Interesting article on Terra Nova

[Xilren's Twin]

If you don't check out, Terra Nova regularly, you might want to start.  It always has some good articles of a more educational and theoretical bent on MMO Gaming.

They have a recent article called Dead Monsters and Naked Emperors which had some gems in it.  To wit:

One major thing that is causing increasing restriction of the freedom of play is the game-mechanical need of developers to make sure that what players do, they do predictably. Not so the story turns out right, but so the all-important (cursedly important) levelling mechanism and treadmill can be properly calibrated. So essentially developers are constantly trying to make players *into* programmable agents, to reduce their humanity down to a primitive AI. Contemporary MMOGs are the Turing Test in reverse, an attempt to engineer human players into dumb software.

That brought a smile to my face.  Maybe there's a decent parallel to be made with television programming being aimed at the LCD part of population just as mmog are aimed at the LCD level-pushing pellet- seeking segment of game players.

Sadly, the overall tone is one of of negativity.  We want freedom in our mmog but that freedom brings lots of idiocy we'd just soon escape (UO); and on the flip side a heavily regulated and restricted worlds eventually gets tedious as you're limited in what you can do (EQ, CoH).  And this article itself is a response to one by Richard Bartle lamenting the lack of developers willing to create worlds with true freedom.

Good stuff.

Xilren

[SirBruce]

Hey, Terra Nova is still one of the better kept secrets around.  Don't ruin it by telling the whole world. :P

Bruce

[Hanzii]

Hey, Terra Nova is still one of the better kept secrets around.  Don't ruin it by telling the whole world. :P

Bruce

Yep, he's one of the few people who writes about mmogs and regularily ends up being quoted in mass media like NY Times and CNN.
Big fucking secret.

[Soukyan]

Hey, Terra Nova is still one of the better kept secrets around.  Don't ruin it by telling the whole world. :P

Bruce

Yep, he's one of the few people who writes about mmogs and regularily ends up being quoted in mass media like NY Times and CNN.
Big fucking secret.

Not to mention many of the ill-informed statements that get tossed around on occasion there and then end up quoted in said mas market publications. Yeah, great for the industry I tell ya...

[SirBruce]

Hey, Terra Nova is still one of the better kept secrets around.  Don't ruin it by telling the whole world. :P

Bruce

Yep, he's one of the few people who writes about mmogs and regularily ends up being quoted in mass media like NY Times and CNN.
Big fucking secret.

Terra Nova isn't a "he"; it's a blog-type thingy that features a variety of authors.  I didn't say the authors were secret; I said that the blog site was something of a secret.

Sheesh.

Bruce

[Liquidator]

Bah.

The thread title got me all excited.  I thought it was news about a new Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri game.  <sniffle>

[Sky]

Bah.

The thread title got me all excited.  I thought it was news about a new Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri game.  <sniffle>

Ditto. They don't make ground-breaking titles like they used to imo.

[Hanzii]

Hey, Terra Nova is still one of the better kept secrets around.  Don't ruin it by telling the whole world. :P

Bruce

Yep, he's one of the few people who writes about mmogs and regularily ends up being quoted in mass media like NY Times and CNN.
Big fucking secret.

Terra Nova isn't a "he"; it's a blog-type thingy that features a variety of authors.  I didn't say the authors were secret; I said that the blog site was something of a secret.

Sheesh.

Bruce

Sorry, the "he" was referring to Edward Castronova the oft quoted Terra Nova author and co-creator of the site (I know there's more contributors than him) - and I'm quite sure I've seen the site itself mentioned in mass media as well.

[Rodent]

Since when is Terra Nova a secret? I thought it was pretty wellknown atleast in this community.

As for LGS Terranova, that games is just begging to be remade in a new engine. Like all LGS games it's probably one of the better games I've ever played.

[Sky]

Looking Glass going under really upset me more than anything that's ever happened in the industry. Such a solid studio dies while so many craphouses persist (and sometimes wax). How many dev houses never made a bad game? Look at the Blizz fanbois, fer crissakes. Damn shame. LGS's pedigree pretty much spans my favorite games whenever they were released, Ultima Underworld to System Shock 2.

[schild]

Well, their latest article is total mental masturbation. I'm sorry, but there are still people like Sid Meier making games.

Who are the auteurs of the gaming industry? Will Wright, Sid Meier and Shigeru Miyamoto are the first ones that spring to mind. I'm sure I could come up with more. Most importantly - this is the first total bullshit frontpage post I've read of theirs. Talking just to hear themselves speak. If there's nothing to say that's frontpage worthy - don't say anything at all.

As for them applying it to MMOGs, I don't know what they're trying to achieve. But I'm pretty sure the first work that could be considered an auteur work will be Tabula Rasa. Or it will come the closest.

Raph got his name mentioned again. +1 fame. Store owners will now offer him a discount in each town he comes to that shares his alignment.

Btw, I know this idea came about because of the Snafu of calling Garriot the father of online gaming. But you know what - who gives a shit? Ego-plays do not deserve any form of attention.

[HaemishM]

MMOG's do have a sense of auteurship, IMO. For SWG, I'd have to say that initially, it does have the Raph Koster stamp on it. Now that's it's iterated through a number of balance changes and Raph no longer works directly on it, not so mucn.

Look at the original EQ and then look at what has been proposed for Vanguard. You can't tell me those don't have the McQuaid stamp, which BTW smells like complete catass. Meanwhile, Blizzard games have a distinct studio autership to them; they feel like Blizzard games. Looking Glass Studio games had the same sort of feeling. The Visual Concepts ESPN sports games have the same feel.

