Extra Credits is a show that most of you probably know, it has become quite popular during its short lifespan. I am a fan and agree with them on many topics. But the episode "Narrative Mechanics" just comes across as pretentious nonsense and has been bothering me ever since I watched it I would like to give my thoughts on this episodes and see what others on the escapist think. So please before you condemn me as a hater with no life please at least read what I have to say and keep the judgements until after ;)

Now, the people who don't know the episode, in this episode they ask the question "Can games tell a story or raise a question using only play?" They use missile command as an example.
Now this is a very simple question, Yes. Practically every game does this. Even counter-strike does this. Even if you never heard of Counter Strike, play one round and you know the story, terrorists are trying to blow up a small town and counter terrorists are trying to stop them. Am I missing something here? Why did they have to reference a thirty year old game to prove a point? I guess it depends on how you define 'play'. If you factor in exploration of your environment as part then it's simple, but if were only talking about your interaction(eg you shooting your gun in an fps) as part of 'play then it becomes a lot harder. I'd love to hear some conformation on this.
But my biggest frustration in this episode is how they portrayed Missile Command as a deep and Intelligent game which it certainly is not.

In it you have six cities and three missile bases and you lose when you lose all six cities, so do you sacrifice all but one city so you can maximize survival chance or try save them all? They stated it had "the best and most difficult moral choice any video game has ever presented'. But I don't see it as a moral choice, because these aren't cities full of people, there pixels. Now, not saying you can't feel bad for pixels, many games such as Mass Effect, Silent Hill and System shock 2 have brought me close to tears before but that is because these characters are fleshed out, we learn to care for them through the course of the game and can truly sympathise with there struggles. But in Missile Command, we know nothing of these places, they did say you're supposed to use towns near you and pretend there the towns in Missile Command but I don't buy that, that's like if in Mass Effect 2, instead of giving the character Jacob a backstory, a box popped up saying "Pretend he's your best friend in real life" it wouldn't work there and it doesn't work in Missile Command.

So it's not a moral choice, it's a calculation. Obviously you will survive the longest if you concentrate on keeping one or two cities alive and forget about the rest so why not do that? If you want a much better example of a moral choice, try Pathologic. It's a game most of you wouldn't have heard of it, it was made by Russian Developer Ice Pick Lodge back in 2004. Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a long article about it that is worth reading,but for now I'll give a quick synopsis

The game begins with three healers arriving in a town, a backwards settlement built on a meat industry out in the barren earth of the Russian steppes. The year is 1910. The three healers do not know each other, and arrive in town via different paths and come for different reasons. One of the healers is a doctor from the city, another is a shamanistic figure. The last is a tiny girl with fearsome messianical powers. They are the Bachelor, the Haruspicus and the Devotress. They're also your playable characters.
But things are wrong. The moment the three healers arrive a terrible, merciless infection breaks out. Soon thousands of residents have fallen ill, with hundreds more dying each day. As the town is isolated and, eventually, quarantined, the healers are trapped, forced to win the fight against the disease or succumb to the infection themselves. And make no mistake, if no one stops this plague it will wipe the town off the face of the Earth.

This is a very hard game and as such, resources are scarce, very scarce. As such you will often have to give up something you need just so you can buy some food and survive the rest of the day. But roaming the streets are children, homeless and willing to do anything to survive, just like you. You are free to murder anyone you please and these kids often carry resources like medicine which you give to infected people and postpone the spread of the plague, leaving you with more time to help cure it.
And this is the choice you must make, do you murder these innocent children to help save the lives of others? If so how much is too much? You also have to consider what damage this will do to the town, if you kill too many, how will the town continue after the plague? If nothing else, it puts bioshock's little sister moral choice to shame.

So that's all I wanted to say, feel free to disagree. Please keep the hateful, obnoxious comments to a minimum, I'd like to keep this civil. Thanks for reading.

I partly agree about the missile command section, the thing you have to understand is, everything is relative to the eye who perceives it.

What might me a moral choice for you, will probably be a calculation for others, and vice versa.

It depends HOW you look at it, someone who does sets himself to imagine that those cities ARE full of people will probably agree with what James said.

