Fontaine's Ghost

The following is a letter I wrote in response to an article in Edge Magazine (E206) titled "The Death of The Author" in which Clint Hocking of Far Cry 2, Chet Faliszek of Left 4 Dead, and Ragnar Tornquist of Dreamfall: The Longest Journey talk (quite bleakly) about the irrelevance of authored narratives in the future of gaming. I agreed with a lot of what Tomquist said, but really disliked what Hocking and Faliszek said--which is ironic as I love their games and have never heard of Tornquist's. Anyway, this is my response--one that could be far more elaborate and detailed, but it is a start.

I find it disappointing and somewhat unsettling that the minds behind some of recent history’s most interesting interactive narratives (namely Clint Hocking of Far Cry 2 and Chet Faliszek of Left 4 Dead) have some of the grimmest, most apocalyptic predictions on the importance of authored narrative in the future of gaming (“Death of the Author”, E206).

The issue of authorship in narratives, and just who possesses it, has been debated in literature circles for decades. Certainly, the unique element of player interaction that makes gaming narratives so interesting complicates the author’s role, but I think it is rash to claim that the author is made redundant simply because two players will play through the same game in a different way. Player expression has not killed the author, but has merely given the author a new, slightly more subtle responsibility: that of story-presenter instead of storyteller. The author no longer writes a script for the player to read in a linear order, but instead writes a world and presents it to the player.

Left 4 Dead is an interesting example as it straddles the fence between authored narrative and player expression. Certainly, each play through the campaign will leave the player with a different experience and a slightly different narrative—one time it may be the narrative of the college student who saves the day; the next day it is the Vietnam veteran who uses his training to get the survivors to safety with a valiant self-sacrifice. However, regardless of what stories the players tell in the social experience, the games author still looms overhead, ensuring that whatever narrative is told by the four interacting players, that narrative will still be about four survivors of a zombie outbreak making their way to a hospital rooftop.

An author is required to present the narrative of Left 4 Dead, to present the narrative of four survivors desperate to escape the city. Within that presented narrative, it is the player’s responsibility to shape how the story is told. This is the opportunity that gaming alone offers us, and what makes our medium of choice so exciting.

Bioshock attempted to teach the gaming community this lesson in 2007. No matter how the player chooses to play the game, no matter what choices they make, the game’s author is still looming above them, whispering in their portable radio, saying, “Would you kindly play this narrative that I have presented, and no other.”

To state as the article’s interviewer does (and as Hocking and Faliszek agree) that players constructing their own narratives makes the author’s role redundant, is only addressing half the problem. In gaming, the author has a new role: to present the tools that the player requires to construct that narrative.

Player expression has killed the author about as successfully as Andrew Ryan killed Frank Fontaine, but all of Rapture is still jumping at his shadow.

So last night TeamOGL (my housemate's team) took on Team Crazy Bill for the top spot in the Cybergamer Left4Dead ladder and just missed on the win. It was incredibly close with some great plays on boths sides. The videostreaming worked on gamestah this time, too,, so my other housemate and I prett ymuch watched the entire game from beginning to end with the added realism of our housemate yelling and swearing from across the hallway. If you have got 90mins to kill, I strongly recommend watching it. Some excellent plays all round.

A revival

So it seems that I fail at this constant, academic-quality updating, so I will attempt to revive Critical Damage with some more casual, less analytical entries. Pretty much, it is now just going to be the journal of my gaming adventures.

Though, it is a silly time to try this revival as we seem to be in a gaming lull at the moment. There are quite a few games coming out next month that I am interested in: ODST, Wet, and most of all, Scribblenauts . But last month and this month, there has been very little. I made the mistake of buying Tales of Vesperia, thinking it was time to give the ol' JRPG a go again, but I should have known better. I will probably trade it in when Final Fantasy XIII is released.

To keep myself occupied in the meantime, I picked up Burnout Paradise cheap. I loved Burnout 2, but never played the later ones that everyone praised, so it is pretty cool to get back into it, even if every single race feels like it is following the one road. Road Rage mode is amazing fun, and the seamless trasition between online and offline play is great. On a negative note, though, whoever thought "DJ Atomica on Crash FM" was clever should not be let anywhere near another game script.

Anyhow, hopefully that gets me through to the end of this month. If not, I still need to finish Point Lookout.

My housemate is currently taking part in a Left 4 Dead ladder run by cybergamer.com.au. His team, TeamOGL, are undefeated on 7 wins and currently in fourth position. Their most recent game was last night against Scrubs and was broadcast live on gamestah. I tried to watch the video but it streamed horribly, so I just listened to the audio commentators while playing Burnout. It was an incredible experience. I've never listened to so-called "e-sports" before and to hear people treat their game as seriously as people treat sport was incredible. It reminded me of dad listening to the cricket on ABC radio. At several times I had to pause Burnout and just listen as the commentators went crazy as Bill on 1hp shot two Hunters out of the air mid-pounce. It was pretty incredible to listen to. Only suggestions to the commentators would be a) write the score down on a piece of paper as the game is going so you remember it and can tell listeners who is winning, and b) stop with the immature sexist jokes tacked on the end of every sentence about Zoey; no, i do not think she enjoyed being "pounded" by the tank. No wonder no one takes gaming seriously. That aside it was exciting to listen to.

In geekier news, my 360 gamerscore hit 10,000 yesterday. I'm trying not to be proud of this.

Lost, Damned, Finished, and Left for Dead

So I have spent the last few days playing through the first Downloadable Content (when I was a kid the word was Expansion Pack but whatever) of Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and the Damned.

Overall, I was as impressed with it as I was with the original story arc. It was really interesting to see Liberty City through the eyes of a character without the naivety and, I guess 'innocence' of Nico Bellic. While exploring Liberty City as Johnny, I noticed so many things (small things--buildings, alleyways, people) that I never had as Nico.

This makes sense. Nico just got the boat. He would see the top of skyscrapers and the statue of Happiness and, I guess, the 'tourist' America. Johnny, on the otherhand, has been here his whole life. He is in a gang; he has a clubhouse; he rides the streets confidently like a king (a president), not some nervous tourist (not even a nervous tourish with psycotic tendencies).

The characters and the acting was as top notch as the original. I truly believe no game has acting (or character animation, whatever you wish to call it) like GTA4. The dialogue is so fresh, so real, the character movements and behaviours in cutscenes is exaggerated but so real. TLAD did just as well and each member of Lost MC had a distinct personality while still fitting into the redneck-bikie stereotype.

One criticism is the speed with which the game pushes the player through the story. You finish one mission, then almost instantly get the phonecall that something has happened and they are ready for you to do the next mission. I gues this makes sense as the player has more than likely already explored all there is to Liberty City and making them wait three game days to do something might get annoying... but it made it difficult to sympathise with the characters' situation when they have supposedly been suffering for days since the last cutscene but you watched it only ten minutes ago.

I finally bought Left4Dead yesterday. Hopefully it lives up to all I have heard.

I wanted to make a post about the playstation-fanboy riots over at Edge when they gave 7/10 to Killzone2. Instead, I will just say that graphics aren't everything (though it looks damn impressive for, yknow, a pre-rendered video), and if the gameplay is anything as repetitve as Killzone, then I think 7/10 is quite good. Nevermind the fact that some amazing games get 7/10 from Edge--Fallout 3 comes to mind. 7/10 means pretty good. If you think 7/10 is a bad score, stop reading Official [console name] Magazines.