Still waiting for books

I am still waiting for the books, i have however dedicated my time to think about game design and underlying messages in games. This is a copy of my text i presented on the total war forums.

I have been thinking a bit recently about what makes me enjoy games so much. I was debating a bit how the depth of games look like. Mainly story. A game can have an incredibly complex story but on the surface it might look like some random entertainment medium.

This might be a kinda long and weird text but i had to get it out of my mind.

The first game i thought of was mass effect. Mass effect got hung out as an "erotic" and "Sex oriented" fan service game by the news media. When one sees the video of the main character making out with one of the in game companions one might think that this is true. If you take time and play through the game on a serious level however, you find out that the game is much more than what the visual image of it first tells you. What Bioware sought to show people by making that scene was that you, the main character, the hero, in the middle of saving the galaxy from a very serious threat, finds time for the people he/she cares about the most. This is in my opinion a very beautiful message.

By combining a very deep story with a prompting dialog for each choice the player makes Bioware managed to blend the shooting and killing in mass effect with messages about how one should care for his or her fellow companions and strangers alike.

Another game that pops up in my mind is the old FPS Call of duty 2. I remember when i first played it. Me, as a Russian conscript went into a room to find a German soldier being tortured and beaten. When he finally tells the Russian interrogator what he wants to hear, the Russians execute him with a bullet in the back of his head. Bastard probably deserved it was my first though. Later you had to defend a couple of buildings from a German assault. It was terrifying, i remember seeing the Russian soldiers die one by one while killing German after German. Bastards killing my friends i though. When the attack was halted i was given the order to counter-attack. Now i was on the offensive and was pushing the Germans back, inch by inch. Suddenly i felt it. I felt the German soldiers, fighting for their lives, they were trapped, just as i were previously and they were dying, one by one. It was just like me and my fellow Russian soldiers. I thought about it for a bit, i remembered how terrifying it was to see my fellow soldiers die and feeling that soon, those Germans are gonna get me. Now i imagined how terrified those Germans were, fighting to the last man in a cold and harsh, ruined Moscow, miles away from home. It was a hidden message i think. Call of duty 2 wasn't just mindless shooting, it was putting the player in the body of a soldier, fighting for his life. Later, as i discovered, it also showed how the enemies were just like me.

What i also discovered is that looking at some gameplay videos and seeing some images, didn't help me grasp any understanding of the game at all. The only thing i saw was shooting, killing and blood. The horrors of war basically. But from playing the game i understood what it ment.

The game didn't say: Here's war, go and have fun killing mindless nazis cuz it's fun.

It said: Here is how war looks like, observe it. Not just your allies, but your enemies as well. Analyze it, what does these images mean to you? When you are done, form an opinion about it.

This is what i think is so great about games and why people that does not play them can't form any in depth opinions about them.

Why do i enjoy strategy games then? Do they present these kinds of messages?

I am gonna use two of the total war games as examples. In Empire: Total war i was kinda amused by the swedes. Since i recognized what they were saying, i found it humorous that CA included Swedish voice actors, speaking old Swedish. This was a miss by CA though in my opinion. What the Swedish voice actors did in empire was presenting war as something that is fun and silly. It made it humorous to hear them fighting and dying. Empire was still a great game since it was fun to play but i think the underlying message was a bit misleading. This was however, greatly improved in Napoleon: Total war. Just to see if the Swedish voice acting still was in that silly, kinda humorous style in napoleon i played a skirmish battle the day i bought it. I gave a Swedish army a couple of regiments of line infantry, i myself had an entire army of howitzers. The moment i began bombarding the swedes i got amazed. They screamed, they cried, they called for mom. It was really authentic. I almost felt sorry for bombarding them.

Empire made me think like this: bombarding these guys is kinda fun. I'll prolly win this battle, another territory for me, yay!

Napoleon like this: Ok, i am hitting these guys kinda hard, must have been like this but worse during the real Napoleonic wars. Glad i wasn't born during that time.

See the difference? In empire, bombarding swedes or some other faction is just a part of the game, no real feelings behind it. In napoleon, fighting an enemy is a grim, dirty and bloody affair. This makes it realistic and people that experiences this stop for a moment and think. Well, at least if they like to think which i take it they do if they like strategy.

This is part what makes strategy games enjoyable for me as well as RPG's and some shooters.

With that i say thank you and hope it wasn't too horrible to read all this ^_^

//Kurten