I'm on a number of little mailing lists, and today I got an interesting email about a not-so-closed beta: this MMO, Domo.
I haven't downloaded it, I haven't played it, I haven't done anything with it. Nor will I. Not because it's bad - I have no way of knowing. I just don't have time.
But it makes an extremely interesting case study.
Innovation in the MMO industry tends to be by baby steps, because anything that innovates more heavily is by some tiny little company that folds before reaching first prototype. However, the innovation is there. I've already lauded Granado Espada for its three-character system, and I think everyone can learn from these types of things.
Domo is trying to put in a social game. You can pledge a relationship to someone - master/student, friends, lovers. And you have some kind of destined relationship, too, although the description is pretty fuzzy. The game lets you build up special techniques (only combat examples are given) that you can use with your social partners.
It's certainly a fun little step, and I'm looking forward to talking to some of the players in a few months once everything is a bit more settled. But...
I'm worried it's too shallow.
Relationships are like any other gameplay element. In order to be interesting, they have to have an interesting feedback loop. That means difficult choices that lead to interesting consequences.
Once you've declared you're AngerPump's best buddy, what's your next step?
Presumably, the game uses one of two ways to "develop" your relationship: either time spent grouped or some kind of social resources expended (friendship gems or some such). Both of these are good, choice-wise. Figuring out who to spend time with or who to spend your limited resources on are both interesting challenges. Obviously, they both have the potential to be hugely unbalanced.
For the sake of argument, let's assume a game (not Domo, since I've never played it) uses time spent grouped. Now, the kind of relationship can offer a multiplier. Friends get a flat rate for time spent. Lovers get a big rate for time spent as a pair, but in larger parties get only a tiny social profit. Master/student might get nothing from being grouped, but a significant boost every time the student kills something (or smiths something or whatever) while grouped with the master. You could even have a "rival" relationship, where you get lots of points whenever you kill something your rival wounded...
Obviously, this kind of complexity allows for a very complex choice as to how you spend your time and with whom. It's fun to think about, it's got me all excited.
But the other end of the deal is the consequences. Just getting more "social points" really doesn't mean anything. What matters is what those social points mean.
It looks like in the case of Domo, you get special pair moves, which is a pretty fun reward. But it's not much of a feedback loop: getting a new pair move doesn't actually change your socialization much. It does mean that you're more likely to rely on that person when doing difficult dungeons, so it does have some effect, but it's tenuous.
The consequences of an action should almost always have an effect on that action in the future. It's a feedback loop, right? But you need to be careful not to let things get too broken or flat, because then it's a really boring feedback loop.
One way to get feedback is to take the entire social network into account. You're friends with AngerPump and BladderProblem32, but they are rivals with each other. Therefore, when you improve your relationship with one, your relationship with the other suffers.
If these were NPCs, I would have them automatically talk to you about your relationship: BladderProblem32 would tell you that he's disappointed in your growing friendship with AngerPump. Creampuff_Eater will ask for help killing off a demon on level 41. DumpyLump will ask for more of your romantic time, or maybe Ergognomic will ask for a few hundred silver to get him that new pickax...
Since these are not NPCs, there's no need to do that (and no way to do that without radically changing the nature of the game).
But the point is still there: if you build a network of social relationships, you can make tugging on one of them skew the others out of joint. So it's possible to have a Knights of the Round Table situation, but as you might expect, it just takes one errant love relationship to bring it crashing down...
All of this could be ignored by simply stating that the relationship system is only there to give a framework to the natural player relationships, and that they'll contain plenty of complexity and drama on their own. It's true that I'm always thinking in terms of NPCs, so my view is tinted. But... I don't think that a good feedback loop will ever be a bad thing.
Anyway, if anyone plays Domo, please tell me how it is. And even if you haven't played it, tell me what you think.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
The People vs Phoenix Wright
This post does not have any meaningful spoilers in it.
I finally played Phoenix Wright. Just the first one. I don't play many DS games.
There's a lot that can be learned from a game like this. First off, that the word "game" is a really poor one. It's really just an interactive movie. Not even. It's kind of just an interactive comic book.
But it's fun as hell.
For me, the telling bit was the last case. For the final case, they suddenly give you a wide variety of investigative tools: a spray to detect blood, a fingerprinting kit, the ability to analyze clues in 3D...
But although the case was very clever, I enjoyed it least out of all the cases. In looking carefully, the reason I enjoyed it least was because these tools took the focus off of people and put it onto stuff.
The strength of the game is the people. For the first four episodes, gameplay consisted largely of running from person to person and trying to convince them to say something useful. Even in court, it's mostly about badgering them until they tell the truth.