However, that isn't true for every game, because only real good teams or real good lead designers can really imbue a game with that type of flavor. Hastily thrown together teams to pump out the lastest shlock don't really care about that.

[Khaldun]

Dude. Schild.

I know that Sid Meier is still making games. (Well, new versions of his old games, but still.)

That was the whole point of the piece: that for some games, there really is a single developer author analagous to what people mean when they talk about an "auteur" director in films.

But the long-term attack on auteur theory by writers about films is that really films are gigantically complex to produce and in the end, many people "author" aspects of the film, particularly people who do editing or cinematography or visual effects. The same could be said for games, which is why many writers about games aren't sure about how to talk about who the "author" of a game is, and why some scholarly writers about games would rather just avoid the idea of an author altogether.

What seems important to me is that it's different for each game (as for each film). There really are games which have the thumbprint of a single author on them, and some that have no real author.

With SWG, though I'd say the overall original design had many Raph Koster trademarks on it, you also have to recall that Raph frequently insisted on the SWG forums almost from the moment the game went live that he didn't really know the details of the nitty-gritty implementation of much of the game. Which in terms of the traditional meaning of the term "author" is a pretty odd thing to say. When Sarris ported over the "auteur theory" of film from the French in the 1950s, one of the things that was key about it was the assertion that a true cinematic auteur director controlled *everything* about his film, from the smallest details up to the big picture. Even with Sid Meier or Peter Molyneux, that's not the case; with any MMOG, it's double-triple not the case.

[schild]

Dude. Schild, etc.

Dude. :) I think one of the things that you have to remember with games is that the production - despite the move to the studio system - isn't exactly like film. (This isn't directed at you, Khaldun, just the article in general). Lucas for example is so much of an auteur he ruins his work. This may have been the fault with Fable and Molyneux as well, but the underlying problem is much deeper. A single designer has a vision but he can't possibly do everything, on a film a director is at least capable of handling every little nuance up through post production.

Basically, I think there needs to be a different definition for the auteur in games as opposed to using the one handed to us by cinema.

[HaemishM]

I think the auteur definition given is flawed for cinema anyway, except in such rare cases where the production really is so small that one person can do most of it, a la Robert Rodriguez on El Mariachi (and to a lesser extent his later stuff). But when you start throwing in CGI and outside art direction on top of it, which much of today's cinema does, I think certain directors may retain autership without going to the depth of this definition.

one of the things that was key about it was the assertion that a true cinematic auteur director controlled *everything* about his film, from the smallest details up to the big picture.

Or maybe I'm just being too literal.

With games, since most of the whole thing is CGI and programatically based, it's even harder to assert auteurship over a project. But those details usually come out of the lead design position, which is why I consider SWG to have a Koster-feel to it.

[Xilren's Twin]

I think the auteur definition given is flawed for cinema anyway, except in such rare cases where the production really is so small that one person can do most of it, a la Robert Rodriguez on El Mariachi (and to a lesser extent his later stuff). But when you start throwing in CGI and outside art direction on top of it, which much of today's cinema does, I think certain directors may retain autership without going to the depth of this definition.

No they still retain it not because they physically DO it all, but they most definately control it all.  Every single scene in a movie is in the movie b/c the director approved it to be, in the the manner presented, including all the CGI scences.  Every one.  It would be like saying Brad played every race/class combo from 1-50, doing every quest and seeing every mob, zone, spell, skill and equipment in EQ before it was released.  Sorry, can't happen.

Thats the difference, and why IMHO you can't use this analogy with MMOG games.  There is so much in one of these suckers the project direct cannot possibly experience it all to give it their ok, which means they are ceding control to other people, sometimes lots of other people, which blurs the clear vision and undermines the concept of auteurship.

Which is also symptomatic of why certains class/races/skills suck when a new game is released; if the "Lead Designer" had to validate every one personally, less would get missed ('course, the game would take 15 years to release, but hey perfection takes time :-p)

Xilren

[HaemishM]

Actually, I don't think focusing on the details like class abilities and such is the kind of auteurship I'm talking about. Since, as you said, it's not physically possible. And except for the most successful directors, it doesn't happen in film either.

BUT, I think the overall feel, the overall gameplay and concept of the world is where MMOG's can get their auteurship. It's a style, a feeling of gameplay. When it's there, it's very subliminal, when it's not there it's kind of obvious. Only the best game designers can impart it, or the most stubborn.

[Rodent]

About Raph's auteurship in MMOG's. To my knowlage he's made two so far. That's far to few for me to say "This game feels like a Koster game", maby when he's made a few more I can safely say that, but for now I am content to just say that he's made two games that offer more freedom of choice then the more generic level based EQ-clones.

Still the guy must be doing something right, I still play both UO and SWG.

[schild]

Still the guy must be doing something right, I still play both UO and SWG.

I'd love to get a steel cage match between Garriot and Koster over here on f13 where they challenge eachothers ideas. I'd also like a solid gold toilet bowl.

[Khaldun]

Basically, I think there needs to be a different definition for the auteur in games as opposed to using the one handed to us by cinema.

So do I. That's the point I was making in the article.

[schild]

Basically, I think there needs to be a different definition for the auteur in games as opposed to using the one handed to us by cinema.

So do I. That's the point I was making in the article.

Well, it doesn't stop there. I don't really think the term should be applied to games at all, but if we're going to apply it, we might as well call it whatever we want since we'd be inventing (or defining) a certain way of developing games. I'll think about this more tomorrow.