Xandax wrote:An innkeeper saying some dialogue via text is not more "in the game" then the same innkeeper, saying the exact same things.
Look: there's an innkeeper. You walk around several characters who are engaged in dicing, drinking, and conversation. Then you approach the innkeeper, click on him, and he brings up a number of different optional topics of conversation. Perhaps only one includes a hint about a bit of the plot, but you may have to work through a number of responses to get there. Meanwhile, the innkeeper could tell you that talk may be cheap but it still costs, and ask for a tip for his struggling family. Point is, you get the information, but you've interacted with the environment by walking through it, seeing it, "hearing" it, and ultimately speaking with a character to get what you want, by whatever means you can.
The cutscene lifts you out of there. You can't interact. You can't move. You can't do anything. You've been whisked into a theater, where you're watching a movie. That's what a cutscene is.
One does not require more creativity then the other. I really can't believe any unsupported argument which states that writing text is by default requires more creativity then putting the same story into a cut-scene. It is merely a tool for developers to use.
I don't understand your use of the phrase "unsupported argument," here. The best argument I can provide is a personal one, based on my own experience in game development, and I gave a necessarily brief, general, but accurate example of how creativity figures into game design outside cutscenes. Whether it's text, or a cave you design that the player must excavate to find a clue, or a person the player must play at a game to win a clue, or a quest you must run to get something for somebody who has told you they'd provide you with a clue, it amounts to the same thing: it's interacting with the gameworld. There's no question about that. A cutscene doesn't. There's no question about that, either.
Ahh yes, because the MMO you worked on is an example for all subsequent game development indeed, and because I've not worked on that one I'll not know anything about general processes which aren't at all limited or confined to game-development. Guess it is my time to take something with me for use as heavy irony.
Gee, do you think I maybe resorted to irony and Argumentum ad Hominem, because of the way you just blanket dismissed my personal experience as if it amounted to nothing, and wasn't even worth a moment's notice? Let's see:
Sorry, but that is not correct. There is no more creativity involved in writing up some story elements and getting the innkeeper to tell it via text, then there is getting it shown as a cut-scene of the innkeeper telling it to you.
The answer is: Yes!
You just told me in a two utterly confident, sweeping statements, that all my experience briefly but previous stated didn't matter, and that nothing I spent 4 years doing was more creative than could have been shown by a few movies. Guess that's why I responded as I did. Hmm...yep.
Not to say that prior experience in game development, especially on a small scale, really clinches any argument. Nor should it. But to have it dismissed so readily and completely, without a question or even the slightest nod to the fact that I just might, after all, have done a bit of what I'm talking about, and not really be full of BS...well, it was frustraing. A bit.
I'm sorry, but I still think you are wrong, because you set up one scenario for "text" and a different for "cut-scenes" and say they aren't the same, which hardly can be surprising. Setting up the same conditions to begin with is a start.
What sort of identical conditions did you have in mind?
Do you claim that the very same process you depict could not at all take place if it was made via cut-scenes telling the information instead of text telling it? Sorry, but if you claim that, then it is indeed very wrong.
Who said text was telling it? If I wasn't clear before, the player would have to find a character and speak with them, then work through a dialog tree with a variety of responses. If it were the same thing as the cutscene, I'd expect to pick up a piece of paper that had the entire plot-as-shown-in-the-cutscene on it. I don't. My players interact with our mythical innkeeper, who has a lot of subjects for discussion, and a variety of responses depending upon character profession, sex, status, reputation, etc. And of course, the responses that the innkeeper receives. The idea is to make the experience as rich as possible for the player, so that they come away feeling that this is one deep NPC indeed, and one that will show still more sides if they play again.
You can put out pieces the player needs to find and put together for himself, and simply display the story elements as cut-scenes instead of text. The mechanic of displaying information it does not automatically or de facto affect the process with which the information was thought out.
If you just show everything, then it isn't interactive, and I find that boring, and jarring to the illusion of the carefully crafted environment. I don't say you do, but I do.
It might be semantics, but that is what you start with in my view, so yes, I know it.
You seem to equate cut-scenes like all revealing display of information and "text" as the player finding the elements himself, which is a flawed comparison.
Simply picture your game, and imagine that the text you write were now made into a cut-scene, and you'll see what you depict is purely semantic as well, hence my reaction to your claims.
I think we're at cross purposes, here. I'm not discussing the media (as in the ideal), but the way the media is actually deployed in the realworld. Hence, cutscenes: scenes that cutaway from the roleplaying world. So, tell me of several cutscenes that swim against the tide, that allow you to interact to the level of specificity and detail that I've described, and I'll agree with you. The possibility exists that movies could do more; I've certainly reviewed products based on nothing but "interactive movies." But they were dull dead-ends, with few choices, and the company that made them failed. Doesn't mean the idea isn't possible, though.
