SAGITAR'S PROFILE

author=Tabris_Macbeth
...Say, anyone else remember the days when the goal of games was to, y'know, have fun? When they didn't have anything to do with pretentious cockery and everything to do with, y'know, having fun?

Why is it "pretentious cockery" to say that games have been around as long as humans have, and they've had meaningful uses throughout history that have had nothing to do with fun? If you think fun is all games are and all they should be, that's fine. I'm not going to attack your opinion. But creating games is something that is deeply important to me, something I've done my entire life and will continue to do until I die. It's currently how I make my living. Don't tell me your tragically simplified view of games should govern my life as well, and don't call me pretentious for having a more complex one.

As I said, I'm not going to get into the games as art debate. But as someone who makes his professional living as a game artist, I find it ludicrous that there's some magical moment where my environments cease to be art just because they're put into an interactive medium.

author=Tabris_Macbeth
And I really gotta ask, why is a shot of this guy's profile in this, for apparently no other reason than to stroke his own ego? The World of Warcraft pic is relevent, 'cus he brings up World of Warcraft, but then the only other picture in the article is a picture of his profile, where he's tooting his own horn way the hell too loud.

Seriously, man. You're just making RPG Maker games. You're not that special.

Were the personal attacks really necessary? Grow up.

I included the picture of my profile as a relevant example of the different personas people adopt in games and on the internet versus in real life. I could have used anyone's profile, I honestly didn't think there would be such a gross misconstruction of my intent. You don't have to make childish accusations about my ego just because you disagree with my opinions. Your arguments lose a lot of credibility that way.

And no, for me this isn't just about making RPG Maker games. If games are simply a casual hobby for you, I have no problem with that, I never attempted to shove my opinions down your throat and never would. But there are millions of people out there who agree with me that games are currently and historically an immensely powerful tool for inspiring, educating, and uniting, and adding "video" in front of them doesn't change that.


To everyone else, I'd love to respond to your comments and will try to get to it when I have a little more time. Thanks for your interest in the subject, even if you disagree with the article! And I appreciate most of you keeping your arguments civil.

Thanks for all your responses! I think I should clarify a few things...

First, here's the definition of "escapism" as given by Webster:
: habitual diversion of the mind to purely imaginative activity or entertainment as an escape from reality or routine.

Games are so much more than that. Games have been central to our culture, lifestyle, and ability to interact with each other going back to the very origins of humanity. Look at ancient Aztec sports, or gladiator fights, or dice games, or the early Olympics... would anyone really argue that all those competitions were about escaping reality?

Adding "video" to the front of "game" does not change that. Being able to develop and share games using digital technology does not change what games intrinsically are, or what they have the potential to be. What it DOES do is give developers an infinite canvas, a global audience, and an even more central role in society.

author=Link_2112
Even if video games have responsibilities they don't compare to those in the real world. So giving up the responsibility of your job doesn't make it any more acceptable if you are trading it for the responsibility of healing your party during a raid(which, depending on your job, can be much harder :3). Not paying bills can get you evicted and make you homeless; not feeding your Chocobo and letting it die is meaningless. Any responsibility online can be neglected with no real consequence. That's the big difference, consequences.

See, but this is such a narrow-minded example. Sure feeding your Chocobo has no real consequence, but the responsibility you feel to do so is based on those same principals that govern real-world responsibilities. And as that blurring between the physical and digital worlds grows wider and stronger, those in-game responsibilities will completely have real-world impact.

Already pervasive games call for players around the world to meet physically and form relationships they would have otherwise missed out on. In some Xbox games, players bet Microsoft points (real world money, mind you!) on the outcome of a digital game. One of the lines being blurred is the line between in-game consequences and real-world consequences.

author=Corfaisus
Unfortunately, most gamers aren't going to purchase Dead Space 2 seeking inspiration in the realms of art, music or theater; and even fewer desire a solid educational experience unless it's something they have to learn anyway and this medium would make it a little more tolerable.

Ah, but you can't really say things like "most gamers" anymore! As the range of people who play games is growing wider and more varied every day, trying to define us all is impossible. You mentioned Dead Space 2, which sold roughly 1.5 million copies, fairly substantial when compared to games or similar scope and style. And yet the puzzle game Bejeweled, which has been proven to improve mood and heart rhythms, hit the 50 million sales mark over a year ago.

author=Corfaisus
As a last note, but if for whatever reason someone should feel the line between the digital and the living worlds beginning to blur, that would seem more a mental illness than an actuality. No matter how close we are to our cellular phones or our handheld computers, the division between simulation and reality will forever be a solid, impermeable boundary.

Between simulation and reality, yes. But that's different between the digital and physical worlds.

I disagree completely that this blurring is a mental illness, as you put it, but instead an inarguable reality neither good nor bad. The fact that we can access the internet anywhere from our phones is a perfect, simple example. We no longer have to sit down and make the conscious decision to enter the digital world -- it's always there at our fingertips, and we can access it in any "real-world" moment. Anyone who calls that a bad thing is ignoring the tremendous potential it has for good, as well.

author=calunio
I agree that there is some degree of responsibility on games. Some people (not many) take it too seriously, and they stress over gaming stuff. Some have committed suicide because of MMORPG stuff. But usually, people take those responsibilites in an engaging, fun way. Dealing with a dungeon boss is nothing like dealing with an office boss. Chasing a goal (like gaining levels) in a game because YOU WANT TO and YOU'RE HAVING FUN DOING IT is not directly comparable to goals like studying for a test.

