Should a designer's objective be to build an environment where players can drive events and experiences, or should the game determine the objective, with responsibility for leading player behavior in meaningful ways?This philosophy conflict between user-created experiences and designed authorship is one of the most interesting issues emerging in next-gen games. I first started getting my head around it when I recently heard Warren Spector giving a lecture on his approach to design at NYU. His talk was followed by an informal but fascinating Q&A with Area/Code's Frank Lantz -- if you're familiar with both these guys, you can imagine how interesting the discussion was!
In case you're unfamiliar, Lantz and Area/Code are very well worth reading up on -- Lantz is, last I checked, a professor in the Tisch School’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and heads up NYU's Game Center. But if you're a Facebook user, you probably know Area/Code best for Parking Wars, which played a major if not defining role in turning the spotlight on FB as an emerging platform for social play. (Also, if you're a Facebook user, become a fan of Sexy Videogameland. Y'know, if you want.)
Whether or not Parking Wars is a "video game" is open for debate, of course -- but it is interactive multi-user play imagined by traditional game designers, and it's significant because it reached users where they were already interacting, rather than demanding they enter the designer's world in a traditional way. You also may or may not know that it was created as a cross-media extension of an A&E reality show -- I sure didn't, at first --
which provokes some interesting thoughts on how game design can help IP be media-independent.These kinds of ideas about games are less-known to the core video game audience, of course, but at Austin GDC last year, Lantz said Parking Wars pulled 400,000 users in its first two months -- close enough to twice what EVE Online has got now, if I'm not mistaken.
Hopefully you can see why it was so interesting to see someone like Lantz talk with someone from Spector's world -- Origin, Looking Glass, Ultima, System Shock, Deus Ex, Thief -- about the role designers play in the kind of experiences players have.
I've always tended to fall on Spector's side of the fence -- I've never been a fan of multiplayer games, because really, I want to interact with a guided vision, not my pals from the internet. Spector would rather have you talk around the water cooler about the moments you discovered in his game that he didn't plan for, and discuss amongst yourselves the way you all experienced the same thing differently, rather than hear a recounting of what was essentially your group social outing (involving headshots).
I get it. Say what you will about the BioShock "choice," for example, but we're all learning from the differences in one another's experiences of the same event. Meanwhile, the story of your WoW raid is solely personal, and interesting only to you and your guild.
[there is nothing anyone could say that would make me want to know the story of this picture]
One thing Spector said during the NYU discussion was that he feels multiplayer games are "lazy." This is the designer in him talking, of course -- his theory that in letting players build stories via Left 4 Dead-style happy accidents in open worlds, the designer doesn't have to tackle complex challenges like making choices meaningful, or making characters believable.
Spector wants to take on those challenges, and he doesn't like the idea that user-driven play, from his standpoint, effectively allows game design to bypass them. It's actually an idea I relate to a lot as a writer -- I was raised in an era of authoritative media, when individual voices drove culture, opinion and information. The internet's changed everything, of course; the authoritative voice has evolved into a conversation between writer and audience, and the writer now leads the community discussion rather than acting as a single determiner, a unilateral judge.
And it doesn't take a professional writer to lead a community -- many feel that the rise of citizen journalism and the core concept of crowd wisdom means that individual authority in media will eventually disappear altogether.
Naturally, as someone who makes her living as a journalist, I reflexively dislike this idea -- is this why I am a Spector-sympathizer? If the game designer insists on authorial authority (hee hee), is that his self-interest in the way?
Lantz actually called Spector out -- politely, of course, as it was obvious that both gentlemen respected their differences -- because one of the advice items Spector had offered the primarily-student audience was that the design process shouldn't be ego-driven, and that designers shouldn't try to impose their will on players. Why then, should Spector want to fight the apparent trend toward user-governed gameplay in order to build the experience from the game design power seat?
As with most divergent perspectives, it's unlikely that reality will skew solely to one side or another; the rise of social games and user-generated content doesn't mean the author-driven video game will just poof away. But questions of control are still fun to think about -- do you want to drive the community yourself, or do you want to interact in an environment that's been created for you?
