Tasteful Understated Nerdrage/MrBtongue Thread

[Lancehead]

There's deep C&C and shallow C&C. The former is based on multiple layers of choices, variables, stats and skills, etc that are accrued throughout gameplay, while the latter is typically based on simple binary CYOA dialogues with little context.

I think the difference is that in one case the game systems and mechanics come out of the game world, whereas in other cases game world exists largely separately from the systems and mechanics.

 

[Infinitron]

Actually, on second thought, I understand what he was trying to get at. It's not so much that the effect of Fallout-like C&C is "world simulation". He's talking about the motivation of the designers for adding that type of C&C to the game, which was that they wanted to allow the player to affect the world in a plausible fashion to some extent.

"Simulation" isn't the best term for describing this, I think, since it's usually associated with sandboxy "living world"-type games with emergent gameplay.

 

[Lord Andre]

Eh, just because Bethesda uses the word doesn't mean they own it. The TUN guy usually uses the classical meaning of words and if not he will warn you when a slang term is presented.

 

[tuluse]

I think think it's the wrong way to frame the concept of c&c. The problem isn't that Mordin lives or dies based on an arbitrary standard. The game did a fine job foreshadowing the fact that loyalty would affect the survivability of the characters (it might have even outright said so, I don't remember). The problem is that it's not a real consequence (in the context of ME2 and only ME2). Imagine if the Mordin death consequence came half way through the game instead of the end. Now if you failed to get his loyalty, you lose out on the possible upgrades he could have researched for you and you're down a man for the suicide mission.

The c&c here is no more simulation than it was before, but it's a hell of a lot more interesting.

 

[BobtheTree]

That, too. I think it also has to do with wold states vs. which cutscenes play in the last act of the game. Fallout has a number of various states that change based on player actions, Mass Effect 2 just plays different cutscenes.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Why violence?

Shadenuat

Machocruz

My thoughts on the most recent video and the thing that MrBtongue did not touch on at all:

Videogame violence is an aesthetic representation of mechanics. Games are sets of rules which facilitate failure and win states. Shooters are effectively pattern-matching and reflex games wherein the goal is to place a cursor over a target in an allotted time. Ammo management, health, etc. are supplementary mechanics that make the shooting system more interesting. Now tell me, how many themes map logically to this set of mechanics?

It's also important to understand the realities of game development. Making a shooter that plays to modern standards takes dozens if not hundreds of people months or even years. It costs lots of money. And in the end, what is the shooting? A set of graphics and mechanics which can be recycled again and again in order to provide entertainment. That is, the initial investment cost of shooting enemies in a satisfying way is high, but once it's done you basically have a game ready to go.

MrBtongue's comparison of dialogue to shooting is not fair because dialogue systems rely far more on unique content, including writing, scripting and voice acting, which for the most part cannot be reused. That does not mean we can't take major steps to implement non-combat elements in ways that are just as satisfying and reusable as the mechanics in shooters (mini-games are one way developers try to do this), but it does mean that you may have to make sacrifices in other parts of the gameplay to do it.

Part of the problem, of course, is that the only mechanics and systems that developers are exploring are ones that are thematically consistent with shooting. So, we have iron sights as a new mechanic because we are fixated on ways to make shooting more accessible. But I think a lot of the problem also boils down to the fact that for this gameplay style that has worked so well for the industry, violence really is one of the few ways to visually describe it.

In other words, the limiting factor, in my opinion, is not solely violence (though that is a factor in actually marketing a game and getting investors/publishers on board), but rather in the relatively narrow and limiting set of mechanics and systems which are considered appropriate for mass market use. Sadly, the mass market is always there to confirm this is the case, because like it or not, many people do want pretty mindless, fluffy entertainment. Most Western triple-A games are so expensive that you also put your return on investment at significantly increased risk. Ultimately you aren't making a game because it's your dream game: you're making it to make money for someone else, and to keep your ass employed.

This is true. Yet all this has an underlying reason that informs all of it.


The answer is - Because it is easy.