The only difference between studying for a test and studying histories of character, or between an office boss or a dungeon boss, is that one we volunteer to tackle and one we are forced into. Is it really "fun" to be chasing that next level in WoW, to see your numbers go up ever so slowly while you click the same buttons and kill the same monsters over and over? That's not much different from office work, is it? Games can often be stressful and terrifying and weigh on our minds just as heavily as "real-world" problems. To say that games are simply fun is just not true. They can be a hell of a lot of work.

author=calunio
I also hate this "mask" talk. It just expresses utter lack of understanding of human personality and behavior.

The rest of your argument I can at least take as healthy debate. It's difficult not to take offense at this, however. You don't believe people wear masks in their everyday lives?

author=calunio
Crazy, man. Crazy.

I'm not sure this argument is as crazy as you seem to think, or my opinion as rare... Jane McGonigal is one example of a high-profile name (named one of Oprah's 20 most important women in 2010) who shares similar views on the issue. In fact, she's made it her life's goal to see a game developer win the Nobel Prize by 2023, a feat only possible if we accept that games are closely tied to our real lives, and we can translate the heavy responsibilities we accept as a part of playing games into real-world good.

author=Crystalgate
Games teach and inspire mainly about games, not real life.

I don't believe this, and would be surprised if many people here did, honestly. One of the links I gave in the article was to OCRemix.org, as an example. All those amazing compositions were inspired by games. And there have been tons of studies to show that kids are often more receptive to real-life lessons if they are able to interact with the information through games. The entire educational games market wouldn't exist if your statement was true.


I wasn't able to respond to everything, but I hope this helps clear some of my points up. Games are incredibly powerful, and it's important to understand how deep their roots go in our culture and "real" world. They are not, and SHOULD not be an escape from the world, but rather a colorful, infinite extension of it.

A review!! And a great one at that! First of all, thanks so much for taking the time to write this up and submit it. I truly appreciate it.

I'm glad you liked the way the story is told so far, as you said it does kind of play second fiddle to the day-to-day activities on the farm. I wanted the maps and village to have a very defined atmosphere, hopefully I accomplished that with the graphics. I'll see what I can do about the walking speed (I'm planning to offer a horse at some point) as well as the other great bits of advice you suggested.

LockBall is fun once you get the hang of it, but I definitely am looking into creating a tutorial sort of introduction or a "practice mode" instead of just throwing you into it.

Again, thanks so much for the review and the recommendation.

author=catmitts
Seriously, thinking about games in terms of overall coherency in theme/structure/aesthetics is probably important but I do wish that any kind of "breaking the spell" weren't automatically treated as a bad thing.

I entirely agree with pretty much everything you said. There's a whole host of memorable moments throughout gaming's brief history where the wall between player and game was blurred or broken to positive effect. However, there's a significant difference between breaking the illusion intentionally (which implies a certain amount of creativity and innovation, and like you said shouldn't always be viewed as a bad thing) and doing so unintentionally. The latter is what I was I was talking about in the article.

When you see features like those you discussed in Earthbound, or when Psycho Mantis reads your memory card, or evenwhen Sonic stamps his feet impatiently and looks to the camera... These "illusion breaks" were intended and delicately handled. But more prevalent in the indie community are things like continuity/timeline discrepancies, grammatical mistakes, nonsensical design, and poor user interface -- the dangerous kind of breaks.

author=catmitts
One of the things I like most about games is this kind of playful abstraction, the way that you're encouraged not to experience them as an unbroken flow but to step outside this flow and think critically about whats happening: can I make this jump, do I have enough items for this boss, what's involved in this puzzle, is there another route through the dungeon, and also how all this information is represented and processed.

I like this about games as well, but I would argue that players don't really step out of the experience to consider these things. Instead, they are understood to be part of the experience, which goes along with that "suspension of disbelief" the player is expected to lend. I once had an interesting conversation with an instructor (who worked as QA supervisor at Bioware for years) about spikes in a platformer. There's no logical reason for deadly spikes to be littered about any world, but when an experienced gamer encounters them, he or she will accept them as a logical obstacle regardless. It's sort of expected that because the player is giving the developer their time, the player is willing to (as you put it) meet the developer halfway in terms of logic. Just look at Mario... Nothing about that world makes sense! Yet it's the biggest franchise out there.

I've gotten off the point, but in short I agree with pretty much all of your points, and I definitely recognize the value in those low-budget plays that still manage to engage the audience. I think there, our responsibility as players is to be more willing to accept inevitable flaws in our games as long as it's balanced out by attention to detail in what is there, as well as an attempt by the developer/playwright to make the game/show consistent in terms of theme and vision.

author=Shinan
Compare to a movie where the presence of a mic boom or a crappy effect is fairly immediate in taking you out of it. Mostly because in movies there's usually not the same bond between audience and movie.

In fact you could even go so far as to say that just as games are interactive so is theater (just not really not to the same extent at all).

That's a good point, and I might actually agree that theater and games have more in common than either of them do with film. Both rely on direct interaction with the audience, rather than the more passive storytelling techniques found in film or novels.


I'm glad you guys are interested in the topic and agree about the similarities between the two mediums. Let's keep the discussion going!

http://rpgmaker.net/games/1855/

I'd really appreciate you giving World's Dawn a shot. I haven't gotten very much feedback on the demo at all and would really like an experienced reviewer's honest opinion. Thanks!