Are all of us together as good at game design as one Warren Spector? And what might we see taking place in the games industry if in fact the answer is yes?
32 comments:
Maybe this is a cop-out answer, but I think there is room for both.
My personal bias, however, is for the game designer controlled universe. A well designed game has a story arc, it has meter and rhythm, rise and fall. I like to travel through a carefully crafted gaming environment that is driven by a designer's vision. Give the users too much rope, and... well, you know the rest.
I laughed at your WoW photo caption by the way. I don't know how I could be led to care either.
JT, that's not a cop-out! In fact, that's pretty much what I said:
"As with most divergent perspectives, it's unlikely that reality will skew solely to one side or another; the rise of social games and user-generated content doesn't mean the author-driven video game will just poof away."
These things never become a "pick one or the other!" scenario -- but I was interested in everyone's preferences here.
Hmmmm.
In response to your caption: it probably involves cheetos and birth control. :(
In response to the question posed in this post: Well, I think the designer really needs to start by asking what the hell he's even doing with his game; ie, what feelings do we want to create, what ultimately will you take away from playing this game? Which is obvious enough, yet I think depending on your authorial goals, an "open, user-generated" approach can be more effective than a strictly guided experience.
Regardless of whether or not the game designer determines your objective, most of the important storytelling in games is done through setting, environment, level design, etc... I guess what I'm saying is that Bioshock didn't need the overarching narrative to be as fascinating as it was, and they could've dropped the entire atlus/fontaine save-my-family emotionally manipulative BS and just let you explore the ruined city on your own while trying to survive and make sense of what's going on, and it would've been just as fascinating. Probably even moreso. So much of what that game is "about" is built into its setting that they could just let you run free and you'd still get the point.
I think Dead Rising is actually kinda relevant to this discussion. Even if the execution of its story goals is far from perfect, the basic idea is sound and really rather progressive for what it is.
Even though a WoW raid is a collaborative experience, I don't think anything can be done that wasn't intentionally designed. You can't change the story, so the author of the encounter still gives you and your guild the same overall narrative. Any guild raid is going to get the same narrative, so I don't see how that is divergent from any single player narrative. Overall the experience is still dictated by the designer.
When you start running into games with emergent game play I think you see a greater rift between them and traditional narrative. Is there really that great of a different between playing a game with other people and playing the game separately and discussing the narrative?
I think there's a little bit of a false dichotomy here. It seems like this isn't about single player vs. multiplayer games, it's about narrative games vs. ludic games (i.e. two legs of Michael's gaming tripod).
It's just that we don't really know how to make multiplayer narrative games compelling. WoW isn't about story, it's about leveling and killing monsters. But Tetris, Geometry Wars, etc. provide the same kind of discussion (or lack thereof) that WoW does.
It seems weird to call out Left 4 Dead, as L4D seems to be the closest we've come to bridging the multiplayer narrative gap. There's still a lot of dynamism, but it's been my experience than L4D discussions are closer to relating how one approached the Little Sister dilemma than how your guild took down Kel'Thuzad.
I tend to gravitate towards a more structured, narrative-based, authoritative experience myself, but that may be because I was always into stories in other media (books, movies, comics, etc) over say games such as sports, or boardgames. Or at the very least, I found the former more fun to think about. Then again, once I'd get involved in a game, I'd find it extremely fun, it just wouldn't give me as much to think about in retrospect.
Right now, for example, I'm toggling between Geometry Wars 2 and Silent Hill 2. I find the former ridiculously fun, but gives me little to think about when it's over (though if I were a game designer, I may feel differently, as there's a great deal of brilliance that goes into crafting such a finely tuned experience). I realize this is still a single-player game, but it has a lot in common with multiplayer games insofar as there's no narrative and the interactions are very impromptu. SH2, on the other hand, I find not very much fun at all, but I enjoy thinking about its symbols, themes, and overall design. Just depends what I'm in the mood for really.
