Note: This is part III of my write-up of EA Sims Bloggers Day. You can read Part I, Part II and Part III here.

MySims. You play as a wide-eyed chibi, thrust into a run down town and given a goal: attract citizens. You do this by building furniture, houses, and unlocking super-computers and pin-ball machines. Once you’ve got what people want, you’ve convined them to return home.

When we saw this game demoed, it was hard not to notice the gap between this and MySims Kingdom. In MySims Kingdom, the producers talked about how they’d elimiated the annoying loading screens. Moving from that into MySims PC, you see the loading screens first hand. Everytime you switch between building mode and town mode, in fact. Where the PC port does come into its own though, is the online arena.

Each player gets given a little social zone to invite their friends to. You can build there, so you can each get your own ‘hangout’, there are the usual chat-programs and minigames - tag being the version we saw - and the whole thing is like a slicker, cuter, smaller, faster-loading Second Life.
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A couple of weeks back, Jon and I went to logger-heads over the issue of cutscenes. Of course, a topic like this needs to be returned to - and Jon did exactly that in his return email to me. Since I always need to have the last word, naturally I replied.

Jon,

I think, perhaps, we want video games to do different things. You want video games to tell a story. A cohesive story, that follows the rules of characterization and plot. When we read a book, we don’t expect silent and masked protagonists. When we watch a movie, we don’t expect to influence the dialogue on screen.

Video games are - I believe - currently evolving. They balance two different demands, and many times these two demands are completely opposed to each other. The first demand is that of interactive entertainment. Whether that’s racing a timer whilst organising oddly shaped building blocks to stop them building up to the top of the screen - or pitting your spiky-haired warrior against an array of peculiar monsters.

The second demand is narrative. This is the why, the where, the when. I can build stats for the sake of winning, or I can build stats so that I can be better able to take down the evil psychopath threatening to destroy the world. Either way I’m building stats, but with a story wrapped around it I can at least be motivated, or moved.
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MMORPGs seem to be the new ‘it’ game platform. It seems like almost every company is falling all over themselves to try and get a nice piece of that massively multiplayer cake. Subscribers come and go, each one looking for something a little bit different. What sets a certain MMO apart from others depends on the person playing it. For example: Some people hate PVP while others simply can’t get enough of it. With this in mind, most companies strive to make their game something special. Something people will want to play even if the game itself is slightly less than desirable in other areas. What sets an MMORPG apart?

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Jon, from The Clockwork Manual, got in touch with me the other day. As fellow video game fans we hit it off, until the subject of cutscenes loomed its ugly head. Jon was all for them. As a Metal Gear Solid fan he could hardly be against them. I, on the other hand, am vocally anti-cutscene. Jon’s initial email can be read here. He points out some of the defining and memorable video game cutscenes, and wonders how we could ever tell a story without them. My response was as follows.

In the film-making community, flashbacks and ‘dream sequences’ are considered a crutch. It is one of the first mistakes amateur film makers make. It is a weak way to tell most stories, and is usually used as a shortcut, or to cover up weak writing.

There are, however, no rules in any creative media that can’t be broken. Memento used flashbacks brilliantly. Spellbound contains a famous dream sequence. These are great films, and they know exactly what they are doing.

So let’s talk about video games and cut scenes.

In a video game, you have two elements that should reinforce each other: the story and the gameplay. Most amateur game developers, when they want to tell you something related to the story, use a cutscene. Is this bad? Yes. Cutscenes are jarring, they take away our player control, they break our identification with the player character, and in most cases - video game budgets being what they are - they are poorly acted and badly written.

Much like flashbacks, they are usually the ‘most obvious’ way of telling the player something, but rarely the best. Intertwining the story into the game play is a far superior method. Using a ‘breadcrumb trail’ of in-game information to allow a player to puzzle together the story themselves is an art in itself. As an example: the Bioshock audio diaries.
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I’ve been in a startlingly good mood recently, allowing me ample relaxation and peace of mind. The perfect mindset for gaming! Don’t get me wrong, here. Anger is always good motivation when pretending to shoot people, and a wistful, nostalgic mood might make a fantasy game all the more enrapturing, but I’ve never enjoyed a game more than when I’ve felt calm, cool, and collected.

In the spirit of happy gaming, I figured, what better way to revel than to write about a bunch of stuff that makes me gush with video game love? Scenes, moments, characters, and even some games themselves. There are some that make me remember why I turn to my console when I’m feeling a little blue. They just make me believe in gaming again.

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The biggest conundrum of the gaming world isn’t whether video games inspire real life violence or the ongoing console wars. It’s not controversy about Fat Princess being, well, fat either. Honestly, gaming has always been about the relationship between fans and developers—the semantics of when a company should listen and when they shouldn’t.

It’s about the acknowledgment that a company can be right and wrong; the realization that change isn’t always a bad thing, but isn’t always good either. And the simple fact that the angry lynch mobs of gaming should not always be heard.

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