Binary Swan

Around me are the sounds of battle: gunfire and explosions, near and far away.  The objective, a mortar team up on the hill is harassing our armor and needs to be neutralized. How we will get up there has been on my mind for the last 5 minutes. We creep carefully closer so as to avoid the line of sight of the enemy. A lapse in concentration results in the machine gun emplacement opening up on our position. I order a fast move to the cover of a scattered pile of rocks. I take a bullet in the leg in the time it takes me to ensure my men make it to safety. Bullets zip past my head as I hit the deck and crawl to where my men are waiting. An explosion ruptures my existence, a grenade, possibly, all I see is dirt through blurred vision. I keep on moving. I make it to cover, taking a moment to assess the situation. Every glance out of cover is met with more fire from the enemy. I order my men to flank left where other scattered rocks will cover their approach. I inch out of cover to lay down a suppressing fire, allowing my men to move forward. The enemy fires again, less accurately this time. Things are looking up, I steal a moment to check on my men. They are moving to the obje….

The screen goes black, a stray bullet had struck me in the head. I am dead

The moment to moment action in the new Operation Flashpoint game, Dragon Rising is what makes this game an amazing experience. There is an ever present possibility of death, independent of choices made and you never feel the hand of the developer in these events. They have set up the base conditions and your presence is what causes the scenario to play out. Dragon Rising provides the intial (and expected) escapism and empowerment on a videogame letting you play soldier. Your actions are shown to be integral to each victory, you are the active force in this world. But you also inherit the realistic chance that as a soldier, your death is only one bullet away. Operation Flashpoint avoids many other gaming traditions aimed at reminding you of your empowered existence. There is no swell of orchestral music when you order a charge and no canned character dialogue for when a team member dies. The game succeeds because it does not try to elicit emotion or reaction from me in any way except through gameplay and given the large open nature of every mission, and unscripted AI, this comes at unexpected times. I do not need a large explosion or vista to reward me for being successful, overcoming the challenge of the game is it’s own reward. When a mission is complete there is no cutscene to form my character’s story, there is only the things I have just done, the moments that have just passed. The screen simply fades to black until I next take up the role of the soldier and define my experience by actions. The game does not try to force feed the empowerment fantasy to the player, anytime you act in a way that results in feelings of agency they feel earned and are much more effective.

Ok I admit it, the title is not 100% accurate but read on and find out my reasoning. I have revisited two games recently, both first person shooters and both very good titles in their own right. They also happen to represent two very different approaches to the genre. The first is Tron 2.0, hailing from the year 2003. This game is representative of the corridor shooters of yesteryear whose last great contributor was probably Half Life 2. The second game is Far Cry 2, a touchstone in the evolution of the genre. It conjures up terms like “sandbox” and “emergent gameplay” much more readily than “corridor” and “cutscene”. Playing them both simultaneously has illuminated the strengths and weaknesses of each game and has allowed me to reflect on how it is that I can still enjoy both immensely.

Far Cry 2 trumps Tron 2.0 in moments pure emergent gameplay. I know that the course of a battle is up to how I approach it and the decisions I have made. Recollections of my gaming here are stories of my decisions and the consequences, the moments that I was uniquely present and privileged as the game’s player. Yet as many will know Far Cry 2 is not without it’s flaws, with the diamond system being my case in point. For all the polish of this sandbox of an African nation there are moments of inconsistency such as the presence of over 200 identical cases that only the player seems to know about, the magical ability for diamonds to be deposited into my “account” once I eliminate a target or the feeling that the world does not exist without your presence bringing it into being. Tron 2.0 is a very different game to Far Cry 2. Notably as in my feeling as the player in that I am not free to define myself in the world. Yet whilst I am only the unseen controller of Jet, I am convinced of the validity of this world because I am never given any reason to think otherwise. This is because it is consistent, all the way to it’s core.

Many elements of Tron 2.0 felt archaic and obvious when I started to play the tutorial level. I was receiving sequential exposition from programs (NPC’s) about how to move and act in the world, it was as robotic and dry as any tutorial I have experienced. But, as I moved through the area it started to make sense, I was inside a computer system and everything would have to be calculated and strict. This realization provided me with a frame to judge other design decisions I encountered. As I moved played the game I noticed more and more that everything seemed to fit. For example:

• Energy and Health are “downloaded” which is exactly like Half Life, except that it makes sense;
• As a program I increase my version number by gaining buildpoints and define my playstyle by running  upgradeable subroutines. Translation: I level up by gaining experience from collectibles and missions and select my equipment depending on the challenges in front of me;
• I am able to download emails flesh out the narrative and world of Tron 2.0 but this act depletes my energy stores as a program;
• When asked to find an alternative route around obvious opposition, the small vent part of the level is defined as a backdoor in the system.

Every layer of Tron 2.0 act in the service of consistent presentation, from the delightfully self aware writing and the easy justification of having a HUD whilst you are digitized into a computer to the single occasion when a program yawns because it had been taken out of sleep mode. It is this consistency that makes this game fun, it allows me to get lost in the fantastical story and it is what is missing at times in Far Cry 2. The use of diamond cases in the game is an acceptable one given the context but it is obvious in its function of enabling the player to progress and act effectively in the world. I am not disputing the element itself, just the fact that it is not consistently presented, it is a collectible whose representation as a case of diamonds feels incidental. As a result I cannot seem to ever get lost in the world of Far Cry 2 even though I have alot of fun.