My gut reaction is to think of Little Big Planet--whose "create-your-own-ending" message after the most anti-climactic boss fight I've ever experienced really ticked me off. However, this could be because I was promised narrative and was instead handed the reigns. It would be like going to see a movie and right before the end, the director came out and said, "You finish it." Would I do it? No! I'm not a bloody film-maker; I can't replicate his special effects, plan the best shots, let alone edit or score the thing. And ultimately, I'd be disappointed with my ending--I still haven't created any levels in LBP, either.
However, I look at a multiplayer game like Brawl, which I can play with my two brothers in two different states, and we have an amazing time. I need only the narrative created by our epic battles.
So I do think there is room for both, but I'm not sure we're ready to meld the two together. I have not, unfortunately, played Left 4 Dead, so I can't comment on how it combines the two. But it sounds like this is also what Capcom tried to do with Resident Evil 5, which works "okay" for me (though I know it doesn't satisfy everybody).
I'm inclined to agree with Nels (and JT) here — different games have different sorts of appeals. (I tried brainstorming some basic ones awhile back, but I have to imagine other such systems have been described, and perhaps more in depth, elsewhere on the web or in some academic journal.) The fact that these all belong to the same "medium" is kind of incidental; sudoku puzzle books and mystery novels share a physical medium, too, and there's certainly room in all of "books" for them to exist side by side.
Still, I think there are some valid questions worth considering in here. Even in the subset of games we think of as "narrative games," for instance, what are the relative merits of making games feel "open ended" to encourage a sense of agency (e.g., Fallout 3, GTA IV) versus directing players more down a single path (e.g., Shadow of the Colossus)?
@Nels,
I feel like multiplayer gaming is intrinsically at odds with a narrative experience as we're used to hearing, reading, watching stories on our own, be it through a book, movie, or comic. Granted we do tend to watch movies with other people, but that's for other social reasons, and I feel like they're designed to be enjoyed equally alone. We're not used to having to call a buddy over to co-cooperatively read The Great Gatsby together, so shoehorning multiplayer into a game like oh, say Shadow of the Colossus likely wouldn't work (even though that may have initially been the idea, if the early workshop footage was any indication).
Or maybe it would work, but would just be very difficult to set up and would require everyone playing to be on the same wavelength. If you're playing a serious narrative game online with a couple of teenagers screwing off, that'll break the immersion more than anything. I'm not saying you can't have a great narrative multiplayer experience, but I'd say there are lots of obstacles to overcome that could potentially undermine the whole experience.
@ Josh: "Any guild raid is going to get the same narrative, so I don't see how that is divergent from any single player narrative."
Not really. They are gonna get the same embedded narrative, the one the designers put there, but each individual is gonna get a different emergent narrative because they don't do the same actions, have the same relationship with their party members and so on. But that's all guessing since I never played WoW.
@Monsieur Durand Pierre
Yeah, that's what I was getting at. Interactivity weirds established notions of narrative enough as it is. We're still working on reconciling that, let alone what it means when we've got multiple players in such a framework.
The issues you pointed out are very real and I'm sure there are plenty of others too. It's exciting that we're seeing some folks working in the area, but I can tell you from experience, these are not easy problems to solve.
Ever read Diamond Age? Ractives.
Multiplayer narratives? Try Clue. Get a few players to play the parts. Toss in a hired player(s) or NPC(s) to play the murderer(s). Let the story unfold. Think, Murder Mystery Dinner.
That said, Spector's "lazy" comment forgets one thing: you replace narrative with game balance in multiplayer. The director is found in character rulesets which focus what a player can do vs. another player.
@Mr Durand Pierre:
Your point spreads further than just multiplayer games. Playing a narrative-based game with a bunch of random teens on the 'net would only ruin the immersion if the game allows players to ruin the immersion in the first place.
This has been my issue with Half Life for a long time (why doesn't anyone notice me jumping on the table and flinging cups at their head like a hyperactive child?) and its very noticeable in multiplayer gaming.
Gearing myself up for a blog post about it myself in the near future, but my main point would have to be that designers need to consider looking at elements we take for granted in games (control systems, idle animations [or lack thereof] and voice chat are the ones that spring to mind immediately) and consider whether to leave them in to support user-driven gameplay, or cut/tweak them to drive a more convincing narrative scenario.
