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My ex, who never showed any interest in games beyond his 1 hour of fiddling with the original Sim City and then pronouncing it "unrealistic", just sent me this...at 1:30am:
Check out the trailers for this game L.A. Noire. Makes you want a video game console.
Maybe I should have kept him. But then, I'd have heard 10 more years of "games are a waste of time".
"…you just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake."
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It's always people who watch Dancing with the Stars who say games are a waste of time.
Still, good to hear that you've rubbed off on him, Spike! [Image Can Not Be Found]
Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
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There's a game out there somewhere for everyone who claims "games are a waste of time." My friend's wife has always just shaken her head when her husband, sons and I were discussing games. She didn't like using email, either. Didn't really get it. Then, a couple of years ago her oldest son upgraded his iPhone and gave the old one to her. The ease of use for her was eye-opening. She embraced email and texting like a duck to water. She still wasn't into games much, until she bought a DS for her husband. She borrowed it for a trip and never gave it back. She had to buy him another one! Then she discovered Angry Birds on the iPhone...
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Steerpike said:
It's always people who watch Dancing with the Stars who say games are a waste of time.
I am grateful that none of the people I am close to watch Dancing with the Stars. I think I'd have to disown them.
As to my ex, I think I should tell him about Cities XL. It looks much more interesting than any Sim City.
"…you just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake."
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Introducing newbies to games is one of my favouritest things in the whole world! ^_^ Ever since I taught my little sister how to snipe in Team Fortress Classic when she was about ten years old.
Gaming is a medium at least as valid as any other, and without doubt more varied. Combining music, acting and visual arts together in an interactive cauldron o' gumbo renders it, in my opinion, the 'ultimate' medium. As Toger said, there's a game out there for everyone 🙂
Can't say I approve too much of Rockstar being the ones to draw people in. Their brand of gaming has been stepping ever further away from true interactive freedom into scripted 'interactive movie' territory.
Perhaps they'll become the boundary drug of gaming. Blurring the lines between film and freedom, to LURE THE UNWARY INTO THE FOLD :>
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Almost none of my friends game. Because video games are evil and a waste of time because…ummm…Hillary Clinton said so. This from people who rush home to watch the Biggest Loser finale with squeals of anticipation. [Image Can Not Be Found]
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Jakkar said:
Can't say I approve too much of Rockstar being the ones to draw people in. Their brand of gaming has been stepping ever further away from true interactive freedom into scripted 'interactive movie' territory.
Mostly irrelevant tangential comment here, but whilst generally in agreement with the sentiment of this statement, Heavy Rain really changed my views on the 'interactive movie'-- or what ever it shall be called-- genre of gaming. I don't think it would work in another medium and be able to carry the same impact. Even though it seemingly had the player not doing much of anything, it hit me hard with the emotional train. I rarely felt pleasant emotions whilst playing HR and I like it all the more for that. Sequence after sequence of awkwardness, inadequacy, feebleness and so on. I don't think that could have been achieved without the interactivity which furthered the connection to the four characters.
If being wrong's a crime I'm serving forever
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I'm totally with you there xtal. Heavy Rain made me realise how compelling and engrossing a simple 'do this to go that way, do that to go the other' mechanic could be. Quantic brought the story and character development right to the fore and took the branching as far as they could. As a result, everybody's experience felt unique, even if it ultimately wasn't. Also, because you knew the story could branch in all manner of directions and each of the characters could die, it gave every decision more weight; your choices had magnitude and mattered. I think something else that gave Heavy Rain more integrity was that it didn't get bogged down in trying to spruce the experience up with traditional game elements like shooting, driving, exploring and juggling inventory items etc. The emphasis was squarely on the story and how it progressed.
Jakkar said:
Gaming is a medium at least as valid as any other, and without doubt more varied. Combining music, acting and visual arts together in an interactive cauldron o' gumbo renders it, in my opinion, the 'ultimate' medium. As Toger said, there's a game out there for everyone 🙂
This is something I've been saying for years and I'm with you Jakkar, I'm a bit of crusader myself when it comes to introducing people to games. Games almost exclusively have the potential to combine everything that every other medium holds so dearly, in addition to the recreational, competitive and co-operative elements of play and sport. It's an incredible and often woefully misunderstood medium.
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Both my parents thought gaming was a waste of time too, although now not a day goes by when they don't pop for a few hours of slaughter in Azeroth.
A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war, wide awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. – The Teachings of Don Juan
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The words cinematic or "play the movie" tied to video games as a design goal or feature sends has me at Lizzy Borden's house (now a museum) trying to eat her spirit and kill 'em all.
grooowrrrr! [menace menace] rrrrowwwr!
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I think the most interesting thing in game evolution right now is the potential for new sort of hybrid genres to arise to attract people who traditionally aren't gamers. Heavy Rain hooked my parents, who previously had only ever really fiddled with Tetris and the like - it's not that they thought games were a waste of time, just that they didn't really see the appeal (though they wouldn't admit it, I think they thought that learning to operate a controller was too hard).
I think (slash hope) that we'll see an in-between medium that uses the principles of games like Heavy Rain to reach a less hardcore audience, and we'll also have more traditional games too for people like us. If someone else doesn't beat me to it, it's on my to-do list once I have the industry clout required to take on a risky thing like that.
"Home is not a place. It is wherever your passion takes you."
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I like the idea of a strong, convergent cinematic play style. There are a million challenges associated with getting it right but Heavy Rain did go a long way toward proving that it's possible. As Brandon says, it will attract people who might more traditionally define themselves as "movie watchers," and it might actually make today's controllers more accessible. Not every game needs to be Heavy Rain of course, but there's room in the art form for more like that!
Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
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Jarrod said:
Both my parents thought gaming was a waste of time too, although now not a day goes by when they don't pop for a few hours of slaughter in Azeroth.
I suppose they proved themselves right then [Image Can Not Be Found]
Heavy Rain - I've yet to play it, lacking the kind of funds to have ever been among the PS3 crowd, but I look forward to it. Perhaps oneday they'll manage to make a whole game as good as the first half-hour of Indigo Prophecy? =p
There will always be an issue with making games 'accessible' - the current state of the market shows that its size is somehow limited, that there can only be so many makers before newcomers find it increasingly difficult to find a foothold. Humans cling to what they like, and what their friends like. We're at a certain level of saturation now - so there can only be so many games at a time, by my thinking - only so much variety. The more 'accessible' gaming becomes, the more soft, casual, squishy low-interactivity titles succeed, the less publisher interest/consumer interest from the remarkably small pool available will be spent on deeper titles.
With the success of the Xbox 360 delivering multiplatform titles we saw entire genres watered down and almost, for a time, extinguished. One could call STALKER the saviour of its genre - the deep FPSRPG, with a complex, varied control system and a more rewarding experience - but on the other hand maybe STALKER succeeded precisely because of the watering-down of both FPS and RPG genres during the period of Call of Duty/Oblivion success. The people were left hungry for a PC-exclusive, darker, more involving title.
I'm hesitant to support titles like Heavy Rain, and to a lesser extent L.A. Noir not because they aren't worthy of their place, but simply because of the nature of trending and fashion. If they succeed, past generations of games/platforms have shown us that deeper games will probably suffer.
If we could trust the consumer market to have some kind of self-control and not mobrush every good, innovative (and simple to play..) title, or trust the publishers not to attempt to clone every successful concept to exhaustion the moment it sells more than anticipated.. I'd be wholly advocative of equal rights for games of varying levels of interactivity 😉
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