Especially in games, this easiness of violence is multiplied by manifolds.
Since you dont kill real people. Or... youre not even "killing" - because its so unreal, and you can just think of it as just "winning". Or just... "defeating the enemy" - without any big reason to go into any details of it.
But if you want to - it is very Easy. "I killed that dude haha!" "Head shooot!"
No problem. He isnt real.
You can safely enjoy it.
Its Easy.


And the games make it even Easier, because all enemies are so obviously and intentionally evil.
From their backgrounds, motives to the very way they look.
Games lavishly supply players with numerous excuses of all kinds. Informational and visual. If they ever implement smells into the games you can be sure the enemies will smell badly.

Those that dont do this are very rare, almost non-existant.
If nothing else - youre "killing" nameless, faceless irrelevant fodder, even in those games that try to present at least a few characters as something more - in order to get to them in the first place.

It is not only Easy - but it is Easy in numerous ways and on numerous levels - and its the Easiest way to cause the feeling of ego satisfaction in the player - in the fastest way possible.
Which will make them return for more.
This approach then makes it Easier than any other.

All the while - without any reason to feel guilty about any of it - which makes all of it Easy.


We loved violence in all its forms because of these same reasons throughout our history.
This is the answer why did Germans as people succumb to something so obviously "evil" as nazism and everything it caused.

This is the answer why there is racism of any kind.

Not just simplistically because it is Easy - but because it is Easier then the other options.
It is Easier to kill someone then to convince him into accepting your views.

It is Easier to try and wipe out Jewish people then to actually solve problems of economy, socio-political system and everyday reality.
It is Easier to just blame some specific group for all of it.
Today, it is Easier for Jevish politicians to act aggressively and with violence against Palestinians then to find a better solution. It is Easier for Hezbollah to plant bombs around Israel and kill civilians then to fight Jevish army.
It is Easier for Jevish army to send aerial strikes or artillery strikes that kill many civilians then to try not to.

We are hardwired to feel pleasure when we win over someone. When we are stronger.
Defeat hurts. Winning feels good. Dopamine releases.
Even in just written arguments like the kind we have here, the one who is perceived as stronger in any sense is largely accepted as a winner, and brofisted regardless of the specifics.
We never praise the looser, right?

And of course, there is the US and their schtick about teh "Winners".
People still believe that shit in the US even if its obviously not true and most know it - because it is Easy.
or.... Easier.



And so it goes in games. What is Easier?
To make a game only about combat or to design and successfully implement other modes of gameplay?
And even if you do... which games will have more audience? More sales?
And around which games will people cluster and buy even more of? Around "winners" or those that are... not winners?
Why? Because it is Easy and Easier.


-edit

what i say encompasses both what TuN and Errant Signal say
their takes are merely a part of the concept entirety - focused above.

i watched errant signal video after i wrote this too,
but it was nice to see someone recognized the aspect of Ease, even just partially.

Interesting, because whilst I respected Spec Ops: The Line for what they were trying to do (i.e. make the start of the game look deliberately like a CoD clone, and then slowly make it clear that by adopting the shooter mentality of doing whatever it takes to win - massacre 50 soldiers with a turret, why not? Kill civilians who are attacking you because you destroyed the city's only water supply in order to break your enemy's strangelhold over the population, why not? Use white phosphorous (and find out later that the casualties includes a school building with about 30 dead children huddling in terror under their school-seats unable to escape the white phosphorous) because it's the only way of 'getting the mission done'? why not?' - when you're playing it it's no more effective at conveying death than the games it's trying to criticise.

I actually think Spec Ops: The Line might have achieved its goals more successfully (but sold worse) if it had broken away from the CoD gameplay after the early section, and (whilst it does let you make some choices - including 2 obvious ending choices, and a couple of harder to find but very very fitting ones) opened up a bit more to give you SOME opportunities to take the high road and avoid some of the horrors that you end up inflicting (by the end of the game, it's clear that the carnage you've caused is easily worse than the rogue 'Kurtz-from-Heart-of-Darkness analogue' squadron you were trying to stop). It would have been interesting to see how many players used the white phosophorous to easily clear the zone, and how many painstakingly played their way against a near-impossible number of enemies in order to avoid the horror of chemical weapons (the reason that using white phosphorous is a war crime is made pretty clear after you've used it) and avoid civillian casualities. I suspect few would have even considered not using the white phosphorous an option, and it would have been a much bigger kick in the guts to see a 'Walking Dead' style stat screen showing what major choices you made and what percentage of other gamers made them - kind of like a 'you know that bit where your squadmates are horrified at you, there's burning and moaning corpses all around dying slowly and ultra-painfully and a bunch of dead school-children? You didn't ACTUALLY have to do that you CoD drone'.