But the final case is mostly about stuff. In fact, even in court, it's not about getting witnesses to tell the truth. It's about simply discrediting the witnesses and presenting the truth through stuff.
This can most easily be seen in the "court record", IE the inventory. In the first four cases, you generally have about a dozen items, sixteen at most. In the fifth episode, you end up with more than thirty. It's not simply that it's a more complex case: it's a fundamental shift in the focus of the game.
I found it irritating. What I liked about the first four episodes was the people. They didn't require any high-tech silliness like blowing on your DS or solving jigsaw puzzles. It was just me, a dialog tree, and a ton of really entertaining writing.
I think there may be a lesson in this, but only if I'm not unique... did anyone else notice the same thing?
I finally played Phoenix Wright. Just the first one. I don't play many DS games.
There's a lot that can be learned from a game like this. First off, that the word "game" is a really poor one. It's really just an interactive movie. Not even. It's kind of just an interactive comic book.
But it's fun as hell.
For me, the telling bit was the last case. For the final case, they suddenly give you a wide variety of investigative tools: a spray to detect blood, a fingerprinting kit, the ability to analyze clues in 3D...
But although the case was very clever, I enjoyed it least out of all the cases. In looking carefully, the reason I enjoyed it least was because these tools took the focus off of people and put it onto stuff.
The strength of the game is the people. For the first four episodes, gameplay consisted largely of running from person to person and trying to convince them to say something useful. Even in court, it's mostly about badgering them until they tell the truth.
But the final case is mostly about stuff. In fact, even in court, it's not about getting witnesses to tell the truth. It's about simply discrediting the witnesses and presenting the truth through stuff.
This can most easily be seen in the "court record", IE the inventory. In the first four cases, you generally have about a dozen items, sixteen at most. In the fifth episode, you end up with more than thirty. It's not simply that it's a more complex case: it's a fundamental shift in the focus of the game.
I found it irritating. What I liked about the first four episodes was the people. They didn't require any high-tech silliness like blowing on your DS or solving jigsaw puzzles. It was just me, a dialog tree, and a ton of really entertaining writing.
I think there may be a lesson in this, but only if I'm not unique... did anyone else notice the same thing?
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Peaceful Games
I've been thinking about peaceful games, lately. I don't mean nonviolent games... I mean peaceful games. I've been thinking about the idea because I've been playing a lot of games that make me wish there was no pressure at all. It's hard to explain what I mean by this, but I'll try.
Something like Animal Crossing seems like it might be the ultimate ideal of a peaceful game, but it's really not what I'm talking about. Animal Crossing is a grind-filled casual game. There's an implicit push to do really dumb things like make shit-tons of money and buy stuff.
It's probably impossible to make a game with no implicit goals, but the idea behind a peaceful game is to make those goals very relaxing.
There are some relaxing games out there, ranging from Jaruu Tenk to Knytt and so forth. But these games are rather more shallow than I like. Jaruu Tenk allows you to spend a huge amount of time with the inhabitants of this little house, but nothing you do has any significant effect and the harder you try to do anything meaningful, the more of an outright bastard the character in question becomes.
How about this idea: Let's take Simcity Societies and mod it. In our heads, because the game doesn't support this level of modification, and even if it did, it would crash every half hour.
You don't build your city build your city build build build. Instead of spending cash on new buildings, you have to spend public will. Which means that once you run dry, you need to go amongst the people.
The people live in the buildings and on the streets you have made. There's a few interesting stories happening at any given time, ranging from thieves to summer crushes. All of the stories are built around the buildings you have put up and their situation. That boring row of houses you put up? There's a squad of ten year olds that really hate living there, man.
You get your public will by simply touching these stories, perhaps making a few of the decisions or introducing a few new elements or building something. You don't have to solve them, or do anything specific.
This is a clumsy example, but the idea is to take the focus off the building of the city and put it onto the people living in the city you're building.
Perhaps a better example is in Civ IV. Civ IV is a great game, but I keep thinking, "I don't want to play it from this angle." I'm not interested in what tile to put a city on, or even whether we have open borders with someone. However, seeing how the people live in the nation is very interesting to me. Ideally, I would be able to play the game by simply guiding stories, and the AI would expand, negotiate, and research for me around the story resolutions.
The thing is that these "character driven games" are only possible because of the complex "reality" behind them. Joe and Sue fall in love because they spend all day at that coffee shop you built so close to the fountain. The Knights of Agrigore only formed because your bandit problem was growing too serious. The trade union is only being attacked because the black hole is passing through sector 14...
While there's theoretically a strong implicit goal to maximize your empire or whatever, the fact of the matter is that such things don't matter. No matter what you do, there will be stories. The kind of world you build using them determines what kind of stories you'll have in the future.