But in the end if you just play it as an arcade survival game, all you want are more points, so yes, it will be a calculation.

Good reading.

Things like character and plot do not equal mechanics. The games you mention do include narrative mechanics but missile command is comprised almost exclusively of narrative mechanics. That's what makes it a good example.

Remember that during the time of Missile Command, games required a lot more imagination, where as these days we have cutscenes, scripted sequences and photorealistic graphics. Those pixels you bash for not having backstory or description, in those times, were your lives. While motivation was high score, not just to save them, you could either try to save them all and get bonuses for saving them, or let all but one die out and just focus defending that.

BlindTom:
Things like character and plot do not equal mechanics. The games you mention do include narrative mechanics but missile command is comprised almost exclusively of narrative mechanics. That's what makes it a good example.

I presume you're talking about Pathologic. I wasn't using it as an example of Narrative Mechanics, I was using it as an example of a well executed moral choice system.

mrc390:

BlindTom:
Things like character and plot do not equal mechanics. The games you mention do include narrative mechanics but missile command is comprised almost exclusively of narrative mechanics. That's what makes it a good example.

I presume you're talking about Pathologic. I wasn't using it as an example of Narrative Mechanics, I was using it as an example of a well executed moral choice system.

But, but the episode you're complaining about is a demonstration of narrative mechanics....

RYjet911:
Remember that during the time of Missile Command, games required a lot more imagination, where as these days we have cutscenes, scripted sequences and photorealistic graphics. Those pixels you bash for not having backstory or description, in those times, were your lives. While motivation was high score, not just to save them, you could either try to save them all and get bonuses for saving them, or let all but one die out and just focus defending that.

I understand how it could have had a good moral choice back then, but it's not 1980 anymore. If it is not relevant anymore I don't see why they should have mentioned it.

mrc390:

RYjet911:
Remember that during the time of Missile Command, games required a lot more imagination, where as these days we have cutscenes, scripted sequences and photorealistic graphics. Those pixels you bash for not having backstory or description, in those times, were your lives. While motivation was high score, not just to save them, you could either try to save them all and get bonuses for saving them, or let all but one die out and just focus defending that.

I understand how it could have had a good moral choice back then, but it's not 1980 anymore. If it is not relevant anymore I don't see why they should have mentioned it.

I understand how the breton lais might have had good rhythmic structure back then, but it's not middle england anymore. Obviously we have nothing to learn from early incarnations of our art and culture.

BlindTom:

mrc390:

BlindTom:
Things like character and plot do not equal mechanics. The games you mention do include narrative mechanics but missile command is comprised almost exclusively of narrative mechanics. That's what makes it a good example.

I presume you're talking about Pathologic. I wasn't using it as an example of Narrative Mechanics, I was using it as an example of a well executed moral choice system.

But, but the episode you're complaining about is a demonstration of narrative mechanics....

Yes, but that's not my biggest issue, for the most part I discussed how they stated Missile Command has "the best and most difficult moral choice any video game has ever presented" which I thought was simply not true.

mrc390:

BlindTom:

mrc390:

I presume you're talking about Pathologic. I wasn't using it as an example of Narrative Mechanics, I was using it as an example of a well executed moral choice system.

But, but the episode you're complaining about is a demonstration of narrative mechanics....

Yes, but that's not my biggest issue, for the most part I discussed how they stated Missile Command has "the best and most difficult moral choice any video game has ever presented" which I thought was simply not true.

Only in terms of how it functions as a narrative mechanic. The other justifications come from a very personalised and therefore subjective context. That's not the sort of thing you can argue against without sounding like a preposterously snobbish elitist.

BlindTom:

mrc390:

RYjet911:
Remember that during the time of Missile Command, games required a lot more imagination, where as these days we have cutscenes, scripted sequences and photorealistic graphics. Those pixels you bash for not having backstory or description, in those times, were your lives. While motivation was high score, not just to save them, you could either try to save them all and get bonuses for saving them, or let all but one die out and just focus defending that.

I understand how it could have had a good moral choice back then, but it's not 1980 anymore. If it is not relevant anymore I don't see why they should have mentioned it.

