available for the foreseeable future (100s of years).
Even if all the characters in the virtual world are played by ‘real’ people in the sense of an MMO, the NPCs would have to be played by ‘actors’ and the player and the actors would have to conform to the ‘rules of the game’ and stick pretty much to ‘standard’ scenarios. The whole problem of viewing games as ‘simulations’ seems to be a minefield of questions that cannot be answered. However if games are viewed as constructs that include some elements that are simulated and some that are scripted/programmed according to the game rules the whole thing becomes a manageable problem and returns us to Games people want to play and does not lead us down a virtual path to people living in virtual worlds.
Post a Comment