I for one don't really see how the incidentally differing narratives in a linear game like Gears of War are different from the incidentally differing narratives of a WoW raid. It's just a matter of scale and the number of people involved. Figuring out the best way for four characters to take down a boss in Final Fantasy isn't qualitatively different from figuring out the best way for 40 people to take down a boss in WoW.
Competitive multiplayer games do more in the way of trusting players to do interesting stuff, but as I'm sure Valve or Infinity Ward would tell you, there's more design and authorship than one might initially assume that goes into designing competitive multiplayer.
Additionally, if you look at the games Warren Spector is renowned for, there is a higher degree of control over their experience afforded to the player than most other entries in their respective genres. Compare Ultima and Final Fantasy. Compare Deus Ex and Half-Life. Compare System Shock and Dead Space. I don't think it's about withholding control from the player or not trusting them to make something cool. It's about finding ways to engage the player in a creative world by making their actions significant in to the game. It's about giving the player context and genuine motivation, putting them in their character's shoes. It's the difference between a boring, shapeless sandbox and a cool playground filled with fun and versatile toy structures.
Personally, I think the stories I created with the designer's help in Deus Ex, avoiding killing hostages, finding ways to do stuff I maybe wasn't technically supposed to do, are significantly more engaging and emotionally resonant than a game of L4D or CoD4. Deus Ex kind of lets you break its own expectations, lets you exploit the mechanics to get out of situations you weren't supposed to get out of. It was my first real introduction to emergent gameplay. But contrast that with GTA, where you can do anything but nothing matters. Kill a million civilians, I don't care, run over grandma and demolish an orphanage. But in Deus Ex I'll spend two hours trying to make sure I incapacitate the person trying to kill me for failing to execute a hostage that's far from innocent. Ideally, you combine the strength of the fiction provided by the author with your actions to make everything you do meaningful. It's your actions in the face of extraordinary circumstances that makes it memorable, and for that you need an author AND a player.
Julian -- thanks so much for your comment. That's essentially how I feel too, and I especially appreciate your clarification: I don't think anyone could ever accuse Spector of de-prioritizing player agency, to say the least!
@Mr Durand Pierre and @Nels:
I have to disagree that multiplayer gaming is intrinsically at odds with narrative and spectatorship (though I do agree that most games don't bother to try to these work together). This is somewhat akin to suggesting that you can't enjoy a movie's story if you go to see that movie with a chatty friend.
Consider, as a counterexample, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. Personally, I found that game's story to be much more enjoyable when played with a friend. In some cases, this was for the same reason that I enjoy watching action movies more with friends than watching them alone. One of the best scenes in the game – shooting out the back of a van to escape police officers, with the protagonists arguing the whole time – wasn't hard, but was exciting and interesting. In other cases, however, the story was even better by virtue of its mode of presentation, such as in those portions of the game where what Lynch's player was seeing on one side of the screen was different from what Kane's player was seeing on the other.
I'm sure you could also easily argue that a sort of non-linear, non-traditional, "emergent" narrative arises from what players do together (as was alluded to in the talk described in the original post), but I don't think you even need to go that far. There's a reason that people complained when they found out that you wouldn't be able to see the cut scenes in Too Human's cooperative multiplayer mode: Some folks actually do want to experience game narratives socially. Those two kinds of appeals are not mutually exclusive.
@Nels Anderson: I'd just like to add that part of why WoW is so ridiculously successful is because while it does have the massively multiplayer, loot-grinding social gameplay, it also does have a rich world with lore that rivals that of Tolkien. When we think of WoW, we do tend to think of the image that Leigh posted, and while a significant amount of WoW's player base is uninterested in WoW's story, rapidly clicking to skip past it, I think it's a bit unfair to say that the game isn't about it's story. Depending on the player, the game will be about whatever aspect of the experience interests them.
That being said, I agree with JT; there is no proper way to do it. And as I have said before, and will continue to say forever, there is no black-and-white barrier between games that are driven by a designer and those that allow the player more freedoms; like everything, there is a continuum that these two extremes exist upon, with all games falling somewhere in between.