 

[Lord Andre]

Good C&C comes naturally from the rules and events of the world and can be anticipated by applying the setting's internal logic to the situation. In a situation where the player doesn't posses the in-game information necessary to speculate on the choice's outcome, it's very important that at least the consequence makes sense in hind sight e.g. a plot twist.

C&C based on meta rules and other arbitrary rulings introduced by devs artificially or that contradict previous established events are bad retarded.

 

[PlanHex]

And lol people are talking about RPGCodex in the comments.

Well, my first thought when I saw the video title in my youtube feed was *Codexer detected*...

 

[Delterius]

And lol people are talking about RPGCodex in the comments.

Well, my first thought when I saw the video title in my youtube feed was *Codexer detected*...

You'd think, but the internet being what it is such things quickly gain proportion. If the Prestigious Magazine and VD really created the term C&C (and it seems the Codex is the only place that takes the abreviation for granted), by now even BioWare Social and BioWare Marketting use the term.

 

[Infinitron]

And lol people are talking about RPGCodex in the comments.

Well, my first thought when I saw the video title in my youtube feed was *Codexer detected*...

You'd think, but the internet being what it is such things quickly gain proportion. If the Prestigious Magazine and VD really created the term C&C (and it seems the Codex is the only place that takes the abreviation for granted), by now even BioWare Social and BioWare Marketting use the term.

I've pointed TUN to this forum several times, so he may have actually picked it up lurking here.

 

[Delterius]

And lol people are talking about RPGCodex in the comments.

Well, my first thought when I saw the video title in my youtube feed was *Codexer detected*...

You'd think, but the internet being what it is such things quickly gain proportion. If the Prestigious Magazine and VD really created the term C&C (and it seems the Codex is the only place that takes the abreviation for granted), by now even BioWare Social and BioWare Marketting use the term.

I've pointed TUN to this forum several times, so he may have actually picked it up lurking here.

True. But on the other hand, TUN sounds like a BioWare refugee from day one (it takes one to recognize another) and 'choices and consequences' have been a thing there since ever.

 

[Gozma]

There is "ever" and there is "ever"... I remember C&C being a set phrase on the Codex (mostly by VD) before Mass Effect/DA/Alpha Protocol, because I remember being like "whoa that is Codexian" when they used the term in advertising those (and it had not been used for stuff like Troika games or the Wuxia RPG Bioware did after Kotor). It's possible-likely VD was an early adopter of it from somewhere else, but it incubated on the Codex for a while.

Edit - First Codex use of the term I can find is from 2003 in an interview VD did with the Teudogar guys.

 

[Grunker]

I learned the term before coming here... I think in a discussion about The Witcher, ironically. I think the tagline for that game was "There is no good or evil, only decisions and consequences." It's certainly delusional to think that the term and what it stands for was invented here.

 

[Infinitron]

There is "ever" and there is "ever"... I remember C&C being a set phrase on the Codex (mostly by VD) before Mass Effect/DA/Alpha Protocol, because I remember being like "whoa that is Codexian" when they used the term in advertising those (and it had not been used for stuff like Troika games or the Wuxia RPG Bioware did after Kotor). It's possible-likely VD was an early adopter of it from somewhere else, but it incubated on the Codex for a while.

Edit - First Codex use of the term I can find is from 2003 in an interview VD did with the Teudogar guys.

Vault Dweller Care to weigh in on this matter of historical import?

 

[Delterius]

I don't actually doubt the term was invented or rather codified in the Codex, simply because we already have a abbreviation for it. 'C&C' is a natural point of discussion in the Codex, while it must be spelled out everywhere else.

