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 games: the future of gaming at eief
When games evolve. In his keynote speech at this year’s Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival, digital media business genius, Adam Singer, challenged the games industry to develop the videogame into a medium in its own right.Despite already being very financially lucrative, when compared to older formats like books, film and music, videogames are little more than a niche form of entertainment - and certainly not considered as capable of anything greater by the mainstream consumer (other than as, for tabloid readers, Satan’s electronic poison). Singer thinks that games will never truly appeal to the wider market until they can engage with audiences that demand more from a format than the ability to hack individual limbs off an aggressor. I did wonder whether he’s familiar with the tragic story of the characters in Planescape: Torment, or the humorous antics of Guybrush Threepwood, but let's face it – as a medium, games haven't matured yet. As their presentation becomes more realistic (or at least “cinematic”), so players’ expectations of convincing, considered narratives will rise, especially as we often play games on a screen shared with television and film. Or so says Neil Richards of The Mustard Corporation, a small team of writer/designers aiming to build “credible, original game worlds”.  Dungeons & Dragons Heroes & Guybrush Threepwood in The Curse Of Monkey Island. But the solution can't just be to plant cinematic sequences into a game: rather than adding emotional depth, cut scenes can disengage the player from the experience, which provides quite a conundrum for the writer. The Mustard Corporation's Marek Walton suggests one possible answer: instead of using scripted sequences, let other gamers perform character roles. “I think players are very adept at stripping a game down and knowing its mechanics. So if we interact with a human being, we instantly know it’s a real person - which ups the ante [of engagement] a lot.” Marek has been playing World Of Warcraft. But if gamers become role-players, wouldn’t he be writing himself out of a job? “Not necessarily. Writing a game involves developing characters, backstory, the universe... it's a shift in the role. Characters are driven by needs - you’d just need to get the player-characters to agree to them”. “Like a Dungeon Master”, says Neil. And so we look back to Dungeons & Dragons. It's rather apt, in a way. Could the key to broadening videogames’ appeal actually be hidden in the dog-eared rulebooks of an even smaller gaming niche?
David Thair
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 moral outragegames #115  in-game adsgames #114  handheld gaminggames #113  killer7games #112  god of wargames #111
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