I do, however, strongly disagree with Spector's idea that multiplayer games are lazy. It is a very interesting challenge to provide players with the tools they need to create their own experiences while interacting with each other, while still maintaining a bit of control over how the interaction will occur.
An example of this would be Left 4 Dead, where players are free to progress in any way they see fit, but are encouraged to progress as a group with very open communication. That is, it's not like the game gives them all the freedom in the world. They can do anything they want within the bounds of the game world, but like all games, doing the "wrong" things will hinder you, and hence players learn not to do these things. This is but a small example, and I'm sure someone can think of better.
Additionally, a game doesn't need to be about any kind of narrative. When we were kids playing tag, was there a narrative? We were just having fun...and that's the key element of games: fun.
Whew. Thanks for the acknowledgment, I'm glad my wordy, rambling post actually contributed something of value. ^_^; I'll keep this more succinct.
I think Spector's being a bit contrarian by using a strong word like "lazy." The industry has been pushing away from his specialty of plot-driven games with significant leeway given to the player, and it's easy to get snarky about it. It takes a lot of work to make a good multiplayer game, and I think if pressed Spector would probably acknowledge that. What I take away from his statement is that the "story" generated by a game of chess or a match of Halo is qualitatively different from the story generated by a playthrough of Deus Ex. Conflating the two is a mistake, and it's somewhat insulting to designers that spend a lot of time making a malleable narrative in a game like Planescape: Torment to say that what players are doing in Unreal Tournament is the same. It's a very different, if equally challenging and important, set of issues.
I think I have to fundamentally disagree with Spector's point of view here, particularly if he really was so careless as to use the word "lazy" when referring to a game that lacks a narrative.
The role being discussed is "game designer", not "storyteller". If a designer wishes to tell a narrative and has the skills, resources and time to create one that's compelling and appealing for their audience, fantastic. Sometimes it works.
Other times, you get Tetris, which effortlessly becomes a part of modern culture alongside Michael Jackson, Back to the Future and Discworld. Now THAT'S a challenge.
To imply - let alone state explicitly - that narrative games are inherently superior to multiplayer games seems faintly ludicrous to me - and absolutely damaging to the breadth of what a "game" can be. My preference, counterpointing Spector, is that I'd gladly sacrifice touching one person on a deep and meaningful level with my well-paced narrative if it meant I could sculpt a playground of fun and entertainment for a group of friends that keeps them together even when we're physically apart.
I mean, who else is going to talk about Bioshock with me?
- L
@ Jason T
Well said. I suppose I just have a bias against multiplayer games as games are something I tend to do when I'm not hanging out with my mates. That, and it's a rather big commitment to play through the entirety of a campaign with someone. But that's probably just personal bias. If you have the means to play a game like that co-op, there is potential.
I definitely prefer to "interact with a guided vision," but that doesn't preclude mindless multiplayer deathmatches for me (I wasted far too much time on Quake 3 Arena).
Ultima 6, Hero's Quest, Dues Ex, Ultima Underworld, etc., are all great examples of games that did it all: good stories, great immersion, lots of freedom. But there are plenty of games that have freedom and a decent story but still aren't quite as fun, such as Gothic 3 or Oblivion. What is the X factor then? I dare to say the obvious: the X factor is doing it all, and doing it all to near perfection. Good story, good dialog, good graphics, good gameplay, good combat mechanics, freedom to explore, accessible interface, etc., etc.
Spector's comment about laziness was odd, but he certainly knows something about balancing narrative and freedom that many others don't. In fact, games that do it right don't even seem to try to balance them, because they're not at odds in such games. Spector knows to design a complex web of quests that offer freedom of execution (Ultima 6) or enable a series of solutions to individual problems (Dues Ex). In both cases, neither interfered with the narrative or vice versa. Players were gently led forward with a large enough sandbox to create the feeling of freedom with a goal.
I have been able to massively enjoy both kinds of games. Different levels of designer control have their own appeal.
More open, emergent games, like has already been said, are more dynamic and spontaneous. The user-driven "stories" in a way feel more significant to players because players "lived" them in a way. I know I've gone through many spontaneous things in games worth retelling like war stories.
