Warren Spector has a bone to pick with modern day video games and he’s putting developers on notice. Spector, a legend in the gaming community for creating titles like Wing Commander and Deus Ex, laid into popular franchises like Uncharted and The Walking Dead during his opening keynote at PAX Australia.
“If all you want to do is show off how clever you are, get out of my medium! Go make a movie or something, because that’s what you should be doing.”
I’m sorry, did he say his medium? Oof! Spector believes that these games do not live up to the full potential of the medium, he’s right, but my response to that is, so what? Do the majority of films make the most of their medium? No. Does majority of music make the most of its medium? Nope! Does anyone actually think 50 Shades of Grey is a great book? NO! But it doesn’t matter because there is plenty of incredible content out there for people on the edges who aren’t buying what the mainstream is selling.
Spector is waging war against populist entertainment for no good reason. Unlike the music or movie industry, the titles that garner the most notoriety in games aren’t exclusively the most financially successful. Call of Duty, Halo, and NBA 2K ads may run on a loop and blanket every street sign in sight, but Minecraft, World of Warcraft, and CANDY CRUSH are as big if not bigger earners in the industry. There is experience diversity at the top in gaming, and more important than that, the gaming industry supports its indie community.
Titles like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and Rocket League can find homes on major platforms like PSN and reach millions of users they never could have on PC. The barrier of entry in game development is lower than it is in comparable industries and publishers, unlike Hollywood studios, are interested in promoting and nurturing young creatives and their whacky ideas. The beauty is that we have a system where all kinds of art can thrive and the quality gap between AAA titles and top tier indie games is shrinking. What I found more troubling was Spector’s seeming dismissal of guided narrative experiences.
Gameplay vs Narrative
“It’s a great story, better than any story I’ll ever tell in a game, but it’s not a players’ story,” Spector said of Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series.
Forum dwellers love to pit these two elements of games against each other. This is a battle between gaming’s Conservatives and Liberal parties. Conservatives, i.e traditionalists, want to see a return to the old way, where gameplay systems ruled the experience. Liberals, however, welcome the shift to narrative-driven experiences and titles without proper gameplay systems like Gone Home or Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture. What you’re seeing here is a broadening of the medium. The market has scaled to such a size that it can now support smaller titles with unusual gameplay approaches. This should be welcomed by someone like Spector. It is a sign that the medium he placed his bets on so long ago has arrived and has a bright future. Instead he has decided to drive a wedge between different artists groups in the industry.
Spector broke games down into 3 experience tiers: Low, Medium, and High expression. Low expression games are titles like Uncharted, Half Life, and Tomb Raider, these are linear experiences that present players with one pathway to progression. High expression games are titles like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and The Sims, these are experiences where the player has strong influence over the experience he’s having. Great gameplay is essential to a game’s success and sometimes great gameplay alone can be enough, but narrative elevates gameplay systems and builds stronger bonds between gamers and IP.
Human beings need story, we need characters, this is how we relate alien worlds to our own. This is also why games like Uncharted are so successful. Players may not be playing their own story, but they’re playing Drake’s story and they are damn invested in its outcome. They love Nathan Drake. They want to see him succeed and by playing as him they are helping him accomplish his goals. The gamer is his indispensable imaginary sidekick. These are powerful strings of attachment. These experiences are more powerful than the temporary ones you get from competitive play—Spector believes Fighting games to be high expression titles—because you are emotionally tied to someone who looks and feels like you or someone you know and you feel like you’ve played an integral role in their growth, their journey.
Your Story vs Their Story
“It’s not that games like this are bad, but they limit your ability to interact with the game world, so the story can unfold the way the storyteller wants it to unfold. You have very limited ability to express yourself; it’s about how do you accomplish a predetermined path to get to the next plot point. It’s a great story — a better story than I’ll ever tell in a game — but it’s not a player story; it’s not your story.” — Warren Spector
Is partaking in another’s adventure more enjoyable than crafting your own? In gaming the answer is more often than not, yes. In the past, developers have attempted to straddle the line between the two leading to uneven narratives and protagonists devoid of their own identity, avatars for players to project themselves onto. This mirage reveals itself for what it is immediately because it is impossible to tell a compelling narrative with a protagonist that is unsure of himself. You need a central character with a strong POV because that gives your narrative direction. How complex can a supporting cast be if your protagonist is hollow? Look at the difference between something like Halo and Uncharted. Bungie defended Master Chief’s lack of personality with the belief that players would “project themselves onto him”. Joseph Staten, lead writer at Bungie at the time famously said: “We left-out details to increase immersion; the less players knew about the Chief, we believed, the more they would feel like the Chief.”
But that never worked because in order for their narrative to progress Master Chief had to make choices and the players didn’t dictate those choices. The players couldn’t speak as Master Chief, they could “control” him, but they could never truly place themselves in his shoes. Developers have to take ownership of their characters and inject them with the complexity needed to make them feel alive.
Games that truly embrace a post-narrative approach are MMOs. These are games with no ending, no overarching plot. These titles ditch the analog approach to narrative to one that feels inherently digital, always on, always in flux. World of Warcraft doesn’t feature structured narratives like Uncharted or Heavy Rain. MMOs mimic life in that narrative can only truly be assessed or discovered in hindsight. The game is a series of barely linked experiences. The “story” or lore is there to give context to the universe, to give it dimensionality, to make living in it feel more authentic to the player. In a game like this the player’s actions mean everything, but this experience isn’t for everyone. It certainly isn’t for me. Living in the real world is exhausting enough I’m not trying to pull double duty. The difference here is that I’m not trying to eradicate games like WoW.
Us vs Them
“Gamers: vote with your dollars… If we all play our parts, if we all do that, if we make games that share authorship … we will be the medium of the 21st century.”
The real crime here is not that Spector doesn’t like or respect games the popular games of today it’s that he feels they shouldn’t exist. His defenders have shouted bu-but he said he lo-lo-loved those games! Yeah and then he called for their eradication moments later, you dont’ get to have your cake and eat it too. We need to be tolerant of different experiences. The industry is still in it’s infancy, it’s growing rapidly, daily thanks to smartphones and tablets. Why alienate new users who are enjoying these experiences? What does that accomplish? People like what they like, everyone’s tastes are different. Who is anyone, even someone as important as Warren Spector, to negate or dictate the kinds of experiences people wish to have when they game?
Some people just want to feel apart of the blockbuster experience and that’s what games like Uncharted provide. You can’t do Uncharted in World of Warcraft and you certainly can’t do World of Warcraft in Uncharted. Developers have attempted to blend elements from both sides of the fence, but it’s incredibly difficult, and the stories often suffer. Spector isn’t wrong when he says that games can be more than what they are today, I just don’t believe we have to mutilate ourselves in order to reach our final form. And deep down, I don’t think Warren does either.
