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"Cinematism"

Games are forever getting more realistic. Better graphics, cleverer artificial intelligence and more dynamic physics modelling makes games advance faster than any othet form of entertainment. The ultimate goal: to evoke emotions in the player. As Hideo Kojima said: "If I could make someone cry by playing one of my games then I would be the best games designer ever".

But to evoke deep emotions, like sadness and anger, must games get more and more realistic? After all, Nintendo's policy on the issue is almost the exact oposite- make games more and more phantasy based.

However, I'd have to say that when it comes to playing a game, I can feel far more relation to the player if they, and their surroundings, are as realistic as possible- and I bet that the majority of casual gamers, and hence the majority of the market, would agree.

Cinematic effects in games are what is needed to make gamers become sad a cry or raise their spirits and uplift them. A real relationship between the player and character has to be formed to allow this, and this essentially mean that the characters have to be as realistic as possible.

Although none-realistic games are able to make you feel good, and provide fun, I don't think that it will ever be possible for them to create any negative emotions- it's just impossible to feel any sympathy for the characters.

What games really need to become emotional is for them to take on the best parts of films, like excellent scripts and well written roles for the characters, and remove the linearity in games- if the player fells like they can do what they want in a gaming scenarion it'll increas immersion.

The structure of games needs to change too. By removing stopping points in the games, like "end of levels" and "save points" the game should never remove the player from the action. Another thing that has to go is the overuse of cut scenes- it should be the player that causes events in the game to happen, and not have them forced upon them. For example, often in a figting scene you will defeat your opponent only to see a cut scene where they escape... if you could somehow remove suchg constraints so that you had the ability to shoot the character before they escaped then this would really help immersion.

However, most of these ideas are just not feasible. Non-linear games require development tools that simply do not exist- to make a games will hundreds of possible endings and levels is just impossible at the moment. Also, the way we interact with games need to be improved. The day of the plastic controller with coloured buttons must come to an end... we need some device that allows us, the player, to do anything we want.

Whether such games will ever be made- I don't know. But if they are then it'll be gaming's finest hour.

Sonic

Baldurs Gate is another good example. It managed to have a compelling single player, and literally 100s of sub quests to carry out. Granted, BG is a 'traditional' style RPG, so sub-quests are pretty much built into the style, but more sub-quests could be incorporated to pretty much any genre to make it seem less linear, when infact the main plot is unchanged, but there are other things happening around the plotline, that aren't essential to it.

This in turn will make any world seem more realistic, as it seems things ARE happening beyond your quest, when this so often does not seem the case. Often characters only seem to be there to help you, tell you something, or kill you. Sub quests can give characters... well, character...

Good point Sibs, and this certainly raises questions about how to impliment multiple path games.

One excellent substitution is Zelda OOT, in which there is no driving compulsion to have to follow the quest set. Instead you have plenty of extra tasks, searches and games.

Sonic

Did someone mention Battle Royale?

For all the wrong reasons, that's the funniest film I've ever seen, but then I suppose Luke and Phil had a part to play in that sentence.

Only people who've seen the subtitles will get this:

"Are you OK?" "I'm sorry, I'm fine I'm fine"

"When you were bummed..."

"Ow my *ss hurts"

etc...


There are just so many hillarious lines, mainly bcause I think the subtitles were the result of an American chip+typewriter experiment. There's also so many comical things, such as the instructions video... Ah...

Everyone, I order you to see this film, in subtitles mind!

I don't know what is to come, but I certainly know that anything with a good storyline can draw you in, look at Zelda, and (yes Grix) Skies of Arcadia.

Then again, arcade games are a bit like actions movies, little or no plot, but great fun if not taken too seriously.

hmm... the only way (at the moment) todecrease linearity it to decrease the plot complexity, so multiple paths are open. Like MMORPGs have very little in the way of plots so people can make their own quests. But doing that in a single player game could get tedious, as you could feel you have less purpose...

Grix Thraves wrote:
> Hell yeah, love films... but games are on a different level.

Battle Royale,
> still number one in the Grix chart.


Still haven't seen that film yet :(

Mind you, our school's DVD library opens today (films chosen by misterhappy), so I'll be borrowing a couple over the weekend:) Requim for a Dream methinks.

Sonic

Hell yeah, love films... but games are on a different level.

Battle Royale, still number one in the Grix chart.

You CAN watch a film over and over for a certain period of time, and I found that I couldn't stop watching The Matrix since it first appeared on Sky! But I did stop and haven't watched it for about a year. I think it was only about a few weeks before I started to tire of the film.

I believe that you can watch THE BEST films over and over for a while, but cannot watch the ones you love to hate. Disney say you can watch their films over and over, and loas of little kids do, and then grow up on Disney films.

It's like gamers, you play Nintendo games over and over, and you live on Nintendo! But you don't grow out of Nintendo, like some people think you should!

You can't watch a good film again and again???

You guys are watching the wrong kinds of films! Go to the cinema this week and see Mulholland Drive- critics fav film of the year so far and one of the best I have seen for ages. Now that I will watch many, many more times than I play a game.

Sonic

I agree that the best game will always be better than the best film. You can go back to a game over and over, and never tire of it. And when you do, you can just ignore that game, and come back to it a few months or even years later, and still experience what you felt the first time you played it! Multiplayer modes also help.

But with films, you cannot watch the same one day after day, but you can also go back to it after a while, only to expect the same thing again. There's nothing that comes as new and surprising to a film, when returning to watch it, but you can always find something different in games. Even if it's just one, minor, detail.