AwesomeButton
Proud owner of BG 3: Day of Swen's Tentacle
Epiphany and epitome are different things
Reply on topic to follow.
Reply on topic to follow.
A quality writer is able to do just that. Some RPG game masters can do that as well.If you think about it, it is completely unreasonable that we should ask video game writers to come up with a whole new world and make it coherent and intelligent.
Uhhh i am talking about world building and shit not about combat.Real live experience is something that drastic.I am talking about many simple experiences like going to camp in the mountains or visiting some medieval castle town in Europa.Communicating with other people and acquiring knowledge from the their stories and experience,seeing barfights,trying to pickup chicks while drunk.All those things and many monre have big effect on person and its writing capabilities.
I don't do fiction but few thoughts I came to think:People say they want 'escapism', but actually, what that really means is that they want the essentially same and comfortable groove of emotional orgasms. They complain they don't want real world politics* or the mundane work of eating and shitting or game mechanics that enforce thinking or failure, not because they want a fantasy lala land as different from reality as possible, but because they want the comforts of the world they know neatly sanitised of everything difficult. For many, it's about gratifying the frustrations pent up from the real world, not venturing into a truly different world that surprises them.
And so, for exactly the same reasons that they want 'escapism', they also want their escapist world to be samey, predictable, and basically the real world dressed up with pauldrons and titties equally as ginormous as the other. Actually basing your setting off Arab cultures or anything that they don't have a 2-second heuristic for understanding becomes frustrating for these players because now they don't know how to get their gratifications (whether because trying to be a 'hero' doesn't work out the same way, or because they can't dress up in the same way they do in every game, or whatever).
This is very difficult to improve because even though you say
(1) there's no financial incentive or room for companies to educate their employees or their employees to educate themselves; (2) these guys are often working with very ingrained intuitions for what feels fun or interesting, which comes from the same place of 'reality except everyone loves me', and so it's not easy for them to see it as a problem; (3) even if they overcame all this, they can't educate the audience who will whine and punish them with sales.caused mostly by lack of education that could easily be remedied
The solution has been the same as it always was: you need people who are broadly read and have a broad set of interests/experiences come into video game writing, not some dickface that's been playing DA2 all their life. For MCA and many others it is history, and even if it's familiar history like, I dunno, WW2 America, it matters when you actually study it. People make fun of creative writing degrees (and often for good reason) but a proper humanities education is traditionally what is supposed to provide this, as well.
*Though games inserting real world politics 1:1 is usually a dumb idea for other reasons
I think there might be quite double standard what comes to perceived quality of writing. It's not that games are considered dumb per se from where I come. It's that fantasy and sci-fi are considered dumb genres, because of Hollywood, be that films or TV. Now, with fans of these products this symmetry appears to be somehow reversed.
Why do people take my words so literal?!Seeing a bar fight and picking up girls is just a basic example,not a set in stone experience that will change your entire world.Also real live happenings can change your political and philosophical views.A person is summary if its life and experiences.Also seeing things is an experience,real live is not some rpg when you get exp only when you do shit.Also democracy and liberal propaganda are every where not only in your country,although you mericans are very bipolare,after all you have only two parties to vote for.Uhhh i am talking about world building and shit not about combat.Real live experience is something that drastic.I am talking about many simple experiences like going to camp in the mountains or visiting some medieval castle town in Europa.Communicating with other people and acquiring knowledge from the their stories and experience,seeing barfights,trying to pickup chicks while drunk.All those things and many monre have big effect on person and its writing capabilities.
Camping in modern style teaches you how to camp in modern style. Seeing a bar fight is nothing compared to experiencing being in a bar fight. Picking up women, or trying to, is your only example that would give someone the first hand experience to write about the experience.
Going to a medieval castle is something I've done and the experience could easily be replaced by looking at them in a book. More so, as the books I've read on castles gives me information on why it was built a specific way, the tools used, and the type of setting people lived in due to technology, which would much better lend themselves to setting than just looking at something.
