Emergent versus Scripted Experiences

Leigh Alexander, author of Sexy Videogameland recently posted an article about user-created experiences versus designed authorship in video games. She says she finds it to be “one of the most interesting issues emerging in next-gen games” and I have to agree with her. I found her stance on the whole thing a little confusing however.

Leigh references Warren Spectors’ talk at NYU and seems to side with his stance on games. Warren Spector is of course best known for his game Deus Ex, a game that falls wonderfully into the user-created category, or at least my definition of it. I was under the impression that user-created experiences or emergent gameplay referred to games like Deus Ex, while designed authorship referred to most other linear games with a story and a strict set guidelines the player needs to follow in order to progress. Leigh on the other hand makes it sound like user-created refers to multiplayer games while designed authorship is everything else (aside from storyless puzzle games and what not). Nels Anderson, developer at Hothead Games and frequent contributor to the blogosphere, commented (about five posts down) on her article saying, “It seems like this isn't about single player vs. multiplayer games, it's about narrative games vs. ludic games (i.e. two legs of Michael's gaming tripod).” So for the rest of this article I’m just going to agree with Nels though I’ll comment on her multiplayer stance later too. Also, to help ease further confusion, ludic, emergent narrative and user-created all refer to the same thing.

Ignoring the whole multiplayer aspect of her article for now, I have to agree with her and Warren Spector. Games like Deus Ex do a wonderful job of combining an intriguing story with the interactivity that make games so unique in their storytelling ability. One such game I played recently I think stands as a wonderful poster child for the potential of the idea. The game is Far Cry 2, it has a story, it unfolds the same way no matter how you play, but the real experience is created by the player. Every encounter can be meticulously planned in a million different ways, and they can all go wrong and play out in another million ways. This leads to a unique experience while still telling the same story. Another good example would be GTA4. Being able to discuss the same part of the same game with a friend, but describing entirely different experiences is what makes emergent gameplay so interesting. Sometimes you’ll even stumble upon a solution that even the designer didn’t plan for.

Problems however arise from the dreaded ludonarrative dissonance that’s been talked about so much lately. The biggest problem a lot of people had in GTA4 was dealing with it’s darker conflicted narrative, while still trying to play the game like previous GTA’s. All the tools to go on a crazy killing rampage were still there, but this time the setting wasn’t a quirky cartoony version of a mob/gang story. The game dealt with the protagonist making difficult choices about killing while players were still used to running over prostitutes if only because they could. This is the dissonance between narrative and gameplay that is a very difficult hurdle to overcome when trying to tell certain stories. Far Cry 2 didn’t really have this problem because it’s narrative allowed for the player to be just about any type of person he or she wanted to be. Though you could argue it falters a bit during its ending.

Now for multiplayer experiences, generally when thinking about multiplayer games, their narrative never really crosses my mind. Unless the game is co-op, which usually means it was designed with single player in mind as well, there really isn’t much of a story at all. That said, I still don’t think there aren’t interesting experiences to be had within that space. Leigh argues that no one is interested in hearing about your multiplayer experience aside from the players involved with you. I disagree, I see no difference between discussing what you did in a single player game with someone else who has played it versus discussing what you did in a multiplayer game with someone who has played it. I do this all the time. My friends and I regularly play shooters on Xbox Live and whenever one of us pull off some crazy stunt the others are more than willing to hear the story. They’ve played the game enough to understand the context and what made the event so awesome. If this wasn’t the case than why would Halo 3’s multiplayer movie capture mode be so popular?

For me at least, multiplayer games are a social experience and don’t really need a story. Very few games even come to mind when thinking of multiplayer narratives and all of them are cooperative games. MMO’s come to mind, but they are generally not about the story, even the ones I thought had cool stories didn’t matter because the world never changed. Completing an epic chain of quests and exposing the secret ruler of Stormwind as the giant evil dragon that she really was didn’t matter because fifteen minutes later someone else would probably be doing the exact same thing. Another that comes to mind is the GameCube version of Legend of Zelda: Four Swords, which I’ve been playing with some friends recently. I think it has a similar story to Link to the Past, but honestly we’ve been so distracted competing for Force Gems and just having a good time that we haven’t paid a single bit of attention to it. If there is a narrative to be had we clearly don’t care about it. Other than that I guess Left4Dead has a pretty bare bones story, but I suppose it shows potential. I’ll never say multiplayer games can’t have meaningful narratives, it just hasn’t been done well yet and it isn’t something I’m yearning for.

Hopefully that wasn't too confusing, seeing as how I essentially disagreed with and then altered and re-agreed (regreed?) with the original article that spawned this one. If it was too confusing then feel free to stop reading now. ;)