A more linear, more designer-driven game on the other hand is basically aspiring to be a good roller coaster. I don't ride roller coasters myself but I know friends who like to ride them at parks repeatedly.
I actually don't think either kind of game design is being "lazy" either. Any degree of designer control over an experience requires the designer to account for what players might do. It's just a difference between guiding players every step of the way and trying to see how balances will play out.
One thing I wanna point out here though is that the difference between linear game design and open game design seems to be one of the pivotal things that separates Japanese game design from Western game design. The genre were this is most apparent is probably RPGs.
I think the problem is when somebody makes the assumption that a more "user-oriented" game necessarily avoids or takes a lazy approach with plot, characterization, etc. Or that the "user-oriented" approach is employed specifically to avoid/be lazy about those things. Certainly this can be the case, but I don't think we should jump to the conclusion that it always is.
That said, I don't think MMOs are a very good example of a pure "user-oriented" experience, since they typically still have quests and scripted events, and even raid encounters are meant to be studied, learned, and executed based on a script. In other words, MMOs give the impression that the user is determining the experience, but generally the user is just being immersed in a pre-ordained series of tasks. On a micro level, sure, you can run around and do quests in different orders, etc. But on a macro level, you're still usually confined to areas with enemies near your level, can't complete quests that fall well outside your level range, etc.
The idea of a purely "user-oriented" experience is a fantasy, anyway. Authorship is always going to play a role in gaming experiences. Even if the details of what a player does in any given moment isn't precisely determined by the author, what one "can do" most likely will be.
It seems strange that Warren Spector, a guy who started his game design career in Pen & Paper games to have this kind of attitude.
(in pen & paper it is well known that 'railroading' and 'dm-pc' are some of the worst crimes imaginable)
Then again, he did leave that industry, always referring to his reasons for leaving that the only significant choice designers had were wether it was going to be a percentage based system or a d20 system. Which seems a bit shortsighted considering the immense diversity in the games of the non-video kind.
But then he makes Deus Ex, a videogame all about trying to give as much choice to the player as possible. And he totally oened Will Wright at the luminaries talk on OnLive.
Odd fellow. But of course, it's in conflict where itneresting stuff arises whereas dead certainty is a total bore.
Nice post. Your approach is always interesting and well-reasoned, despite the fact that I rarely agree.
Although I truly enjoyed Bioshock and the System shock series, and several other linear narrative games, my preferences are strongly for the player-driven experience. However, I like that there's room for both in this industry. I'd hate to see either lost.
To be unduly contrarian: narrative games are lazy because their ultimate expression is to ape movies. They shoehorn games into the constructs of other media. Whenever the game explicitly or implicitly takes control away, it's merely faking it. Bioshock did a good job of not taking control away to tell its story, however I'm more concerned with its level of gameplay innovation.
Regarding the WoW strawman, I'm sure I'd have a hard time getting someone to care about Bioshock who doesn't play FPS's. The plot was nice, but not really that deep or interesting. I've had many more interesting discussions about WoW raiding moments than about Bioshock with both players and non-players of both. Certainly because WoW had a more meaningful impact on me, and I cared more about it from the start.
Discussions about the AI director and its impact on the experience are more important to games than those about Bioshock's undersea objectivist utopia environment. One is a unique gameplay innovation, one is a novel environment with some new ways of telling its story.
The message for games should ideally be contained in their gameplay, as that is what they uniquely bring to the table in media.
But aren't those questions of how to make the narrative and the gameplay work as a unified whole part of what Spector is claiming that the Counterstrike school of story is avoiding? Even in some extremely linear games that do heavily ape movies, there can be moments when they convey something uniquely suited to games. The sequence in the irradiated tube makes you feel relentlessly devoted despite being nearly worthless, the whole Shadow Moses Island sequence makes you feel like an outdated relic of the past, all your skills tuned to something that no longer matters. In a multiplayer game, without the flashpoint of the narrative the levels and types of meaning you can produce are on a different scale. I mean, sure you can say L4D is about working together with stranger, just like you can say that football is about obeying for the strength of the team, or baseball is about getting your turn in the spotlight.