Looking does nothing, doing gives experiences, learning gives knowledge. Also, the rpg settings and most popular games are the most unrealistic. If you read the posts of people who love games with no content revolved around just dungeons they love the most retarded and unrealistic dungeons and consider them designed well. The more retarded, obtuse, and confusing the dungeon the better in their opinion. If you look at the top 10 rpgs lauded by this site not one has a sensible setting nor a realistically designed dungeon.
Also, I do not think the people designing dungeons are the same designing setting and dialogue. I think a writers time would be far better spent reading up on old cultures and their governing philosophies, norms, and mors and the why of it than visiting castles. They would need to open their mind politically and philosophically and see the world outside of the cult bubble they live in, as people in various social ranks in the imagined culture, what they were raised to believe, and not impose their cult beliefs anachronistically on their thinking.
We live in a time where the current loud moth bullies want everyone to see in black and white. There is no grey. A couple years ago, or within the last decade at least, a cop on Brockton (or a town near Brockton, I forget which) was responding to a call. I special needs teen (mid to mate teens) was threatening a little girl with a knife and was escalating. The cop ended shooting the retarded guy. And all cultists hated him with a fervor for it. That cop probably didn't wake up hoping that day was the day he finally got to shoot a retard. He was put in a bad situation and made a call. He has to live with the decision he made. It most likely wasn't black and white for him and if he had the emotions of a robot and time to study the situation he may have been able to end the situation without lose of life. Maybe if he was smarter, or had better control of his emotions, or the situation was slightly changed things would have been different. Chances are he is a decent guy pulling the trigger on a retarded kid weighs on him and makes him feel like shit and he will have the guilt forever. The cultists call his job and blood because they are unable to see the grey. He did what the cult considers something a good person wouldn't, see he is bad and can only be hated. They are incapable of seeing his life, upbringing, beliefs, or morals as valid as it culminated in an outcome they dislike. Never mind that none of them had the courage to become a cop and be placed in that situation required to make a call that will weigh on their conscience. These are the people making the settings for well known rpgs. Visiting castles and going camping and watching bar fights isn't going to fix it.
LoL are you the epiphany of narrowminded or what?!I am baffled by how literal you take things.Orks,elfs,goblins and all other things exist in European folklore,even the dark elfs.Authors and creators frequently make allegory of real moments in history.For example the orks Warhammer represent the Turkish horde attacking the Empire aka Holly Roman Empire.If you can't see the obvious source of all those fictional works,then you need a better education.For fuck sake even the map of warhammer is nearly identical to the real world.
LoL are you the epiphany of narrowminded or what?!I am baffled by how literal you take things.Orks,elfs,goblins and all other things exist in European folklore,even the dark elfs.Authors and creators frequently make allegory of real moments in history.For example the orks Warhammer represent the Turkish horde attacking the Empire aka Holly Roman Empire.If you can't see the obvious source of all those fictional works,then you need a better education.For fuck sake even the map of warhammer is nearly identical to the real world.
All fantasy is inspired by history and myth. That doesn't make history and myth the primary source of most CRPGs. There's a significant and obvious difference between settings inspired directly by European history and myth, and those inspired through the filter of Dungeons and Dragons and Tolkien.
It's the difference between this:
And this:
The issue is that this potential advantage should sometimes come to something. What comes to this games, KotOR 2 IMO did it very well. I wrote about this in GD Trek thread. You can ignore parts related to Discovery, I was quite tired when I wrote it, but I think it's understandable. And it isn't just Enterprise, also what I wrote about Dark Matter is relevant.I think there might be quite double standard what comes to perceived quality of writing. It's not that games are considered dumb per se from where I come. It's that fantasy and sci-fi are considered dumb genres, because of Hollywood, be that films or TV. Now, with fans of these products this symmetry appears to be somehow reversed.
I think it can be said that fantasy/sci-fi have both advantages and disadvantages over more "conventional" settings.
