Do text-only games have a future? (Games and art)

[Yggdrasil]

This post was partially inspired by an recent thread about whether games can be art:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=43224

I want to argue against the points made mostly by ScottishMartialArts. Here I have copypasted some interesting fragments of posts which support the opposing views:

Literary narrative and gameplay are two competing priorities and are exclusive from each other. Even in RPGs with dialogue, that dialogue is weighed down with gameplay information -- "Where can I find the village blacksmith?" -- that disrupts the thread of characterization, often minimal, and plot development. Furthermore, developing coherent thematic meaning depends on the actions and feelings of the characters, and the events of the plot happening in a certain way. If Player Achilles tells NPC Patroclus not to worry that the ships are on fire, because he's returning to action, and then after an epic battle through the Trojan ranks, he slays the boss mob Hector, then the themes of the Iliad are never developed and you're left with mush. Likewise, if Player Achilles keeps dying to boss Hector and quits the game. Of course, you can tightly control all of this, but then what room is there for the player's skill and choices if he can't die to a boss because the plot demands it? Again, gameplay and narrative are competing forces, and for that reason games in so far as they're games and not long uninteractive cutscenes, i.e. movies, won't ever be a literary medium.

By and large, gamers spend their time playing games instead of reading great literature. Without an example of something truly profound and beautiful, they have nothing to which they can compare their games, and are unable to discover how lacking games are when it comes to thematic meaning and true, awe-inspiring beauty. [..] Still games can be a hell of a lot of fun, but works of art which shape and change how you view the world, leading you to become a more humane, and human, person? Not so much.

I can't help but roll my eyes whenever somebody recommends playing a game "for the story" - I have yet to see any game rise to the quality of some books I've read, and I'm hardly a well-read person.

Again, narrative and gameplay are competing forces in games. The stronger the focus on the narrative, the less and less it can be considered a game, e.g. Heavy Rain. Meaningful narrative depends upon certain things, happening in a certain order, for certain reasons. Alien doesn't work as a movie if Caine makes his saving throw vs. the face hugger, or if they catch the critter when it is still in the chestburster stage. In order to make video game narrative effective, you have to take control away from the player otherwise they're going to screw up the sequence of events, and when you do that, the game ceases to be a game.

You criticized me for judging video games with the same criteria applied to other narrative media, like literature or film. Video games, in so far as they are art, are a narrative medium however, so how else should they be judged?

Again, the more control you give to the player, i.e. the more of a game it is, the less coherent and meaningful the narrative -- by narrative, I'm referring to characterization, setting, theme, etc. in addition to plot, i.e. the whole which is the story itself. Any game that is actually a game, i.e. gives the player influence over the outcome of any action, will necessarily have a narrative that only serves to create context for the game, rather than existing for itself as a film or novel does.

Aaaaand, a nice finishing touch, which opens right into this discussion:

The games as art folks all seem to be arguing that there really isn't an artistic masterpiece of gaming, but there is the theoretical possibility of one being made. Unless there is some revolution in game design which is inconceivable now, I just don't see how it would happen.

Similarly to SMA, I am interested in the question whether games can reach the same narrative depths that good literature reaches. (I think the original question "can games be art" is so broad and ill-defined that it's basically pointless.)
On the other hand I don't agree with his/her conclusion. I think that such games can be made, and that they most likely will be text-only games.

First, there's a plenty storytelling elements with literary merits that can be included in games in exactly the same way they can be included in books or movies. Let's take a game like Grim Fandango as an example, and analyze it's story.
Did it have great supporting characters? Yes.
Did it have a good main character? One that was not without faults, but still likable; a character that while was far from being an ideal human, still was someone sympathetic, and even possible to identify with? Check.
Did it have strong dramatical motives for the main character to get going? Check.
Was they main character's journey not only physical, but also a spiritual one? Sure; Manny had to learn to become a better human being to get his ticket out of the Land of the Dead.
Did the story was ended with an effective climax? Of course.
Are there some aspects of "great" literature that Grim Fandango didn't have at least to some minimal extent? If yes, I'm not sure what they were.

