Terminally Trivial

The following post is mostly spoiler-free, but the YouTube links aren't.  You've been warned…

First, a list of examples:

- One of the standout aspects of Mirror's Edge is the way that the limbs of the main character, Faith, appear and disappear from the first-person view as Faith runs.  At the end of the game, the player releases control of Faith for an exciting sequence that culminates in something I've never seen in a video game: a first-person hug.

- The title character of The Maw grows with everything it eats.  As the game proceeds, The Maw grows from this funny little character to large (but still harmless) force.  By the end of the game, The Maw has reached a size that significantly alters the relationship between it and Frank, the other protagonist.  This moment plays out in a touching fashion.

- Late in Dead Space, the protagonist Isaac learns a devastating truth that causes him to lower his head and nod in disbelief.  This is a moving moment not only because the story has revealed a piece of critical information, but because the player has never seen Isaac in this state.  Emotion has never caused the avatar to launch into an animation.

What do these emotional experiences have in common?  The avatar that the player controls performs an action that is new to the player.  A character surprising the audience by acting in a new fashion is an old technique.  What makes this "avatar bending" unique is the circumstances surrounding it.  The player has been conditioned to believe that manipulating inputs in a certain way always leads to a certain result.  I find that disrupting this conditioning can make a moment much more emotionally jarring than by pure narrative alone.  There's a reason people still remember the best ending to the original Metroid.

I was thinking about the arcade game Time Traveler the other day.  If you've never heard of it, it is a laserdisc arcade game that uses a special mirror to project game images in a hologram-like manner.  It definitely stood out at the arcade back in 1991, but the gameplay was just like Dragon's Lair.  Players see something happen and must then hit the joystick or a button at just the right time to avoid certain doom.  It should come as no suprise that Rick Dyer was a driving force on both games.

One of its gameplay mechanics that is unusual is the Time Reversal Cube.  Instead of buying extra lives, players have to buy Time Reversal Cubes before running out of lives.  These cubes work like an undo, allowing players to replay the scene that was just failed.  It's interesting that the game wants players to buy continues before needing them.  If a game is going to offer continues, why offer them when the player still has play time remaining?  I could see offering a discount before needing any sort of continues, daring the player to beat the game and making them pay for being so cocky.  I find it awkward to have a continue mechanism and not allow for it to be used after running out of lives, the natural time for such an intervention.

While this mechanic may not make the most sense, it did get me thinking about how arcade games used inserting more coins as a gameplay mechanic.  The better the player is, the more the player can play without paying.  On the other hand, it gives weaker players a chance to actually beat the game.  This mechanic is also the precursor of the pay-to-play MMO game.  Want to keep progressing in the game?  Insert coin to continue.  Maybe someday we'll see an MMO where, instead of a monthly fee, players have to pay 25 cents to respawn.

I've been pretty frustrated with the inconsistency of the officiating in the NBA playoffs this year.  For starters, there are questions about what exactly is a flagrant 1 or a flagrant 2.  Apparently, whacking Brad Miller in the head is not a flagrant foul.  Sometimes intentional fouls aren't called at all.  Then there was the Kobe Bryant / Ron Artest situation where Kobe was not automatically suspended for a game for hitting Ron Artest in the head with an elbow although the NBA rules dictate such a penalty.  Where was this kind of leeway when Amar'e Stoudamire got suspended a couple of years ago for simply leaving the bench after Steve Nash got leveled?

The NBA is one of the hardest leagues to officiate.  The action moves so quickly that calls will surely be missed and makeup calls are going to happen.  Even though this is true, sports fans want to believe that the game is pure and that all judgement calls are made accurately.

When playing a video game against another player, gamers accept the idea that there will be some randomness and that the game won't be pure.  There is a rule set that they expect to be followed, but so many games build randomness into the outcome resolution process.  Whether it be a basketball game that has a slider that affects how often charging is called or a certain gun with questionable accuracy that doesn't always hit the target when aimed perfectly, players can still come up short due to gameplay factors out of their control.  For all but the extremely competitive, this randomness is acceptable.  It is understood that a video game is not real life.  Even when the player opts for a more realistic game experience, the game is still understood to be a simulation.  That means the outcomes will be weighted based on the expected result, but there will still be figurative rolls of the dice going on behind the scenes.

This helps explain why competitive gaming has so much trouble marketing itself alongside traditional sports and why playing a sports video game is a more satisfying experience for me than watching a game.  It does not explain why the ref in the last game of Madden NFL 09 I played obviously didn't have a clue what pass interference is.