After Enteprise was cancelled, fans attempted fund raiser to get season 5
I wouldn't know and I didn't wanted to hijack the topic for Trek discussion. It's known franchise, I made parallels to other less known series (Dark Matter) to prove my point that issues what Enterprise had weren't exclusive to it, or are even limited to films / TV but games as well. I could as well take new or old Battlestar Galactica. I actually appreciate what Moore was trying to do in series 3. How well it delivered during it's run it's another matter, finale was dictated by Larson so their that's another matter. At this point I guess we could ask how good was that classic BSG series 2? Wasn't it cancelled like, for a reason?After Enteprise was cancelled, fans attempted fund raiser to get season 5
Were they fans of Star Trek, or fans of Enterprise? If they were the latter, that would explain it.
I do understand where you're coming from, I just think you don't have enough understanding of the topic to make logical points.
Firstly, you lump Tolkien and D&D together as if they themselves exist in a vacuum of invention, as if they are the same thing. As if you see what exists as the most popular example of a genre and then attack it as a whole, because what you want to attack is whatever is in over-supply and you need something to lash out at to make your point. You see vague similarities between Tolkien and D&D and that's enough, everything is now under the umbrella of Tolkien and D&D, like they are some two headed dragon, two faces of the same beast. They are, to you, the summation of your bucket you like to call 'western'.
And this is the reason they ascended to the peak of popularity, causing you to get annoyed about the lack of variety. Tolkien and D&D are already providing tid-bits of all the cultures that you could dig up to make an RPG about. You want to make an african voodoo setting? D&D could do that. You want to make an oriental martial arts setting? D&D could do that.
What has happened is that D&D has ceased to influence the gaming world, having been absent for 15 years, and yet developers still wish to cash in on that market, or, if you prefer less cold language for developers that still care more for their reputation than dollars through the door, developers still have the enthusiasm to recreate the joy of a D&D atmosphere. If it's not the real thing then its going to struggle to match the quality of the real thing, this is the same for any product ever created, from Pepsi versus Coca Cola to Steven Segal versus Sylvester Stallone.
With D&D losing its gleam through repeated photcopying, people such as yourself are complaining that the D&D influence is to blame, when the problem has nothing to do with D&D, quite the opposite, its the absence of D&D which is helping to fuel your disdain. In looking for something 'new', you are in fact regressing by retreating back along the lines in the above diagram, looking for one of the already merged influences, digging it out, and presenting it as new and fresh, neither realising nor caring that by doing so you are regressing the possibilities open to a creator with what they can do with their setting and regressing the global appeal down to something altogether more narrow and colloquial. Niche'ing your niche.
D&D already has everything you need to make any game you want in any setting. D&D is not to blame and D&D has no connection to any catch-all descriptor of what it is, in your case the hyperbole of 'western'. What is to blame is the same thing that's always to blame... a complete lack of imagination combined with people who don't actually care enough from a craftsman perspective combined with people such as yourself who use these failings to invent hyperbolic political statements.
This is not to say myopic and narrow games shouldn't exist. This isn't to say specialist niches within niches shouldn't exist. This isn't to say only D&D should exist, this is just explaining why D&D is at the top of the tree, why it does not meet any hyperbolic criteria of invented stereotype and why you don't get why what you're suggesting is both redundant and purely academic.
It is the limited genral knowledge of writers that keeps settling us with tropes like "elves are repressed minority, live in ghettoes, but they are wiser than their oppressors and have good hearts, their lives matter". The hacks who call themselves game writers simply have nothing to draw on. I'll try giving a real example next time, of how worldbuilding can be approached better.
Tolkien and Dungeons and Dragons are simply the two most significant and powerful influences on modern fantasy CRPGs. I have never said that they are one and the same or that they are the ONLY influences. I have also never said that they were sui generis, so cut the crap.
No one is blaming Dungeons and Dragons, or Tolkien, or Warcraft. I have always placed the blame on CRPG developers themselves. Again, cut the crap.