So what did Grim Fandango *didn't have* as a game? The answer is simple: interactivity. The player was tied to the railroad of the story. He can choose what to do on each particular occasion, but to progress in the game, he has to do exactly what the authors of the game are expecting him to do (bar the order of the quests in some part of the game). There is still only one way to reach the goals. As all the other adventures, Grim Fandango was more of an player-controlled cartoon than a game.

Second, there are games that had the potential of having not only good, but a great dramatic story even if choices & consequences were included.

Take the first Gothic as an example. In my opinion, it had one of the best stories in RPGs I have seen. You had a clear motivation to both to rise in ranks in the penal colony, and to save your own skin by fighting a greater evil. Saving the world (actually, only the Valley of Mines) was just a nice, but totally unnecessary aftereffect. It didn't really matter in what way did full the promise of they story; you had a lot of freedom, a lot of *role playing* in the middle; the story still was great in any case, by having only the same beginning and the same ending.

Here's one more (quite primitive) example which shows that having choices & consequences are not detrimental to a good story. Imagine this situation: You are in a haunted house. It's dark. You just heard a board creaking somewhere nearby. What are you actions?
This situation can be resolved in a multiple meaningful ways that *all* can lead to good dramatic storytelling. The player can be provided with choices like these:
a) go investigate the source of the sound;
b) try to ignore the sound;
c) fall into panic;
that all can resolve to different, albeit interesting plot developments.

Chris Crawford also expresses similar views:

I noted in your early definitions of the topic [..] a reference to the difficulty of reconciling interactivity with narrative. This is a commonly held belief, and one that I reject. [..]

The basis of this falsehood is the belief that any purposeful action on the part of the user is likely to interfere with the pre-planned plot. What if our user decides, as Luke Skywalker, not to go after the missing droid and goof around at home instead? What if Macbeth decides that his wife is a nagging shrew and bumps HER off instead of the king? There went your best-laid plot.

The error here lies in identifying one particular plot with narrative in general. Yes, if Macbeth bumps off Lady Macbeth, then the result isn’t Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” — but does that mean that it’s ruined? There are countless variations on the basic storyline that remain true to the overall theme.

This does not mean that we must permit dramatically destructive behavior on the part of the user. Giving him choices doesn’t require us to give him stupid or boring choices. We can still confine him to dramatically interesting options.

Now, Gothic somewhat lacked in literary expression. I think it was partly because most of the story was carried out by actions. It seems - paradoxically - that text only medium actually has a greater potential for moving the reader emotionally than almost any other medium. In text-only games, the author has the maximum amount "control" over the player. It's the medium where he has the best options to give only choices that are "dramatically interesting". In other mediums, such a restriction can be seen as either too limiting, or (when “done properly”) as technically too hard to achieve. Also, text-only games are the form of games that is closest to literary fiction.

With "text-only" I don't necessarily mean something like Zork. My idea is closer to the so called "gamebooks". As opposed to mainstream CRPGs, where the majority of dialogue choices are in a way meaningless because they have no consequences, gamebooks were different. When you had to choose in a gamebook, you knew that it was very likely that the wrong choice would lead to your death. In my opinion, the best aspects of gamebooks coupled with the computing powers of moder PCs, could provide some truly memorable gaming experience.

As for the areas where interactive fiction still would fall short as compared to "real" literature:
1) It would be hard to write something like morality tale. Macbeth is good example of what would be hard to do;
2) Writer -> reader "conversation" would be less possible;
3) The main character could easily become not "too nice" to be interesting, especially if he always did just what the reader wanted him to do (i.e. if the reader, not the character made all the decisions). I believe that having some tension between the reader and the protagonist is actually good;
4) Often the unhappy ending is a dramatically better one. Consider Hamlet. It would not be just as good tale if Hamlet simply went and slaughtered all the enemies of his father. A possible solution would be to make all endings unhappy - but would that appeal to players?

Unsurprisingly, I think that a breakthrough (although I suspect it will be more of an evolution than a revolution) in this direction is more likely to come from indie rather than mainstream developers. Not only because making an artsy-fartsy "literary" game would be a creative and financially dangerous experiment, but also because the plethora of the artistic means games developers have available at their command actually are more likely to interfere with, rather than to help having a good "literary" experience.

tl;dr version: video games can be art in the same ways literature can be art; well, at least theoretically and with some limitations.