I thought I might put together a video of some Tron 2.0 gameplay for those unfamiliar with the game:

This blog has recently failed to live up to my original intention, to forge my own niche in the blogosphere of games criticism. This has occurred as a result of my own activity, in terms of writing and my failure to forge ahead with some ideas for alternate play styles in the games I play. In order to give myself greater “inspiration” I have decided to open up Binary Swan to more general areas of inquiry into video games. I still have a view to returning to the “games played different” idea when possible but for now I (hopefully) will be able to make more regular posts. On that note I present some thoughts of mine on Grand Theft Auto IV.

The Grand Theft Auto series has left an undoubtable mark on how we think about game design. It exists as the benchmark of the “open world” genre both in technological and culture terms. I have recently returned to GTAIV as a refresh in preparation for the release of The Ballad of Gay Tony episode on Xbox Live. This playthrough has  been interesting because it has come with my awareness of the path of Niko as well as the parallel story of Johnny from Lost and Damned. I find that I am able to pick up some more subtle plot elements during this playthrough and have a keen sense of when the two stories intersect and drift apart.

This prompted me to think of the level of forethought and planning that went into the crafting of GTAIV’s narrative. With the release of The Ballad of Gay Tony Rockstar will have provided the medium with a unique artifact, a video game narrative that can be experienced from the perspective of a single or multiple characters, in any combination or in isolation. Roman’s kidnapping for the Russians is a routine job for Johnny but has profound repercussions for Niko. Johnny has no emotional investment in the character of Roman, but my experience was drastically different and this is because of my previously established affinity for him when I was Niko. The combination of  perspectives on the narrative morphed my experience of the events of the “mission”. My affinity for Roman grew as a result of this event because I gained further insight into the masks he puts on to cope with different situations.

I also questioned the level of complicity that I as the player have with the characters I play. I was conflicted about my actions in the narrative because I was a callous kidnapping biker but I am also Niko, Roman’s cousin who would defend him until the last. Is it even relevant to consider myself as being both these people in the game world when such strong identification would lead to conflict? In Grand Theft Auto IV I previously had limited control of the order that I experienced the narrative moments, through choices in missions. With the emergence of these new episodes I now have control over how the alternate lperspective interact. I am crafting my own experience of the games three pronged narrative in much more open way. The exciting moments I am having with the game on this playthrough are now centred around this new navigation of the narrative. I am excited to see how certain moments in the GTAIV saga will be further modified once The Ballad of Gay Tony layer is available. I hope to answer this quest in the future: How would the story of Liberty City be changed for me in the event of a synchronous playthrough of the three characters stories?

Regardless of the outcome we should revel in the way that GTAIV as a game lets these elements be layered on top of eachother with the different stories, experiences and perspectives of the three characters all interacting to create a unique and meaningful experience.

Red Faction: Guerrilla is a fun game to play. There are explosions that are meaty and things that fall down. Walls can have holes in them, whole bridges can collapse if you so chose. It speaks to feelings of empowerment evoked in so many titles in the action genre. I have previously made mention of Red Faction in my post about how actions within a game environment can change, by altering its composition, how we react to and experience it.. Upon reflection I think that the “world-destruction” element of the game’s design whilst providing a very enjoyable experience in altering the game space also contributes to Red Faction’s main failing.

Now, Red Faction is a fun game to play, but it has a story that is done a service by being called “throw-away”, as if you actually had something to hold in the first place. You can take a look at any review of the game and they invariably make mention of the flawed narrative that overlays a brilliant gaming experience. But, you are not drawn into the world of the Red Faction struggle, the plight of the people of Mars, or the machinations of a cold and sadistic EDF and this flaw is seldom an issue because you can still enjoy the title anyway. And the source of these flaws seems readily identifiable; the weak voice acting, poor writing and a lack of meaingful character development (I have to strain to remember the name of the Alex’s brother, the reason you drawn into the “resistance”). These elements are recongisable because the open world / sandbox genre of games now contains examples of narrative done right, or at least better. Grand Theft Auto: IV springs to mind.

However, in Red Faction: Guerrilla even if they had gotten the narrative right, it would not have made a lick of difference because the very nature of the gameplay would acts as a barrier. Upon completion of the story, you as Alex Mason have liberated the sectors of Mars, destroyed the EDF power base and freed the Martians. If this conclusion came at the end of compelling narrative developments you have might believably felt pride in your special achievement, helping those whose survival you care about. However, you have also destroyed the very infrastructure of Mars in doing so, and therein lies the problem.

The destruction engine of the game results in an open world of ruins. Moving around a ‘liberated’ Mars evokes a sense of despair even if the people around you seem oblivious. The Red Faction has shot itself in the foot by eliminating the means by which they might be able to improve conditions on Mars now that the EDF has been defeated. The destructive changes to the world of Mars in Red Faction: Guerilla, which lie solely in the hands of the player, clash with the possible feelings of achievement already noted. You would be inheriting a junkyard. But, because the narrative is weak, you have little attachment to the struggle of the story and therefore the destruction can be labelled as fun and your actions are meaningless. This possibility speaks to an area of concern of mine in contemporary games design, that the interaction between game design and narrative is not being full realised by developers.

The success of Red Faction: Guerrilla financially leads me to believe that a sequel will be in the pipeline soon. If Volition take the criticisms of narrative that are so prevalent and fix them for a follow up the result might not be a better gaming experience. This is because the flaws we all seem to spot so easily do not address the relationship of narrative to gameplay in the game and the consequences of one upon the other. Is it simply a matter of the immaturity of the games industry? Or, are actions games doomed to always be the mindless “popcorn” experiences that can also be seen in modern cinema?