I understand how the breton lais might have had good rhythmic structure back then, but it's not middle england anymore. Obviously we have nothing to learn from early incarnations of our art and culture.

I believe we can learn most from an element in its most refined form, it's a much better reference point. If very few games ever used moral choice, then Missile Command would be relevant, but everything it does has been done and done better.

In it you have six cities and three missile bases and you lose when you lose all six cities, so do you sacrifice all but one city so you can maximize survival chance or try save them all? They stated it had "the best and most difficult moral choice any video game has ever presented'. But I don't see it as a moral choice, because these aren't cities full of people, there pixels.

Simply put: Immersion is a choice. In all games those virtual people are nothing more then pixels and polygons, far away far away what a real human would look like or do. So if you want to see the cities as cities instead of just sprites in a simple game, you can do that, its a choice you make to get immersed in the game or not. Better graphics can of course help, but are by no means a guarantee for anything.

I am not saying that Missile Command is the best example for moral choice, but I certainly can see where they are coming from, especially given the time the game was created in. The moral choice in Missile Command is also interesting as it is not a game mechanic, you don't get "20 paragon points" when you save a city and "20 asshole points" when you don't. The result of your choice is simply the result of your choice with no extra baggage tacked on to tell you how good or bad the choice was. I personally would love to see more games going that route of making moral choice simply about the choice, not about the result.

mrc390:

BlindTom:

mrc390:

I understand how it could have had a good moral choice back then, but it's not 1980 anymore. If it is not relevant anymore I don't see why they should have mentioned it.

I understand how the breton lais might have had good rhythmic structure back then, but it's not middle england anymore. Obviously we have nothing to learn from early incarnations of our art and culture.

I believe we can learn most from an element in its most refined form, it's a much better reference point. If very few games ever used moral choice, then Missile Command would be relevant, but everything it does has been done and done better.

Most people would consider the most refined or purest form- and therefore the best reference point- to be the element in isolation, or as it first appeared. Alternatively most people can learn best when their teacher talks about something that they know and/or care about. If you think you can demonstrate narrative mechanics better using other games as examples I urge you to do so. The more poeple taking part in these kinds of discussions the better.

Missile command is not the example, it's just an example. It's easy to make a point about a simple game in 7-10 minutes. Although I think it kind of highlights an issue with narrative mechanics - do they only work in very simple games? I can't imagine how narrative mechanics might function in Planescape: Torment, for instance.

Kahunaburger:
Missile command is not the example, it's just an example. It's easy to make a point about a simple game in 7-10 minutes. Although I think it kind of highlights an issue with narrative mechanics - do they only work in very simple games? I can't imagine how narrative mechanics might function in Planescape: Torment, for instance.

Torment is brimmming with narrative mechanics. Narrative mechanics are simply game mechanics that support the narrative rather than purely the gameplay. The Nameless Ones regeneration is a narrative mechanic, whilst magic missilde doing 1D4+1 damage is not.

One of my favourite narrative mechanics in Planescape:Torment is the [intention] tags in dialogue. Even if you do not choose these dialogue options you see that you had the opportunity to play nameless one as a liar or a fanatic. You will puzzle over options like:

1. Lie:Tell me and I will let you go.

2. Truth:Tell me and I will let you go.

3. Oath:Tell me and I will let you go.

and whilst they are almost identical, having tiny mechanical effects such as minor changes to alignment meters. The effect upon the player and their perceptions of themselves and the character they are playing is much more profound.

mrc390:

RYjet911:
Remember that during the time of Missile Command, games required a lot more imagination, where as these days we have cutscenes, scripted sequences and photorealistic graphics. Those pixels you bash for not having backstory or description, in those times, were your lives. While motivation was high score, not just to save them, you could either try to save them all and get bonuses for saving them, or let all but one die out and just focus defending that.

I understand how it could have had a good moral choice back then, but it's not 1980 anymore. If it is not relevant anymore I don't see why they should have mentioned it.

Because minimalism and implication are still extremely valid narrative mechanics. The people who don't realize the implications of it simply don't think about the game at all. It leads very directly to what the EC folks said, and it would be especially obvious to anyone that was living during the cold war when this was a clear and present danger.