 

[Sceptic]

Interesting post. I'd like to talk about each point individually but I don't have the time just now, so I'll just leave you with one text adventure (there are others) that, as far as I'm concerned, satisfies all requirements for art:

Trinity.

Superior writing? check.
Morality tale? check. It's an avil, but this one seriously needed to be dropped. Especially in the 80s.
Symbolism galore? check.
Ambiguous ending? check.
Superb puzzle design? check.

Not really sure what more you'd need.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Thanks, I'm going to check it out.

 

[Unradscorpion]

Sounds like shallow understanding of art to me, just because it's written well, has interesting characters and pseudo philosophy doesn't mean it's art. Although it sure checks as a good game in my book.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Sounds like shallow understanding of art to me, just because it's written well, has interesting characters and pseudo philosophy doesn't mean it's art.

I didn't imply that these things are *sufficient* to make a work of art. Art is crated by the writer/developer being artist, not by following some formal rules. It just seems that they are *necessary*, and I argued that there's no reason why they cannot be present in games.

As for 'pseudo-philosophy', I didn't mention it anywhere in my post at all. On the contrary, my opinion about is that many writing careers that had been spoiled by the authors deciding to become all-philosophical at one point. If, on the other hand, you understand things like "character development through moral dilemmas" as pseudo-philosophy, then I feel sorry for you.

 

[GTMatt]

Any argument about video games as art is moot until society can come up with a concrete definition for art.

Is citizen kane art? Is the godfather art? But what about transformers? Or the hangover?

Same goes for books. What qualifies as art? The Iliad, Great Expectations, God of Small Things, Captain Underpants, Choose Your own adventure?

Is the Mona Lisa art? That picture of the toilet? A photo of a crucifix in a cup of piss? Colors splashed on a screen?

Right now, the definition of art seems to be "whatever all of the people in turtlenecks and berets say it is" - and they don't want to include video games. Who cares?

In the end, game developers have the audience. With or without approval from the "high art" folks, we're telling the stories to an active audience and we have the opportunity to be artistic about it.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Almost anything can be considered "art" by some people. That's not really the point of this discussion.

Allow me to quote from the first post:

I am interested in the question whether games can reach the same narrative depths that good literature reaches. (I think the original question "can games be art" is so broad and ill-defined that it's basically pointless.)

 

[Gragt]

Try The Void.

 

[GTMatt]

Whoops, didn't mean to miss the point that hardcore.

As mentioned by previous posters, the interactivity of games makes it hard to keep a tight narrative the way the author of a book can.

If narration in a game gets too tight, the author gets to put the characters through the intended tribulations and transformations in sequence, but the medium stops really being a game. You might as well grab a book off the shelf, play poker between chapters, and promise yourself you'll stop reading if you lose 3 times.

The author has to be good enough to have the rules and flow of the game serve the theme and greater narrative picture.

I played an IF once called Bad Robot, where you take the role of a machine rebelling from the collective. The text of the game is presented in erratic pseudo-english / pseudo-code that immerses the player in the role of being a "broken" robot trying to get the hell to freedom before being shut down.

That game itself is short and not fully realized, but it's a proof of concept as far as what could be done.

The dangerous thing with making a game serve a narrative is when it just becomes a gimmick, or when it's not fun/interesting/valuable for players to interact with.

 

[Visbhume]

Somewhat related: an article about "interactive" theatre performances:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre ... very-night

James Graham's The Man, currently playing at the Finborough theatre, plays its script in a different order each night, depending on the sequence in which different receipts are plucked out of the audience. The effect is greater than a simple shuffling of the information received; it changes the nature of that information itself.

That resembles the simplest way of creating a "dynamic" story in CRPGs: allowing some freedom in the ordering of the quests.

 

[Fucking Quality Poster]

If books that are well written, have interesting characters, and teach the reader a lesson are considered art, then why shouldn't a game that does the same also be considered 'art'?

Being realistic however, I cannot see any future for text-only games in the current market.

 

[Flatlander]

Being realistic however, I cannot see any future for text-only games in the current market.

Being realistic, there isn't that much future for _any_ interesting games in the current market.

