RPGs and video games.

Table top pen and paper role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons have complex stat based rule systems simply because die rolling, and math are the only fair way to work out what happens in an imaginary world. Without them these games would devolve into the I shot you/No you didn't debate most of us remember from from when we were children.

Enter the video game translation of RPGs. Oddly enough the numerical systems are usually very transparent, even including something as archaic as a to hit roll. In a virtual environment that can simulate the player, and his foe, their relative positions, and animate their actions a die roll to determine if an attack connects is superfluous. It is very strange to see the words "miss" pop up after I have shot an enemy, or struck them with a sword, and have no damage done.

RPGs are all about the character progression, but most video game RPGs go about this in the wrong way. Player skill should be taken into account. Instead of having a low combat statistic automatically determining that your character has missed a low combat statistic should be reflect in low damage, or a slower attack. Even if you connect you do less damage than someone whose character is more advanced, and it is harder to pull off with slower, more limited maneuvers.

Stat requirements also drive me crazy. I try to pick a lock in Fallout 3, but my skill isn't high enough. I should still be able to attempt picking the lock because it requires the successful completion of a minigame. It should just be harder. I may be warned how difficult it is relative to my skill, but automatically locking me out (no pun intended) is unnecessary.

The fact is RPGs in video games define their genre through stat based character progression, but go about it in a way that makes more sense with pen and paper rules. This has been gradually changing with locking picking becoming a minigame rather than a die roll, but vestiges of this old way of doing things are still there, holding the genre back.

I'm not suggesting stats be eliminated from video game RPGs. That would upset the fans, and remove progression, but they need to be integrated into the gameplay in a way that takes advantage of the particular strengths of video games rather than holding on to old ways of doing things.

Other genres have experimented with progression of sorts borrowed from the RPG genre. Even Call of Duty lets player earn experience to unlock new abilities these days. Crackdown is an action game, but has stat based progression in a simple form. RPGs seem unwilling to similarly experiment with lessons from other genres, and this is to their detriment. Western RPGs like Fallout 3 have made some steps in this regard, but JRPGs in particular are the crocodiles of video games. They have evolved very little over time.

The genre has yet to reach its potential.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

UPDATE: My Xbox is working, and I'm an idiot. The back of the hard drive wasn't snapped into place properly so the connector just jiggled around, and freaked the system out. I discovered this while on the phone with tech support. I'll take feeling like a moron over having to replace my hard drive any day, especially at the beginning of vacation.

My Xbox died tonight. Not the infamous RROD, but the one flashing red light of death. Apparently my HDD is borked because I had the temerity to remove it, and take it over to a friend's house so we could use my Rock Band DLC on his Xbox. It gave me signs of trouble Wednesday night when I hooked it back up, but I managed to get it working, and thought maybe I hadn't plugged it back in completely. Then it gave me fits on Thursday, and I had to stand the Xbox on end like an obelisk to get things working. Now it has given up the ghost completely.

Just in time for vacation.

I'm worried about losing all my data since the HDD is the problem, and have no idea what my recourse is for that if I have to replace it, or indeed the entire console. I have a lot of DLC on there, and somehow I doubt Microsoft will give me a bunch of complementary points to re-purchases everything.

Anyway I'll be calling their tech support tomorrow to see what can be done. In the meantime I'm pissed because I kept holding out on buying a 360 exactly because of the hardware problems, and now they bite me in the ass as I begin my vacation from school. I also have a cold, and running Windows XP through Bootcamp has fucked up my Mac. I will call Apple's tech support Monday. If anything else breaks I'm going to go live in the woods for a while.

I know. Waah waah. I'll post something worthwhile later.

The Morality of Perspective: Point of View, and Connecting with Your Character

I took my last blog post in as a rough draft personal essay for my Creative Non-Fiction class, and got some interesting feedback from a bunch of nongamers. During the course of the ensuing discussion I realized one of the factors that has an impact on my morality or lack thereof in games that I take for granted is the perspective.

Being horrible in Fable 2, and GTA IV is easy, and fun. Both of those games feature a third person perspective in which the camera floats behind the character you control, which disassociates the player from the avatar actually committing acts of violence on screen. Niko Bellic may be beating an old woman with a baseball bat, but to me he's just a puppet dancing on virtual strings. I don't really connect with the character. There are also times when cutscenes take over, and I don't have any control over what Niko is doing. I never have control over what he says, and sometimes the things Niko does in GTA IV are at odds with my desires. For instance in one mission that require you to kill a guy for a business associate Niko knocks on the guy's front door, and basically explains he is here to kill him. Of course the target jumps out the window, and high speed chase ensues. Since I'm a big fan of the Hitman franchise (another third person exercise in immorality) I would have done things differently if I was given the choice. The practical upshot of all this is that I do not identify strongly with the character I control, and through this proxy I can do terrible things without a feeling of remorse.

I already stated Bioshock was different for me from a moral standpoint, and it is worth noting the entire game is shown in the first person. The camera is your character's eyes the entire time. Many first person games have cutscenes that show the character from a third person, removing the player from control, and from the character, but Bioshock never does this. All you ever see of your character are his hands, and it is these hands the player must use to either murder, or save little girls. This perspective makes things more immediate, and the silence of the main character also deepens this immersion into the character. For the most part the main character never says, or does anything the player does not intend, which makes (for me at least) being a child murdering bastard all the harder even in the face of a support character who serves as your guide throughout the game dribbling justifications for killing the little sisters in your ear.

All three of these games also feature NPCs that are not hostile. In many games nearly ever other character you meet is hostile. Killing everything in sight is a matter of survival. Fable 2, and GTA Iv are filled with civilians that have no bearing on the story. They are in effect just scenery. This status of being nonentities is another factor that makes their mass murder nothing to mourn, or hesitate over. The worlds in these two games are playgrounds, and the natural tendency is for a player to explore the limits of what can be done, and to see what consequences there are.

Bioshock is a much more linear game, and is mostly filled with enemies you have no choice but to kill. The little sisters, and their big daddy guardians are exceptions to this rule in that they are not hostile unless provoked. It would be very difficult if not impossible to complete the game without attacking some of them to gain adam, but doing so is not a matter of immediate survival as with other enemies who are hostile.

All of these things are taken for granted by gamers, but I had to actually think a little bit about these issues when explaining to nongamers why in some games I chose to gleefully murder entire towns, and in others I couldn't.

I get the feeling these blog posts are eventually going to be edited together in one massive essay on morality, choice, perspective, and immersion in gaming.