BlindTom:

Kahunaburger:
Missile command is not the example, it's just an example. It's easy to make a point about a simple game in 7-10 minutes. Although I think it kind of highlights an issue with narrative mechanics - do they only work in very simple games? I can't imagine how narrative mechanics might function in Planescape: Torment, for instance.

Torment is brimmming with narrative mechanics. Narrative mechanics are simply game mechanics that support the narrative rather than purely the gameplay. The Nameless Ones regeneration is a narrative mechanic, whilst magic missilde doing 1D4+1 damage is not.

One of my favourite narrative mechanics in Planescape:Torment is the [intention] tags in dialogue. Even if you do not choose these dialogue options you see that you had the opportunity to play nameless one as a liar or a fanatic. You will puzzle over options like:

1. Lie:Tell me and I will let you go.

2. Truth:Tell me and I will let you go.

3. Oath:Tell me and I will let you go.

and whilst they are almost identical, having tiny mechanical effects such as minor changes to alignment meters. The effect upon the player and their perceptions of themselves and the character they are playing is much more profound.

If you consider those to be narrative mechanics, basically every game is nothing but narrative mechanics.

Kahunaburger:

BlindTom:

Kahunaburger:
Missile command is not the example, it's just an example. It's easy to make a point about a simple game in 7-10 minutes. Although I think it kind of highlights an issue with narrative mechanics - do they only work in very simple games? I can't imagine how narrative mechanics might function in Planescape: Torment, for instance.

Torment is brimmming with narrative mechanics. Narrative mechanics are simply game mechanics that support the narrative rather than purely the gameplay. The Nameless Ones regeneration is a narrative mechanic, whilst magic missilde doing 1D4+1 damage is not.

One of my favourite narrative mechanics in Planescape:Torment is the [intention] tags in dialogue. Even if you do not choose these dialogue options you see that you had the opportunity to play nameless one as a liar or a fanatic. You will puzzle over options like:

1. Lie:Tell me and I will let you go.

2. Truth:Tell me and I will let you go.

3. Oath:Tell me and I will let you go.

and whilst they are almost identical, having tiny mechanical effects such as minor changes to alignment meters. The effect upon the player and their perceptions of themselves and the character they are playing is much more profound.

If you consider those to be narrative mechanics, basically every game is nothing but narrative mechanics.

I'm having trouble thinking of any in call of duty.

OP how do you expect any game to have a meaningful moral choice, Its not real people, its just pixels. Thats an odd argument to use about a video game in general. How can movies represent moral dilemmas, there just actors.

You then make the same moral distinction on a small scale, (save one child by sacrificing another) as missile command did. I fail to see why the more primitive graphics have to do with anything. The game you described isn't moral at all, its just a calculation of who lives and dies.

In short you just said the same thing as extra credits using a different example and for no reason at all think yours is better....

I agree with the city. Without giving us backround and the cities personalities( sounds weird i know)Its hard to care without a human face.

BlindTom:

Kahunaburger:

BlindTom:

Torment is brimmming with narrative mechanics. Narrative mechanics are simply game mechanics that support the narrative rather than purely the gameplay. The Nameless Ones regeneration is a narrative mechanic, whilst magic missilde doing 1D4+1 damage is not.

One of my favourite narrative mechanics in Planescape:Torment is the [intention] tags in dialogue. Even if you do not choose these dialogue options you see that you had the opportunity to play nameless one as a liar or a fanatic. You will puzzle over options like:

1. Lie:Tell me and I will let you go.

2. Truth:Tell me and I will let you go.

3. Oath:Tell me and I will let you go.

and whilst they are almost identical, having tiny mechanical effects such as minor changes to alignment meters. The effect upon the player and their perceptions of themselves and the character they are playing is much more profound.

If you consider those to be narrative mechanics, basically every game is nothing but narrative mechanics.

I'm having trouble thinking of any in call of duty.