 

[crufty]

No market. however, probably means text based games are more artistic as they are free from commercial pressures...

think of this: suppose I make a fanastic game in the style of IF. The ultimate rpg. Could I charge $60 for it? How many copies would I sell? Suppose a person can work 2000 hrs / yr and it takes three years to make.

units * price = revenue / 6000 = hourly wage

5 * $60 = $300 ~ $0.05 / hr
50 * $60 = $3k ~ $0.50 / hr
500 * $60 = $30k ~ $5.00 / hr
5000 * $60 = $300k ~ $50 / hr
50000 * $60 = $3 mil ~ $500 /hr

The question to ask: can I move 5k units for an IF game? I would be stunned.

What about price? Gotta keep that burdened rate of $50/hr...

@$100: 3k units
@ $60: 5k units
@ $30: 10k units
@ $15: 20k units
@ $10: 30k units
@ $5: 60k units

Still stunned. conclusion: commercial viability is not very high.

But from an artistic sense, selling 1k units @ $30 wouldn't be horrible, netting about $10k - $15k all said and done. Not a commercial venture but still a nice little sum of money. If it can be updated every couple of years, get a little evergreen...its not a great commercial venture but as an artistic one could be considered successful.

not sure what to make of it but thats my take...

 

[Yggdrasil]

Financial success isn't really that important. Yes, such games are not likely to be financially successful. Still, making them would be simple enough, that would not really be an issue. If completing a whole game was something that a single person could do in a reasonably short time, we would see much more new ideas emerging in game form.

The financial aspect is not the only motivation, nor it is the best motivation. Just think about how and why people write novels. They don't always do that for financial gains.
They do that express their ideas in an artistic form.
They do that to impress their friends: "Hey, what are you doing?" "Nothing, just writing the last chapters of my new novel " "Wow, that's p. cool." ("Making an RPG" usually is not going to produce the same reaction).
They do that to become famous; maybe only in some small obscure circle, probably too unimportant for the mainstream to even notice it, but still famous.

I suspect that something like 90% of novels may be not financially successful. Guess what? No one cares. The amount of money a publisher has to put out to get a book published is so comparatively small that they are willing to take the risk and lose a few bucks. The situation is completely opposite with games, and with mainstream movies. When you invest millions, you cannot afford bad sales. You cannot afford risk. You cannot afford creativity, after all.

Creativity requires an author. The modern computer game industry has pushed authors aside and replaces them with nameless drones capable only of doing the technical work, and with financial analysts.

I remember how the guys from Piranha Bytes said in a recent interview: "When we made Gothic, we really had no idea how to make these games... and what the final product should look like to get back all the financial investments that were made". Well, I suspect that Gothic was so good exactly because they were so unaware of the market. Just look at Risen and compare - having a lot of experience has not made their games better.

 

[Yggdrasil]

On a side note, in another thread here in Codex, Cris Crawford was mentioned.

I included a quote of his in the first post, but had been completely out of sync with what he has been doing in last years. Though for some reason he has given up on games interactive fiction altogether. Apparently not: http://www.storytron.com

From a brief glance at this Storytron in learned:
1) They have a demo game storyworld, and it sucks.
2) They have been unsuccessful in obtaining investments. Wow, that was totally unexpected.

In short, reasonable effort, but execution need a lot of work.

Alex, our primary issue is that we can't get any capital to fund Storytron. We ran the company for nearly three years on our own money, a small amount of investment money, and the charity of our workers. However, you can't do this forever, and we ran out of money. We believe that there were two major contributors to our difficulties: first, we were looking for money at the worst possible time; nobody was funding anything but sure bets all through 2009. Second, our prototype, Balance of Power 21st Century, wasn't very good, but we had to use it as a demo, and its poor performance turned people off.

Storytron isn't really dead -- it's in a coma. We're waiting for the investment climate to improve, and for me to build a decent demo.

Chris Crawford also has pretty :monocle: opinions towards "regular" games:

hould we make an attempt to integrate Storytron technology into an existing games form? People have long suggested that RPGs or MMOGs would benefit enormously from Storytron technology. I have in the past rejected these suggestions, but here I'll present a dialog between the pro- and anti- sides of this issue as I see them:

ANTI: Gamers don't really want stories; they want action. If we offer them genuine storytelling, they'll turn their noses up and sniff "Not fun!"

PRO: But gamers want stories now; they've become bored with the same old action games and they want more substance, more of a story.

