I still like my HL2, Witcher and such. But the text based games are worth a play.

Some day I hope I get the chance to really sit down and look at the strengths and weaknesses of all the different videogame formats. It seems like such fun!

Thief 1 and 2 (I didn’t play Deadly Shadows) immediately drew me into the world through its mood, atmosphere, and very cleverly integrated story. I agree that it, in the end, has little to do with the graphical quality – I think it’s more about the *artistic* quality of the game. It’s the subtleties — the steampunk machines of Thief aren’t thrown in-your-face … they’re juxtaposed against the medieval guards and lords. It lets the imagination roam on its own, and come up with its own story that fills in the gaps.

“Somehow I no longer have the patience”. This is the point I was trying to get at in the entire article. The games have not changed at all – but we have as gamers. The games are still as good (or bad) as they ever were, but we no longer possess the kinds of imagination/skill/emotions necessary to bring a text adventure to life again. I’m speaking generally, because of course there are thousands of people out there who play IF games still (won’t someone please speak up?)… but most of us have this sense that we wouldn’t even know how to play a text adventure anymore without tossing our hands up in frustration or boredom.

Thanks for bringing up the point that ‘graphical realism’ doesn’t matter in itself. You’re absolutely right there, and in fact have provided a resolution to a discussion that has plagued this blog for 3 years. But what does matter, I think, is that as our imaginations and emotions have atrophied in the last couple of decades we’ve increasingly come to rely upon graphical realism to fill in that void. And it’s not working too well, except for those of us who’ve hung on to some of our imaginative abilities.

I believe I’ve heard of Ways of Seeing before. Quite some time ago. I must look into it further. I see that it’s based on an old BBC series. Interesting.

Your point about forcing yourself to care is a valid one. I think that I often deliberately pretend to myself that I feel something in games so as to satisfy my own need for an engaging narrative. It’s a form of self-deception that is necessary for me to derive pleasure from what can sometimes be, in its worst incarnations, a hollow and clumsy form of entertainment.

I often find that the worst experience is when a designer allows a narrative to obstruct the game. That was the problem with Call of Juarez. The story wasn’t bad, but I found myself impatiently waiting to play the actual game. I then found that I really didn’t care about any of the characters. They were just there to provide a background story to the action sequences. Games that place you into situations where you rely on NPCs, especially where you explore or fight alongside them, have a much greater chance of eliciting an emotional response. Half-Life 2, for instance, succeeded in making me feel the loneliness of travelling alone when separated from helpful NPCs.

Even multiplayer games like Red Orchestra or the old Day of Defeat mod can have this effect. There’s nothing worse than suddenly finding yourself completely cut off from your comrades in a game where you really feel the need for a group effort. Your fellow players are admittedly real people, but making me care about capturing the objective or keeping them alive (in Left4Dead, for example) emerges from skilful game design. This only holds true if you let yourself care about the game, of course, which is again more self-deception.

The Thief series of games made me care about my own safety in the world. My imagination was utterly pulled into the game. I actually had to stop playing Deadly Shadows at times because I couldn’t deal with the fact that I felt so threatened. Actually, Doom 3 sometimes gave me that feeling, too, and I can only play Dead Space or Stalker for short periods before becoming overwhelmed by the atmosphere. Assassin’s Creed utterly failed to engage me on that level even though it looked incredible.

I have departed to some extent from what we’re talking about, in that I am now referring to how immersive those games are, but maybe that’s how increasingly realistic games have to reach us. We don’t have to use our imaginations to visualise the game, but we can use our imaginations to bring something more to the experience.

I used to read gamebooks (the Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson Fighting Fantasy series) when I was very young. They allowed my imagination to really bring those worlds to life. And I have vivid memories of them. But I also have vivid memories of moments from certain very realistic games. The same goes for novels and films. Both require different parts of my imagination to bring them to life.

The difference is that I could no longer play a text adventure or read a gamebook. I suspect that the gamebooks would no longer interest me because of the writing, as I did read a novel in the form of a gamebook a few years ago called Life’s Lottery by Kim Newman. That was very enjoyable. But I can’t play text adventures. I don’t even know why, which worries me. Somehow I no longer have the patience.