Well, if as you say "Narrative mechanics are simply game mechanics that support the narrative rather than purely the gameplay," when the narrative basically boils down to "I shoot the mans with my gun and they fall down," shooting someone with a gun is a narrative mechanic. As is losing control of your character when a shell goes off nearby, any of the interface screw in the fights where you are clinging on to consciousness, dying from a nuclear bomb in-game, the loading screen that tells you context for a mission, the "game over" for shooting civilians, and so on. Hence the problem with broad definitions.

hotsauceman:
I agree with the city. Without giving us backround and the cities personalities( sounds weird i know)Its hard to care without a human face.

Since i am a pretentious wench, i'll say it's lack of imagination on the end user side to blame.

To use a more acceptable example - books. When i've read Lord of The Rings first time, ages ago, i could easily imagine each and every scene, every scenery, the character faces, voices, the way they would move and act. In my head i created Middle-earth that was probably far form how it was imagined by Tolkien himself, but it worked perfectly for me.
Few years forward and i got my hands on art-book inspired by LotR - i hated it. It was nothing like i'd imagine. Every single carefully drawn detail there just didn't match to what i've imagined. Things even got worse with the movie, which completely ruined my impression of the triology.

These days, as people watch tv/play games much more than they read, we are getting spoon fed the details. We no longer have freedom in choosing how given character or action looks like, we get it presented visually from the start.
For many of you maybe the city in game like Missile command was just few pixels, but if you would just let your imagination immerse you into the situation provided by the game you could easily visualise more realistic city. For every missile hitting it you could just create images in your head how the buildings crumble.

That's probably the difference between some us. I was growing up among pixels and written word, i didn't have all the fancy CGI doing the work for me. Try it sometime, find a description of a creature or scene you never seen rendered before and try to draw it as you personally see it, then look for artwork and compare it. Good chance they will be vastly different.

First of all, I haven't seen that particular episode of Extra Credits, but I think Missile Command is a good historical reference point; It's the same with other mediums such as film and painting. For example visual art has its earliest reference in cave paintings. It's just a way of seeing what is being said, in the most simple form.

Secondly, you are downplaying the play element that is imagination; what's happening on the other side of the screen in the participant's mind. This is a personal and subjective form of playing, and just as valid as the hard-coded digital interactions. The beauty of those simple arcade games is that they are abstract! Interestingly, the medium has moved from abstraction to realism and not the other way round. You must appreciate the abstract nature of games and the inevitablility of personal interpretation. Texts are open.

I'm personally not interested in whether someone thinks Missile Command is the 'best' at something or other. It's simply a personal opinion; like 'best of' game lists. Sometimes more people agree with each other (See Ocarina of Time as a regular 'best game ever'), but it's still subjective.
I'm not so familiar with the ins and outs of Missile Command, but it definately tells a story. I consider every game to have a narrative or idea.

A game that I loved from that early arcade era was Kaboom! Here is what I wrote about Kaboom's narrative.

-----

'kaboom! is like a straight-jacket.

the player has absolutely no control. in most modern computer games you generally have at least some choices or 'free space' to move, but in kaboom the player is stuck at the bottom of the screen and force-fed bombs. kaboom!

you can only move left and right, while a man at the top of the screen throws infinite bombs in a variety of patterns. as a kind of container, you are forced to scroll left and right with the Atari paddle and 'take it up the arse' so to speak.

if you miss a bomb, your container essentially gets smaller which makes it all the more difficult to catch the falling bombs. miss 3 bombs and its game over.

if you don't miss the bombs, then the speed and rate at which they fall increases dramatically. it's at this point where the game completely dominates the player. you have to react so fast that you become hypnotized in a constant reactionary rhythm.

the narrative of kaboom is one of domination. it manipulates the player to enjoy being controlled, and to enjoy a lack of power or choice.

it's kind of creepy when you think about it...but it's kind of delicious.

of course the story synopsis in kaboom! is that you have to de-fuse the bombs of the terrorist. this still works, but it plays down the 'true' narrative. if kaboom! was made today then it would be completely different; it would most probably be some sort of FPS where you fight... hang on a moment, kaboom! was made by activision!'