The problem is that, by and large, developers approach fantasy world building through the assumptions and stereotypes created by Dungeons and Dragons and Tolkien.
Which one is it? I know of at least two. And I can think of at least two more, which have some variation of this trope.
Dragon Age - three games, here!
Any game where characters constantly exclaim "Magic must be to blame!", "You see what foul magic brought to us!?" They just have the race "elves" substituted for the societal group "magic practitioners". This includes BGII and a host of others.
How about PoE? "Hurr, durr, animancy is bad!" Obsidian have tried to give animancy a more nuanced outlook where the player decides for himself how bad is it, but ultimately Sawyer acknowledged that they have portrayed them as evil too often and as benign too rarely.
Your turn now, "dickhead".
How about PoE? "Hurr, durr, animancy is bad!" Obsidian have tried to give animancy a more nuanced outlook where the player decides for himself how bad is it, but ultimately Sawyer acknowledged that they have portrayed them as evil too often and as benign too rarely.
I remember playing KoDP when it first came out and having to adjust my mindset to that of the Orlanthi, xenophobic, warlike, cow obsessed, traditional and omen ridden. Stealing and battle not unfriendly but a natural part of culture that all clans should indulge in. Refreshing.
That kind of stuff was only really possible because they were using a pre-existing setting; tabletop RPGs are/were a lot more creative than cRPGs, and they didn't have to do all the legwork themselves.
That's what most games should be doing.
If you think about it, it is completely unreasonable that we should ask video game writers to come up with a whole new world and make it coherent and intelligent. Even in places with the most amount of support writing gets within the industry, e.g. Obsidian, Bioware, CD Projekt, you've got a few people whose published work usually amounts to a couple other games that aren't given the whole 5 years to write the game but anything from a plot written in one night to at best a few months of sketching out that is supposed to then support a gazillion words of dialogue and reactivity and level design and whatnot. No wonder it's full of random stuff you think up on the shitter, that's all there's time for.
I'd much rather have them learn to pick good source material - no, don't give me a fucking game based on a superhero comic book in an endless spiral of derivation, pick some nice moment in history, do some research, maybe a good p&p system, and then work on it.
Complete bullshit, doesn't merit an answer.Dragon Age - three games, here!
Any game where characters constantly exclaim "Magic must be to blame!", "You see what foul magic brought to us!?" They just have the race "elves" substituted for the societal group "magic practitioners". This includes BGII and a host of others.
How about PoE? "Hurr, durr, animancy is bad!" Obsidian have tried to give animancy a more nuanced outlook where the player decides for himself how bad is it, but ultimately Sawyer acknowledged that they have portrayed them as evil too often and as benign too rarely.
Your turn now, "dickhead".
Dragon Age - 3 games... all in the same contextual universe, so, duh, they maintain their coherence = 1 example.
BG2 - oh, look Bioware again. So not 'developers', still just 1 example.
Poe? Animancy? What the fuck has that got to do with any of your previous points? And anyway, it's a spritual successor to... A Bioware game...
Wow, such strong detail arises when you actually have to provide examples...
You mean... "I don't like Bioware's interpretation of cRPGs", yeah, no shit sherlock. But Bioware /= "developers".
As for the topic I agree. Cultures is a little bit to much tropes, to little "being different" and seldom thought out well enough. When setting creators use our history to create cultures they take the incorrect approach. they directly use aspects of real world cultures to build one; When in reality they should build the culture from the real world factors that built those cultures they copy. Trade, religion, biome; things like that. Race, what place does the race have in the world?
As for the topic I agree. Cultures is a little bit to much tropes, to little "being different" and seldom thought out well enough. When setting creators use our history to create cultures they take the incorrect approach. they directly use aspects of real world cultures to build one; When in reality they should build the culture from the real world factors that built those cultures they copy. Trade, religion, biome; things like that. Race, what place does the race have in the world?
Care to provide some actual offenders that meet the requirement of "creators" (as in getting away from your 'everyone' generalisation)?