 

[Gozma]

I learned the term before coming here... I think in a discussion about The Witcher, ironically. I think the tagline for that game was "There is no good or evil, only decisions and consequences." It's certainly delusional to think that the term and what it stands for was invented here.

If you go back and read VD's game criticism stuff from like very early Codex -> ~2007 or so he brings it up in like every post, it was memetic rather than a "natural" use of the idea. I feel like it's one of those things people think must have always been an obvious point of criticism when it wasn't.

 

[Vault Dweller]

There is "ever" and there is "ever"... I remember C&C being a set phrase on the Codex (mostly by VD) before Mass Effect/DA/Alpha Protocol, because I remember being like "whoa that is Codexian" when they used the term in advertising those (and it had not been used for stuff like Troika games or the Wuxia RPG Bioware did after Kotor). It's possible-likely VD was an early adopter of it from somewhere else, but it incubated on the Codex for a while.

Edit - First Codex use of the term I can find is from 2003 in an interview VD did with the Teudogar guys.

Vault Dweller Care to weigh in this matter of historical import?

If I recall correctly, the term was indeed coined by me. At very least I don't remember seeing it anywhere else. There was much talk about choices and what makes them meaningful, with most people agreeing that you needed a reaction of some kind. Consequences seemed to be a good word to go with choices.

Edit: the concept itself wasn't invented here or by me, only the quick way to describe it.

 

[Kashmir Slippers]

I'm going to throw my two cents into this after watching the video.

I agree with the spirit of what this guy is saying, but I don't think his examples are really all that effective nor are his labels. When it boils down to it, both the Fallout example and the ME 2 example had the same effect: you either do or not do something and down the road there is an effect of that action or inaction. If you want to avoid that result or see the other side of the event chain, you play the game again and choose the other option. I think that the endings of Fallout are a perfect example of this. There are many branch points that you can take to get different combinations of endings, and the only way to see them all is to play those situations over again, so in effect, even his "Type One" examples are also replayablity examples. I don't mean to take off running with his thought, but I think that the nature of C & C is completely bound to replayability or at least a way to thicken the plot. If our choices in the game aren't supposed to create different scenarios, immerse us in the plot on a personal level, or at least make us want to play the game again to see the alternate, then why are we even making choices in the first place?

I think a better dichotomy would be subtlety, or more precisely believability, versus arbitrariness, and I think that is what the video was trying to say. Fallout's C & C worked out well because it didn't broadcast that a certain choice would cause branch point and it made sure that the effects of the player's decision made sense. You destroyed the mutant town's water pump? They ran out of water and died off. You give the location of your hidden vault to the water merchants, the mutants find it faster. That kind of stuff. All of those events logically follow the initiating action. On the other hand, the arbitrary way of doing things is to rely on a seemingly random or unrelated modifier to force a change in the game. As others have said, why would completing the big-eyed guy's loyalty quest make him any more likely to dodge that stray shot? It doesn't really make sense from a cause-and-effect viewpoint and acts as a very crude way of altering the plot without making the player feel responsible for his actions.

The video briefly touched on the main point that I think separates the two "different types" of C & C in that many choices in modern games aren't double edged swords but rather more black and white. Maybe I have just missed the examples, but there aren't many subtle events in more recent games that seem like they would be all around good, but end up with a negative consequence. Most choices in modern games boil down to situations like being a good hero or being an evil hero without really delving into the consequences of what comes with actually being a hero. You hardly ever get penalized for sticking your nose in people's business or saving the day, so a lot of C & C boils down to an almost superficial triviality rather than a way of actually making the player weigh out his options and think of possible outcomes before he goes ahead with his actions, and when they do actually try to make the outcome meaningful, they tend to be broadcasted and have almost instantaneous results.

I'm going to stop here because I feel like I am rambling and have completely missed what I was trying to say when I started typing this. I hope I managed to get at least part of my thoughts across.

 

[Gozma]

The water merchant thing is an "unfairly good" example because winning or losing the game hangs in the balance, and it even does it in a way that's resistant to being trivialized by saving/loading. That's not even just "simulation", it's Real Serious Gameplay C&C and almost unique outside of a Roguelike or a strategy game or competitive multiplayer.