---

And here is a link to what I wrote about how the player tells the story of Shadow of the Colossus simply by playing. Similar to Missile Command and Kaboom, it relies on the imagination of the player to fill in the gaps.

http://au.gamespot.com/unions/PlayGround/forums/28736549/gameplay-narratives---shadow-of-the-colossus

This is what I said in response to the same thing being said on the forum for the video itself

"For all you people saying they're looking to much into Missile Command, I disagree, but more importantly that's not the point of the video it's a example of how you can tell stories in ways other then cut scenes and dialog, yes they could have used Shadow of the Colossus(or any number of other games) it tells it's story in ways other then dialogue but missile command is only narrative mechanics and therefore is a better example piece."

There are bound to be some 'areas of dissonance' though. On the one hand you have story/stories the game is promoting, and on the other you have the player's concepts of what is going on. A lot of the times games are not made very well, and thus there is a disconnect between the representations on screen and the gameplay. However, when these two elements are resolved well (See Braid, Shadow of the Colossus, and any Mario game) there is a clear motivation for playing the story and a clear sense of what is going on.

The truth is that whatever story the designers want you to be playing, the mechanics and the actions always tell the truth. I'm not saying dialogue and plot is irrelevent, but it must be one with the gameplay to create any kind of internal logic. Most games do not handle this very well. It's a delicate balance.

Keava:

That's probably the difference between some us. I was growing up among pixels and written word, i didn't have all the fancy CGI doing the work for me. Try it sometime, find a description of a creature or scene you never seen rendered before and try to draw it as you personally see it, then look for artwork and compare it. Good chance they will be vastly different.

Anything i would draw would look like a fat dino in a dress.
OT: It just seams in games that really don't give backgrounds makes it hard to care. Maybe thats why points are dead(in non-flash games) Because they used to be a good motivation before stories gave you motivation

bombadilillo:
OP how do you expect any game to have a meaningful moral choice, Its not real people, its just pixels. Thats an odd argument to use about a video game in general. How can movies represent moral dilemmas, there just actors.

You then make the same moral distinction on a small scale, (save one child by sacrificing another) as missile command did. I fail to see why the more primitive graphics have to do with anything. The game you described isn't moral at all, its just a calculation of who lives and dies.

In short you just said the same thing as extra credits using a different example and for no reason at all think yours is better....

Well firstly, after that statement I said:
"Now, not saying you can't feel bad for pixels, many games such as Mass Effect, Silent Hill and System shock 2 have brought me close to tears before but that is because these characters are fleshed out, we learn to care for them through the course of the game and can truly sympathise with there struggles. But in Missile Command, we know nothing of these places"

But to the second point I have to say, the children in Pathologic are not blank slates like the cities in Missile Command. The way they live is very
similar to the kids in Lord of the Flies. They've split up into gangs and are subjected to this endless battle with hunger. I did sympathise with them greatly.
Maybe this is just me, but there is also the fact that, you're killing a child, committing one of the worst crimes imaginable in your desparation. When I started the game I never imagined having to sink that low.
And lastly, no it's not a calculation. Killing some kids won't go over well with the others and many will not interact with you after. So you can lose precious time, more than the medicine was probably worth, by killing to many.

Keava:

hotsauceman:
I agree with the city. Without giving us backround and the cities personalities( sounds weird i know)Its hard to care without a human face.

Since i am a pretentious wench, i'll say it's lack of imagination on the end user side to blame.

To use a more acceptable example - books. When i've read Lord of The Rings first time, ages ago, i could easily imagine each and every scene, every scenery, the character faces, voices, the way they would move and act. In my head i created Middle-earth that was probably far form how it was imagined by Tolkien himself, but it worked perfectly for me.
Few years forward and i got my hands on art-book inspired by LotR - i hated it. It was nothing like i'd imagine. Every single carefully drawn detail there just didn't match to what i've imagined. Things even got worse with the movie, which completely ruined my impression of the triology.

These days, as people watch tv/play games much more than they read, we are getting spoon fed the details. We no longer have freedom in choosing how given character or action looks like, we get it presented visually from the start.
For many of you maybe the city in game like Missile command was just few pixels, but if you would just let your imagination immerse you into the situation provided by the game you could easily visualise more realistic city. For every missile hitting it you could just create images in your head how the buildings crumble.

That's probably the difference between some us. I was growing up among pixels and written word, i didn't have all the fancy CGI doing the work for me. Try it sometime, find a description of a creature or scene you never seen rendered before and try to draw it as you personally see it, then look for artwork and compare it. Good chance they will be vastly different.