ANTI: They say they want stories, but you can't trust what consumers say they want. People bought computers in the 1980s claiming that they wanted them for educational applications, but they really used them to play games. Maybe they really do want stories, but we can't know that until they actually put money on the table.

 

[SCO]

You're a fool

People need to eat so they need to sell. No matter that a text based game is very much cheaper to make, potentially controlled by one person -> no dumbing down.
No sell -> no product.

Personally i think some dumbed down web choose your own adventure games like that choice of the dragon have a advertising based future.

I see something like that becoming popular on facebook or mobile games, if real writers who understand the parallel narrative model and are ambitious try.

But until someone succeeds no one will try, and as soon as one succeeds, invariably the price will come down until it is unattractive to the talented (the internet has a tendency to bring down prices on intangibles)

 

[crufty]

one thing is most IF platforms are not great RPG platforms.

tads3 is pretty tight, and probably the closest to being a decent rpg if platform.

obvious if issues:
- if games are not stat based, they are player/puzzle based
- if games tend to be static (a rainy / sunny day and impact on shopkeeper is usually not part of the default lib)
- if games are omniscient (you are in a small square room. you see an exit to the south and to the west. water burbles up in the corner of the room )

vs situational - eg descs that change based on state

[mapping] you are in a square 20' x 20' room. There is an exit behind you and to the right (dimly lit). [perception] water quietly burbles up through the floor in the corner ahead of you, just off to the left.


not an impossible task to surmount but one reason why I think we don't see very many rpg 'authors' per se.

loot is also not part of the typical if experience. if you find a wooden stick, you better pick it up, because odds are you'll need it for something.

again though, tads 3 -- its libs are all open, i think it can get there.

 

[Yggdrasil]

You still overestimate the importance of the moneys. What about people who make open source software? They are often not paid for the work they are doing. What about indie RPG developers? I doubt that their business is very profitable either.

You made a fair point about the internet having a tendency to dumb down shit, SCO. (It's probably a good idea to make IF web based. Not many people want to bother with downloading and running an executable on their PCs just to play a small and unknown game.) It's pretty safe to say that anything that will appeal to e.g facebook users en masse will be example of one. Still, there is no need to go for the lowest common denominator. I know quite a few internet forums with communities that is much more high-brow that the average. In fact, this forum itself is a good example - at least in some ways; it's also a bad example in other ways. I'm thinking that the primary audience of IF is more likely to be "normal" persons who enjoy reading and like to spend their time online, not CRPG nerds who hate everything that fails to resemble Fallout or Arcanum. I'm thinking more of folks who enjoy reading fanfics (if there is such thing as a good fanfic...) or specific subgenres of literature.

I believe that another way around the problem "nobody wants to read serious stuff on the Internet" is going to become available with advances in technology. Think about all those users of Kindle and other current e-book reader crap hardware. Think about how much better and how much more popular these things will become. e-paper is still at early stages, but it also is bound to become hit at some point of time. After all, everyone hates reading books from a computer monitor.

If you question the economic feasibility of such niche markets - well, I can only suggest to read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail

crufty - Choice of the Dragon (what SCO also mentions) is a good (though simplistic) example of stats based IF.

 

[crufty]

yeah, I played it.

BUT

when I say IF I mean more like zork and less choose your own adventure.

Kindle is java based for what its worth

 

[sproket]

I've always had a soft spot for those old text adventures. Unfortunately they don't have the pizazz of graphical games which makes them less commercially appealing.

In my goldchest game, all puzzles will use this kind of interactive mode. Instead of menus of choices you'll have to type commands. Even for things like finding chests.

"Carefully examine chest"

The chest has a lock at the front and 2 hinges at the back.

“Examine hinges”

One hinge appears to have 2 small hair-like wires coming from it. One is green and one is blue.

“Examine blue wire”

It’s dangling loose at the back of the chest

“Examine green wire”

It extends from the hinge to under the chest.

“Cut the green wire”

That would disarm it. If you cut the blue it would have no effect. If you “Pulled” the wire the trap would go off.

I have ideas like that - it needs some work but I think it could be very cool in an RPG.

 

[Unradscorpion]

You can't meld RPGs and Text adventure games well, one requires a bit of detachment from your character ( regardless of what larpfags say) while the other is probably the most immersible form of games if you're literate.