Halo is a sport. There's a reason people watch sports movies, but there's also a reason they usually cover a whole season and have some other sort of drama. It's a different type of story than you get from watching a game of baseball. Claiming that multiplayer games have the same types of stories and will eventually replace narrative games is like saying that sporting events have the same types of stories and will eventually replace sports movies. Here, narrative games includes super linear games like CoD4 AND games with a malleable narrative like Deus Ex or Fallout, but not games where the main draw is futzing with a ruleset, such as the way most people play GTA outside of the missions or games like Noby Noby Boy. They're both important in their own ways, and I would be disappointed and shocked in equal measure of either went away.
The question I asked myself right away was the same as Jason T's: "How can designers throw both kinds of narrative together?".
Like in that century old idea of a multiplayer game in which one person is a killer who has to cover his tracks and the other person is the cop chasing him ("Clue Evolved" if you like). You'd have a story, directed and established, but at the same time moments of user driven narrative. Think of it as Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy Multiplayer:
("How did you hide the murder weapon?" - "How did you find it?")
Other than that, it's like Leigh said: It's an interesting discussion but not really an important one to the near future of our beloved medium. And what Julian said: None could replace the other, so we can just be happy to be able to play both of them.
What might be possible is that the directed narrative will be pushed away by all the WoW's and L4D's of the future. Far fetched but slightly possible.
I had a nightmare similar to that idea once.
Design is Law, an employer of Spector once declared.
I guess history proves that Design must not overthrow the user's desire to experience something unique and new.
Driving the story and game world by guiding the player in shackles will only cause linearity, and the eventual loss of interest.
Giving the user the illusion of choice however, much like in Bioshock's design (and incidentally, it's narrative...would you kindly recall), will create an enduring interactive experience where music, sounds, sights and the like, could stir up powerful memories long after completion.
I know that Aerith's Theme still makes some people cry...
I think good design facilitates the user's desire to experience something unique and new. The ultimate user-driven game is a copy of a programming language and a manual. The designer's job, ideally, is to create an experience the player will enjoy, to show them something unique and new, to help them do something unique and new. If the player is frustrated because the designer is holding their hand the whole time, they're going to miss out on the experiences they could be having. If the player is playing de_dust for the eight millionth time they're also going to miss out on something unique and new.
It's funny that people are pointing out the fact that Spector says purely player-driven games are 'lazy' and the fact that he puts a huge amount of player choice in his games as if they were some kind of contradiction. He's given players choices, while *also* guiding the narrative, which is what's hard. It's easy to either/or (and to choose that might be construed as lazy.) It's not easy to do both at the same time.
"Crowd wisdom"? Are you serious; talk about an oxymoron if there ever was one. If so called gatekeepers such as yourself allow for conventional wisdom to invade, as they mostly do, what sociology terms our "reality tunnels" you can say bye bye to the value of criticism of any form.
I know I am not saying anything new but...
I believe Warren as much as he is a personal hero for his body of work, is forgetting his own words in past interviews where he espouses the player's ability to drive a story dynamically through carefully presented choices. He has done some brilliant work so I am wary to be too critical.
It seems that we all want our players to feel agency, and yet we want to be that guiding hand gently pushing our users towards our predesigned ends; whether that is an emotional state, top score, a match victory or the conclusion of an epic RPG adventure.
To echo what has been said, 'it requires both a player and designer to tango.'
Characters can be anything from paddles in pong, to fully rendered super heroes, to undulating soundscapes we poke at with sticks. Within this medium I believe it is very hard and somewhat pointless to try to decouple the relationship between a player/users ability to form their experiences and the game's ability to manage that experience.
A story can be built from any materials available, and much like characters in a game, stories take many forms. I'm not sure there is a difference between the story created in a multi player death-match and the most amazingly written hero’s journey. At the end of the day you have an experience to describe to others that not only involved your input but that of the systems. Whether that system was player driven, procedurally generated or came purely from the fingertips of one mad genius.
...just another lurker coming out of his corner....
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