Comments for Rebellion Media Blog http://rebellionmedia.net/blog Civilization is crumbling Sat, 31 Jul 2010 02:41:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7.1 hourly 1 Comment on Never Compromise: A Spoiler-Filled Review of the First 20 Minutes of Watchmen by Rebellion Media Blog » Blog Archive » New York Comic Con 09 Wrap http://rebellionmedia.net/blog/2009/02/13/never-compromise-a-spoiler-filled-review-of-the-first-20-minutes-of-watchmen/comment-page-1/#comment-914 Rebellion Media Blog » Blog Archive » New York Comic Con 09 Wrap Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:02:11 +0000 http://rebellionmedia.net/blog/?p=76#comment-914 [...] Never Compromise: A Spoiler-Filled Review of the First 20 Minutes of Watchmen [...] [...] Never Compromise: A Spoiler-Filled Review of the First 20 Minutes of Watchmen [...]

]]> Comment on A Review of the Wordpress.com Video Player by eloreostasp http://rebellionmedia.net/blog/2008/12/12/a-review-of-the-wordpresscom-video-player/comment-page-1/#comment-906 eloreostasp Sat, 20 Dec 2008 03:50:37 +0000 http://rebellionmedia.net/blog/?p=37#comment-906 Thanks the author! Thanks the author!

]]> Comment on Reaching the Uncanny Valley by Duncan Fyfe http://rebellionmedia.net/blog/2008/12/04/reaching-the-uncanny-valley/comment-page-1/#comment-891 Duncan Fyfe Thu, 11 Dec 2008 06:05:21 +0000 http://rebellionmedia.net/blog/?p=35#comment-891 I accept your hypothesis to an extent. I agree that there’s an ultimate limitation; that games are never going to feel like Façade at the fullest expression of its potential, or like you’re videoconferencing. A game’s cast of characters will never pass for human. But that’s the case with every other kind of fiction, too. I don’t think a character in a movie is a real guy, it’s clearly an actor who’s also on the cover of People magazine, I don’t believe that the protagonist of a novel has a life outside of the book, and if I’m watching a play I can be pretty sure that if I throw something at the actors then they’ll give up the illusion pretty fast. And I can love and hate characters in all those forms of media, and I don’t think the verisimilitude of video games is intrinsically less believable. It’s harder to maintain, for sure, because of games’ capacity for interactivity. And games are way behind right now, because they got a late start. Also, the failure of games to reach that hypothetical standard (which we both agree is likely impossible) doesn’t matter very much. I guess it has something to do with your perspective on writing, but I firmly believe that the purpose of a character is to support the story, or the atmosphere, or the gameplay. I never read or see anything for “the characters”. When a companion character in Fallout 3 can’t react to a critical plot twist or a crazy emergent event, then they’re undermining the credibility of the world and that’s where I think the problem lies. They’re not mechanically sophisticated enough to react appropriately and so they call attention to the game’s limitations. That’s my concern. Not that they’re unconvincing as humans but that they’re tripping all over their lines and crashing into the backdrops. Alyx in HL2 can basically pull this off, but only because HL2 is so on rails. But ten years ago, games couldn’t have made Alyx work with a game of HL2’s comparatively narrow scope. I do think this is a technical thing, largely. Valve will get better with Alyx as they go along, and developers will eventually create characters complex enough to support a game as broad as Fallout 3. In the meantime, you can see these occasional gaps between reach and grasp (the “uncanny valley of ludonarrative dissonance”, as some call it.) In regard to your last paragraph, right off the top of my head KOTOR and Mass Effect did exactly the things you suggest. I would bet there’s a lot of developers that have been thinking along those lines for some time. I accept your hypothesis to an extent. I agree that there’s an ultimate limitation; that games are never going to feel like Façade at the fullest expression of its potential, or like you’re videoconferencing. A game’s cast of characters will never pass for human. But that’s the case with every other kind of fiction, too. I don’t think a character in a movie is a real guy, it’s clearly an actor who’s also on the cover of People magazine, I don’t believe that the protagonist of a novel has a life outside of the book, and if I’m watching a play I can be pretty sure that if I throw something at the actors then they’ll give up the illusion pretty fast.

And I can love and hate characters in all those forms of media, and I don’t think the verisimilitude of video games is intrinsically less believable. It’s harder to maintain, for sure, because of games’ capacity for interactivity. And games are way behind right now, because they got a late start.

Also, the failure of games to reach that hypothetical standard (which we both agree is likely impossible) doesn’t matter very much. I guess it has something to do with your perspective on writing, but I firmly believe that the purpose of a character is to support the story, or the atmosphere, or the gameplay. I never read or see anything for “the characters”. When a companion character in Fallout 3 can’t react to a critical plot twist or a crazy emergent event, then they’re undermining the credibility of the world and that’s where I think the problem lies. They’re not mechanically sophisticated enough to react appropriately and so they call attention to the game’s limitations. That’s my concern. Not that they’re unconvincing as humans but that they’re tripping all over their lines and crashing into the backdrops.

Alyx in HL2 can basically pull this off, but only because HL2 is so on rails. But ten years ago, games couldn’t have made Alyx work with a game of HL2’s comparatively narrow scope. I do think this is a technical thing, largely. Valve will get better with Alyx as they go along, and developers will eventually create characters complex enough to support a game as broad as Fallout 3. In the meantime, you can see these occasional gaps between reach and grasp (the “uncanny valley of ludonarrative dissonance”, as some call it.)

In regard to your last paragraph, right off the top of my head KOTOR and Mass Effect did exactly the things you suggest. I would bet there’s a lot of developers that have been thinking along those lines for some time.

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