 

[Jaesun]

Choosing the Water Merchant option should have caused a great consequence to the Vault.

 

[sea]

Like others here I think this video was interesting and a good overview, and I do think that there was a false dichotomy presented (but only for the purposes of argument, not really in practice).

I think there should be a line drawn between story C&C and gameplay C&C rather than replayability and simulation. While in practice these can often take on the form MrBtongue suggests, this doesn't really capture the root of the problem. You have to go deeper.

The lack of gameplay C&C in modern titles is an example of two things: the reduction in scope of gameplay mechanics and a general focus on providing limited and highly-polished, heavily scripted experiences to players, and the belief that it should be difficult or impossible for a player to fail, based on the logic that failure is not fun, especially when it's not immediately obvious why the player failed.

The first, I'm sure, is something we are all familiar with, but it bears repeating: mechanically more and more games are focused not on providing free and open gameplay systems which can be navigated by the player in a freeform manner, but a set of finite mechanics which are in service of facilitating the completion and presentation of an experience. This can be best summarized by simply saying "RPGs these days are about telling the player a story, while older RPGs were about the player making a story." Older RPGs had much more in common with tabletop games and were made by tabletop gamers, which have the mentality that an RPG should be a player-driven experience, with the role of the game world and story to provide a context for the game mechanics and systems that have been set up for the player. More modern titles are created for larger and more modern audiences, which do not have the tabletop background, and their designers are typically not the types who grew up playing tabletop games - hence their idea of what constitutes an RPG (story-heavy gameplay with number crunching on the way) is very different.

I'm not even going to say that one is better than the other because they both serve different purposes. What I will say is that C&C is best when delivered both with gameplay and story implications. Mass Effect, for instance, fails at providing gameplay C&C because what happens in cutscenes never affects how the game itself plays; choosing X or Y doesn't mean you'll have to fight more enemies, lose out on a lot of money, gain a whole lot of bonus loot, etc. It only means that the story will change, and usually in very superficial ways. Meanwhile, Fallout: New Vegas seamlessly integrates story and gameplay C&C because both the plot of the game and the high and low level gameplay change depending on which factions you side with - take on Caesar's mantle and you'll find yourself under attack by different enemies, certain areas will be off limits, you won't be able to do the same quests, you won't have access to certain shops and items, etc., while the story details themselves will also change.

This is only possible in a game which has sufficiently advanced mechanics and systems to facilitate any sort of player freedom to begin with; by virtue of modern RPGs moving more towards "combat minigames" punctuating dialogue scenes and cutscenes (see BioWare's foolish and false statements that RPGs are defined by their combat and story, both on their design and marketing sides), these games are unable to allow for true unity between gameplay and story C&C. The result is going to be half-baked one way or the other, and the worst part is that since different players play games for different reasons, you are actually potentially excluding certain audiences who are interested in compelling gameplay C&C (or vice versa). Ironically even though these games are being made easier, simpler, and dumber to gain wider audience acceptance, there are plenty of people (usually the "hardcore" and original RPG fanbases) who are being alienated as well.

 

[Lord Andre]

I would like to see a video from this guy analyzing the different concrete ways by which C&C can be implemented.

For example, the water caravan situation I would label it as a choice of "information dissemination" . It's rarely used effectively in RPGs.
A lot of them give you the option to obscure your name and mission but usually the consequences for not doing it are trivial.

 

[circ]

Total Biscuit says the exact same things as Errant Signal without wrapping it up in pretentious overanalyzed bullshit, and without a voice that makes you want to kill this Errant Signal guy.

 

[Infinitron]

Total Biscuit says the exact same things as Errant Signal without wrapping it up in pretentious overanalyzed bullshit, and without a voice that makes you want to kill this Errant Signal guy.

Wrong thread bro

 

[Grunker]

Total Biscuit says the exact same things as Errant Signal without wrapping it up in pretentious overanalyzed bullshit, and without a voice that makes you want to kill this Errant Signal guy.

Wrong thread bro

Wrong thread and shitty post