I can understand your point, but I think there is a difference between giving us a basic story, letting us fill in the blanks and just giving us fuck all to work with and I do believe Missile Command is firmly rooted in the latter category.

You could treat Missile Command passively and not care about that at all, but you could do that with any game. I've known people who didn't care about the story choices in Mass Effect, which to me was staggeringly mind-boggling. It's all a matter of why you're playing.

Now admittedly, Missile Command was not a game I ever took that seriously. But here's the deal: that's exactly why they used it. Because Missile Command does not explicitly give us its premise in that level of depth, most of us just blasted missiles without a second thought. The game was too simple to do otherwise, right? But no; within its simplicity, there is depth. Simply in the game mechanics. Which, I'm sure you remember, was the point of the entire episode.

The game you were talking about presented its moral choice as powerfully as it did because it expanded on the story. It was not solely because of the mechanics, so it would have had no place in that episode of Extra Credits.

The point of that episode was to point out how a game can have narrative depth through its mechanics, not just its story and visuals and such. Missile Command may not be the best example of this, but it is one of the simplest, and thus one of the most powerful to use. If Missile Command can have depth simply in its mechanics, those principles can be spread to other games as well.

As a side note, my favorite example of narrative in mechanics is the final boss fight of Beyond Good and Evil. Brilliant symbolism in the controls and such of that battle.

mrc390:

I can understand your point, but I think there is a difference between giving us a basic story, letting us fill in the blanks and just giving us fuck all to work with and I do believe Missile Command is firmly rooted in the latter category.

There is also a difference in what was possible on arcade machine in 1980 could do and what PCs few years later could. Have you actually played the game back then?

You see the phenomena of MC is that it managed to convey a certain message with minimal resources while modern games having all the CGI capabilities, advanced visuals and audio fail to come close more often than not.

Yes it was score driven game, but it also was heavily rooted in the Cold War's culture and the whole "what if" surrounding possible nuclear scenario. The cities that now may seem "empty" due to lack of real context, back then were supposed to reference actual cities in California.

grumbel:
you don't get "20 paragon points" when you save a city and "20 asshole points" when you don't. The result of your choice is simply the result of your choice with no extra baggage tacked on to tell you how good or bad the choice was.

Actually you get points for each city you saved at the end of the round. And their certainly is a way to play the game correctly (the way that's successful.)

For me the desire for people to add moral choices in mechanics usually feels superficial, you can replace collecting coins with helping woodland creatures and it doesn't make much difference to me.

mrc390:

bombadilillo:
OP how do you expect any game to have a meaningful moral choice, Its not real people, its just pixels. Thats an odd argument to use about a video game in general. How can movies represent moral dilemmas, there just actors.

You then make the same moral distinction on a small scale, (save one child by sacrificing another) as missile command did. I fail to see why the more primitive graphics have to do with anything. The game you described isn't moral at all, its just a calculation of who lives and dies.

In short you just said the same thing as extra credits using a different example and for no reason at all think yours is better....

Well firstly, after that statement I said:
"Now, not saying you can't feel bad for pixels, many games such as Mass Effect, Silent Hill and System shock 2 have brought me close to tears before but that is because these characters are fleshed out, we learn to care for them through the course of the game and can truly sympathise with there struggles. But in Missile Command, we know nothing of these places"

But to the second point I have to say, the children in Pathologic are not blank slates like the cities in Missile Command. The way they live is very
similar to the kids in Lord of the Flies. They've split up into gangs and are subjected to this endless battle with hunger. I did sympathise with them greatly.
Maybe this is just me, but there is also the fact that, you're killing a child, committing one of the worst crimes imaginable in your desparation. When I started the game I never imagined having to sink that low.
And lastly, no it's not a calculation. Killing some kids won't go over well with the others and many will not interact with you after. So you can lose precious time, more than the medicine was probably worth, by killing to many.