Again, I had better stop rambling. I do wonder how games will develop in the future. Perhaps we will have less and less time to engage with players, creating games which will be consumed in short bursts but over an extended period. An interesting challenge.

I guess the question is – how much are we willing to ‘force’ the imagination into the world, or can the author do something to ‘invite’ us into it? I did not find the moral choices in Bioshock to be of much personal consequence to me — I found that I was forcing myself to care about the characters. When I force myself to believe or care about the world, I know that something is wrong… like I’m grasping at straws. I never get that feeling in games that give me something to latch on to, like the Ultima series (which brilliantly characterizes its NPCs), or The Longest Journey (April is a wonderful character). I’ll have to try CoD: Modern Warfare and Call of Juarez.

As for looking at artistic representations before/after photography, I *swear* that you are reading my mind. I’m reading a book on that *very* topic right now – it’s called “Ways of Seeing” by John Berger. I will also be looking at J.H. Van den Berg’s “Divided Existence” which tells the history of photography vis-a-vis modernism. You’re dead on here – do you mind if I use your idea for a part of my dissertation? We have become increasingly dependent upon “photorealism” – but not many of us have developed the psychological means that would allow us to still use our imaginations as we look at very detailed scenes.

@gnome – Well, in all fairness LoZ is still in development and I’m expecting the world to become increasingly ‘thicker’ as time goes on. The forums are very active, and there is a demand for the kinds of things you want (and I want) to see. Agreed – there is something timeless about Zork… an ex-girlfriend of mine posted a list of her favourite games, and #1 on it was Zork I. It’s been 30 years. Amazing.

I find that all games, even those which visually represent every detail of the game environment, need me to use my imagination to fully immerse myself, LoZ included. I have to go beyond the graphics and obvious limits of the game design to actually care about my avatar. That can be something as simple as developing my own internal narrative as I play, relishing a sense of exploration, or allowing myself to feel that what I do in a game matters to me.

Some games really help you with this. Bioshock made the moral choice of how to treat the Little Sisters a very difficult one for me to make. Obviously they are just power-ups, but I preferred to play that choice as though it was a real dilemma.

Even when you have little input into what happens – such as the death of Sergeant Paul Jackson in CoD: Modern Warfare, you have to rely on your imagination to really experience that moment. I feel that other games, such as Call of Juarez, give you too little freedom to exercise your own imagination, even though they do attempt to provide a satisfying plot.

Now that I think about it, perhaps it might be worth exploring the analogy between artistic representations of reality before and after the invention of photography, and the problem of how our imaginations can be allowed to engage with games that do all the work of visually describing the game world. We need to go beyond simply trying to evoke a vision of the environment.

I had better stop this rambling monologue and get back to writing up docs for the future development of LoZ. Thanks again for a very thoughtful piece.

Dave Barton
LoZ Game Designer

Funny – I’ve been keeping up with your posts on Vespers since I started writing here Your blog was one of the earliest I read (I believe I got there through through Michael Abbott’s comment thread IIRC). I’m fascinated by your project – there is something very wild about translating a text adventure into a 3D game! Vespers 3D reminds me of Alone in the Dark a little bit – a semi-gothic artistic style.

Although I was not clear about it in the article – there is no reason that a modern interpretation of an old game can’t bridge the gap between generations. It’s just that LoZ, for many reasons that should be discussed, has not managed to do this (yet). The fact that your project is totally unique in its goals and its execution is why I’ve kept up with it over the years. Nobody has done this before, and exploring a new kind of game is exactly what developers should have been doing all along.

If you compare your own project so far, with LoZ, do any major differences jump out at you? It seems like one of the differences, to me at least, is that you’re making an honest effort at preserving the intent/style of the original game. One of the difficulties LoZ has is that it never quite decides what it wants to be – is it a social networking game? Is it RPG-lite? Is it an adventure? Is it a MUD? Vespers (to me) is quite clearly a text adventure – the 3D graphics are an addition.. a way of establishing mood and atmosphere.. I can’t wait to play it and see what it’s actually like.

I’d be interested to hear what you think about my little project. It may not work, it may make no sense, but I gotta believe somebody has to try it. Check out the website link if you’re interested.