Sophisticated Illusion

“The future game player might be an actor in a drama over which he has no control” that’s what makes a drama dramatic (Poole 2000). To be realistic a game should be more like life in the respect that you only have a facile amount of control over a situation. If you’re all powerful in a game and control and change all outcomes, the game is less immersive less dramatic because you are in a sense omnipotent. Loss of control is more engaging more realistic more dramatic, something beyond your control happens and your choices revolve around how you deal with that. The walking dead game is a good example of this, you steer the story but can’t predict the future; therefore you have no control over the outcomes you've orchestrated.  It allows you to feel the illusion of control and then reminds you that some time shit happens and there’s nothing you can do but pick up the pieces.

A game is a subtle blend of tempos, games have to create extreme anxiety in the player for them to be engaging but also have to give some level of breathing room, they can’t be relentless. Games have to flow, getting this flow right is an art. Also if too much breathing room is given we lose a sense of immediate danger that you might get in a game like Silent Hill, where there's danger everywhere and your only option really is to run. Also a game has to be cleverly laced with an increasing array of challenges and rewards to keep the player interested and entertained and more importantly keep them playing. 

Decision making has become a very important process in games these days but to a degree it destroys storytelling. You can listen to a story and then decides how it develops on top of that; having your cake and eating it. You should be at the mercy of the story. In reality you don't construct the story of your own life, you have control to some degree but that control is an illusion because anything could happen to us at any moment that could change the story dramatically in a way we have no control of.

One crucial difference between film and games is that film actors are chosen but game characters are made (That’s not necessarily true any more a la L.A Noire). So this character is designed to make you feel a certain way and although speech in games is always limited to a set number of responses. If you create a large enough number of responses that can create the illusion of intelligence and the player fills in the blanks because of their love of characters. Anything more than that would require the computer to able to think for itself and understand what you’re saying.

It’s an odd phenomenon but I find it harder to watch a likeable character die, their life has meaning purely because they’re liked. They are constructs but you want them to succeed. This protectiveness creates a kill or be killed sort of scenario which can lead to horrific violence like in Manhunt, you’d rather kill and mutilate to progress than let Cash die and be done with it.

However realistic characters are in a way undesirable because they’re everywhere. In real life you can’t date an alien or a robot, fight zombies or ninjas... or zombie ninjas, but you can in video games. So maybe making them real people is taking a step too far, because real people are boring.

Games are a kinetic art form, every frame of movement in a video game is painstakingly crafted by gifted people working very hard just to create a particular string of emotions in people all over the world how is that not art? Really games have to be played to be understood, it’s like when you see a picture of someone as opposed to actually meeting them. People on the outside just see it as lights and noise and violence for the sake of it, they don’t understand because they refuse to suspend their disbelief.

 Playing a game is like religion; deep down you know its nonsense and atheists like me mock the idea of believing something without evidence, but to people on the inside it offers a feeling of fellowship and satisfaction that can be likened to playing a game or taking a drug. That’s because they've chosen to believe it, when you walk into the cinema or a church you hang up your common sense at the door and you prepare yourself to believe baseless fantasy because that’s a fun way to spend a few hours. The only difference is at the end of the film or the game you put your common sense hat back on. We understand that's it's only an illusion but we want to be taken in by it even if it's just to forget about our daily lives for a few hours.