"By killing too many" you say, implying there is a right amount to kill...meaning its a calculation. Im not saying you personally don't find it easier to sympathize with the kids in that game over the cities. But the point extra credit was making (which you missed) was how simple it was to express a narative through gameplay. So using an example like Missle Command is objectively much better due to the games simplicity rather then the one you suggest. In your game there is a lot of story and narrative going on that the player is observing to tell the story so it is not a good example. (though that game sounds awesome!)

bombadilillo:

mrc390:

bombadilillo:
OP how do you expect any game to have a meaningful moral choice, Its not real people, its just pixels. Thats an odd argument to use about a video game in general. How can movies represent moral dilemmas, there just actors.

You then make the same moral distinction on a small scale, (save one child by sacrificing another) as missile command did. I fail to see why the more primitive graphics have to do with anything. The game you described isn't moral at all, its just a calculation of who lives and dies.

In short you just said the same thing as extra credits using a different example and for no reason at all think yours is better....

Well firstly, after that statement I said:
"Now, not saying you can't feel bad for pixels, many games such as Mass Effect, Silent Hill and System shock 2 have brought me close to tears before but that is because these characters are fleshed out, we learn to care for them through the course of the game and can truly sympathise with there struggles. But in Missile Command, we know nothing of these places"

But to the second point I have to say, the children in Pathologic are not blank slates like the cities in Missile Command. The way they live is very
similar to the kids in Lord of the Flies. They've split up into gangs and are subjected to this endless battle with hunger. I did sympathise with them greatly.
Maybe this is just me, but there is also the fact that, you're killing a child, committing one of the worst crimes imaginable in your desparation. When I started the game I never imagined having to sink that low.
And lastly, no it's not a calculation. Killing some kids won't go over well with the others and many will not interact with you after. So you can lose precious time, more than the medicine was probably worth, by killing to many.

"By killing too many" you say, implying there is a right amount to kill...meaning its a calculation. Im not saying you personally don't find it easier to sympathize with the kids in that game over the cities. But the point extra credit was making (which you missed) was how simple it was to express a narative through gameplay. So using an example like Missle Command is objectively much better due to the games simplicity rather then the one you suggest. In your game there is a lot of story and narrative going on that the player is observing to tell the story so it is not a good example. (though that game sounds awesome!)

But the right amount is never obvious as it is in Missile Command, the game was never very popular outside of Russia so good luck finding that info online. It's quite the slippery slope, once you commit the deed once, what's the hard in doing it again and again and again.
Again, my biggest problem with the episode wasn't using Missile Command as an example of Narrative Mechanics, it was the statement that it has "the best and most difficult moral choice any video game has ever presented" maybe I'm making too much of a big deal out of this, but the statement left me frustrated at how ignorant and pretentious it sounded to me before I made the thread. If nothing else at least someone else might try Pathologic now because of my thread :)
PS: Sorry bout the late reply. Been busy :)

Keava:

mrc390:

I can understand your point, but I think there is a difference between giving us a basic story, letting us fill in the blanks and just giving us fuck all to work with and I do believe Missile Command is firmly rooted in the latter category.

There is also a difference in what was possible on arcade machine in 1980 could do and what PCs few years later could. Have you actually played the game back then?

You see the phenomena of MC is that it managed to convey a certain message with minimal resources while modern games having all the CGI capabilities, advanced visuals and audio fail to come close more often than not.

Yes it was score driven game, but it also was heavily rooted in the Cold War's culture and the whole "what if" surrounding possible nuclear scenario. The cities that now may seem "empty" due to lack of real context, back then were supposed to reference actual cities in California.

I know the point was to show how narritive mechanics can be presented even in the most simple of games, I think it would have been better though if they also gave more modern examples, they gave the feeling that narrative mechanics are so rare that they needed to use a 30 year old game as an example when narrative mechanics exist in practically every game( I used the Counter Strike example but there are hundreds of others)
I just discussed the main point of the thread in the message before this so I'll just copy and paste that
"Again, my biggest problem with the episode wasn't using Missile Command as an example of Narrative Mechanics, it was the statement that it has "the best and most difficult moral choice any video game has ever presented" maybe I'm making too much of a big deal out of this, but the statement left me frustrated at how ignorant and pretentious it sounded to me before I made the thread. If nothing else at least someone else might try Pathologic now because of my thread :)"