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Why read my opinion? You’ve read the opinion of everyone else under the sun on interactive storytelling, so why not? So, is it possible? Sure. Will it happen? Yup. Will it be good? Sometimes.

Just like any other game, sometimes it’ll be a pain, sometimes it will be amazing, and sometimes it will be completely inconsequential. The thing I don’t get why people make such a big deal out of it. Let the narratologists do their thing. Let the ludologists do theirs. Occasionally stop in the others camp and say “Hey, how’s it going? Invented the Citizen Kane of interactive storytelling yet?” “No. How’s that ‘game that can make you cry’ coming along?” “Fine.” Live together and be done with it. Blah. Seems to me it’s a lot of noise about nothing.

The narratologists are seemingly convinced that the world will implode. “It’s impossible,” they say, “Impossible!” Of course the ludologists usually aren’t too different. “It WILL work, and when it does, narrative stories will be the thing of movies and books! Games will rule the media landscape!” Y’know what really scares both groups of people? What if it works? I mean, what if we DO get the genuine “interactive story” up and going strong? What happens then? Who will be right? My guess? Neither. Games will still be relegated to second class citizen status in the world of media for some time regardless of what they offer. (Acceptance only comes with maturity.)

But supposing it does happen soon, do ludologists really think anything will change? It’ll be relegated to bullet-point status immediately. Narratologists calm your fears, you’ll still have jobs in a decade’s time.

Commercially successful indy film, music, books, and comics all offer a huge variety to the mainstream forms of each entertainment and nearly without-fail have much fewer resources at hand and a higher (or equal) financial bar to clear.

And I think the lack of this happening isn’t even a technological impetus, but a problem of distribution. We’ve all made programs that we send to our friends over the internet that do something nifty, if not a tiny game we thought up and wanted to get an opinion on.

Game makers can do this, but it severely hampers the potential consumer base. (It’s just a matter of customers being technically proficient and knowing what they’re getting into. So few gamers are willing to buy a new game from a complete unkown over the internet. We’re just not ‘there’ yet. Why? That’s another post.) But I honestly think that when the people who made Eets, Gish, Hapland, or even interactive fiction are able to burn (or have pressed) discs and sell them out of the trunk of their car, then you’ll see variety in gaming. Hell, then people will complain about too much choice.

This entire post started out as a reply to something I read over at Brett Douville’s blog a bit back, but I decided to make it a blog post instead. Now that I’m finally blogging, here it is. Brett said:

Lately I’m really interested in how costs can be lowered so that the bar to entry gets low enough for there to be single auteurs, or at the very least, a smaller set of auteurs. I’m starting to wonder if that’s not the way to get more interesting games.Sure, there are means by which single auteur games can get made, but they are unlikely to see distribution beyond a very small group. Interactive fiction continues to be alive, but it’s a small audience and there’s not really a way to make money from it.

I couldn’t agree more on his saying smaller teams could be good for games. It’s definitely possible for two hundred essentially nameless film professionals to make a good movie from a script handed down to them from their bosses in the movie company. There’s a tiny chance it’ll even be a great movie. But you give Robert Rodriguez and a crew of twenty of his guys a camera and you’ll get a movie I’d pay to see without knowing anything about it. It makes perfect sense to me that smaller teams (or those with a more unified vision that they actively care for) could make a more cohesive game. (Given the technical proficiency to pull it off, of course.) It only makes sense that more people on a team means more interpretations of any given aspect of said game, and that more team members are more likely to not be interested at all.

Need proof? I recently read in Game Developer magazine that EALA (EA Los Angeles) is adopting Will Wright’s concepts of “cells” in which during the time no game is being produced, groups of 7 developers form and brainstorm on ideas. Yup. They’ve officially co-opted creativity and taken it away as a tool for the small dev to get a leg-up. It was small dev’s last weapon, but now the fields are truly even and the creativity itself will be judged.

Today I saw yesterday’s post over at Penny Arcade that mirrored the opinions of a post from the same day by Josh of Cathode Tan. They both lament the lack of consoles that allow user-created code to be executed. But I have the answer. Games need more gizmos.

Well, ‘a’ GISMOS, actually. Gaming and Interactive Simulation Machine/Open Standard. But for marketing purposes I’ll settle on calling it this new console a Gismo. Yes, Games needs a new console. Not just any console, mind you, but one that applies a base standard and is open to all producers. Now you’re asking “What the hell are you talking about?” DVDs are a standard. All DVD players will play a ‘standard’ DVD. And anyone can produce a DVD; WB, Sony, Fox ,etc.
And anyone can produce a DVD player; Toshiba, Samsung, etc. Games needs the same.

I initially thought “the first console manufacturer to do this will be my hero!” But then reality sets in as I realize there that it will not come from within games. This is a case of evolution vs.
revolution, and revolution is the only way. The current hardware manufacturers lose money on hardware and make money on licensing the right to publish games for their console, so they’d obviously be insane to create an open standard for Games. They’re vying for a monopoly on what they want Game Consoles to become. You know, Consoles as “an in-road to the center of the household with one unit that will control every thing about a house.” You’ve heard the
bullshit line before. It will be your game player, movie player, music player, and your DVR for movies, music, TV, not to mention your VoIP-phone.

They won’t be Game Consoles at all. They’ll be ‘Media Managers’.

But you won’t be replacing your all of those contraptions in your entertainment center with one small box. Nope. If this game keeps up eventually you’ll have it slam full of Media Managers. One for Sony products, one for Fox, and one for Microsoft (with associated 3rd party content creators.) Of course this doesn’t count the Nintendo game console that you’ll have to keep on the floor due to lack of room. Think I’m crazy? Let’s see if the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD groups can compromise rather than release two competing formats, each backed by different companies.

Now let’s look at the future on the opposite end of the spectrum. The hardware producers decide that graphics are finally cooling down and that entering the game consoles business doesn’t mean getting into a hardware war they will never win. They decide that customers have realized that graphics aren’t everything. Hardware manufacturers offer Sony, MS, and Nintendo the chance to help join their standards board at the ground floor and form the gaming platform of the future. Which of these three would accept this?

Surely not Sony. Their marketing and hardware has them with a solid lead this generation with the PS3. And they make their money by licensing games for their hardware. And Microsoft? They’ve lost so much money on the XBox and X360 hardware that to quit two systems in
would be insane. Especially considering the ground they’ve covered in becoming a strong second in the consoles with the X360. Nintendo? Here’s something interesting. Now in third, what do they do? They have a shot at being the sole company whose IP would be in this new format, assuming the format succeeded. So why wouldn’t they do it? They quit the hardware war with the Revolution. They’ve long been the only company to make money off of hardware. Sure they’re in third, but they’re turning profit.

So, none of the current console manufacturers make the move. (Maaaybe Nintendo, if they realize their strongest suit is their software.) Now, this isn’t a new idea by any means. Lots of people have thought about it and even blogged about it. But it’s an idea whose time is nearly here. As graphical improvements slow down the likelihood increases. The question is “Who would but it?” If it was an open standard that allowed me to run my own games? I sure as hell would. And I’m sure many other “hardcore gamers” and “hobbyists” would just so they could have trade homebrew. But what game developers would support it? In today’s world of DRM-hysteria game companies are looking at ways to stop piracy, not make it as easy as DVD and CD piracy.

They could allow a scheme like CSS on DVDs, but gamers are a more technical crowd. That’ll be taken apart in no time. Any have serious suggestions on how to allow homebrew but not allow rampant piracy of copyrighted games?