Re: Missing the 'Big Picture'

This is what I posted on my own weblog:

I almost stopped reading when Walter Kim states that "It's my belief that 
the problem of story and game fusion is part of a larger problem in 
videogame development: object-oriented programming". Thankfully, he quickly 
clarifies that he's trolling his way to make a point, and ends with 
"Production pragmatics are gratuitously dictating the course of design 
before any design work is even done." Which is dead on, of course. He 
doesn't offer much in the way of enlightment, but he provides a very useful 
point of view. Recommended reading. The emphasis on experience, emotion (and 
crying as the ultimate proof) and storytelling are quite fashionable. But, 
while important, I doubt they're really the crux of the problem. It's easy 
to say "many games have bad narrative" and "many games fail", and then 
establish a correlation. But no. Many successful games do not have a 
meaningful story. Not every game needs one, or even benefits from having 
one.

(Minor pet peeve: Facade keeps being brought up as a significant example of 
sucessful game narrative - I do not even consider it a game!)

Now, specific to your question:

As long as games are considered "software development", it will always be a 
bit like that. To me that's like saying "moviemaking is carpentry" because 
you have to build the sets. But in all honesty, the biggest problem is the 
lack of experience and maturity of the creative, technical and production 
leads, as well as the craft itself which still doesn't have a solid cultural 
background (terminology as well as truly established methodology).

Anyway I posted on the forum there as well.

mike wuetherick wrote:
> Seeing as it's pretty quiet around here lately, figured i'd post about
> an interesting set of articles recently posted discussing Game Design
> and the 'Big Picture'(tm):
>
> http://www.ludonauts.com/index.php/Developers:_Missing_the_'Whole'_Point
>
> Often it seems that most games are designed by dozens of individuals,
> and end up feeling this way - basically completely fail in the 'big
> picture' department...
>
> Any thoughts on the article?  I personally agree with the author, in
> that games are unique in that every single piece of the development
> puzzle is, in fact 'a design decision', something that often has no
> input or control by the designer...or so it seems this way in the
> final product that is produced...
>
> Where in films, no matter how many hundreds of people were involved,
> often you hear people discussing how 'every frame is perfect', and
> how a film lives up to the directors' 'vision'...
>
> How do film's manage this when games often seem like there was no
> 'vision' to begin with in the first place (whether this is true or not
> is a different story)...

-- 
  Javier Arevalo
  Pyro Studios 



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