There are a lot of different relaxing games you could build, I imagine. Raph built one about flapping your wings. But, to me, it's got to be people and long-term state changes. I don't like "games" that don't give me any control over the world, and I don't feel interested in games which don't have people/people-like-things/stories-of-people in them.
...
Well, just thinking. What do you think?
Something like Animal Crossing seems like it might be the ultimate ideal of a peaceful game, but it's really not what I'm talking about. Animal Crossing is a grind-filled casual game. There's an implicit push to do really dumb things like make shit-tons of money and buy stuff.
It's probably impossible to make a game with no implicit goals, but the idea behind a peaceful game is to make those goals very relaxing.
There are some relaxing games out there, ranging from Jaruu Tenk to Knytt and so forth. But these games are rather more shallow than I like. Jaruu Tenk allows you to spend a huge amount of time with the inhabitants of this little house, but nothing you do has any significant effect and the harder you try to do anything meaningful, the more of an outright bastard the character in question becomes.
How about this idea: Let's take Simcity Societies and mod it. In our heads, because the game doesn't support this level of modification, and even if it did, it would crash every half hour.
You don't build your city build your city build build build. Instead of spending cash on new buildings, you have to spend public will. Which means that once you run dry, you need to go amongst the people.
The people live in the buildings and on the streets you have made. There's a few interesting stories happening at any given time, ranging from thieves to summer crushes. All of the stories are built around the buildings you have put up and their situation. That boring row of houses you put up? There's a squad of ten year olds that really hate living there, man.
You get your public will by simply touching these stories, perhaps making a few of the decisions or introducing a few new elements or building something. You don't have to solve them, or do anything specific.
This is a clumsy example, but the idea is to take the focus off the building of the city and put it onto the people living in the city you're building.
Perhaps a better example is in Civ IV. Civ IV is a great game, but I keep thinking, "I don't want to play it from this angle." I'm not interested in what tile to put a city on, or even whether we have open borders with someone. However, seeing how the people live in the nation is very interesting to me. Ideally, I would be able to play the game by simply guiding stories, and the AI would expand, negotiate, and research for me around the story resolutions.
The thing is that these "character driven games" are only possible because of the complex "reality" behind them. Joe and Sue fall in love because they spend all day at that coffee shop you built so close to the fountain. The Knights of Agrigore only formed because your bandit problem was growing too serious. The trade union is only being attacked because the black hole is passing through sector 14...
While there's theoretically a strong implicit goal to maximize your empire or whatever, the fact of the matter is that such things don't matter. No matter what you do, there will be stories. The kind of world you build using them determines what kind of stories you'll have in the future.
There are a lot of different relaxing games you could build, I imagine. Raph built one about flapping your wings. But, to me, it's got to be people and long-term state changes. I don't like "games" that don't give me any control over the world, and I don't feel interested in games which don't have people/people-like-things/stories-of-people in them.
...
Well, just thinking. What do you think?
Monday, November 19, 2007
SimCity Societies
Well, there's good news and there's bad news.
The bad news is that the game really sucks. It's basically Magic: the Gathering, but without an enemy. Some structures give you "mana" of a given kind - creativity, industry, research - and some structures require mana of a given kind.
Unfortunately, there's no game behind it. There's not even any implicit goals worth mentioning. While you can simply build and build and build, I don't find the algorithm to be very interesting. Basically, making "the perfect city" is too easy. There are NO tradeoffs.
In order to make an interesting city, you have to cripple yourself on purpose.
The easy example is power plants. While you can get cheap power plants that shoot smog into the air, it's only a little more expensive to get cleaner plants, to the point where there's almost no reason to ever get the nasty ones.
There's no sense of location in the city. Plunking down something that gives off creativity allows you to plunk down something that absorbs creativity anywhere else on the map. Once you start putting down subway stops (or bus stops, although they're a dominated strategy), your sims don't really care how far away anything is.
Also, as I mentioned, no trade offs. I can have a city that's got tons of all six elements. While there's not necessarily anything inherently exclusive about any of them, allowing me to have all six without struggle is just poor game design.
Look, I can understand a creative, religious, industrious community. I can understand a religious, industrious, controlled community. I can understand an industrious, controlled, scientific community. But a religious, industrious, creative, controlled, scientific community? Makes no sense.
Also, they don't let you drag a road to the edge of the map and connect to other cities. Which would have been way cooler in this game than in any of the games they actually let you.
That's the bad news.
The good news is that the game is heavily modable.
The bad news is that I don't think it's modable enough. I want to change the underlying game rules, but the modable files just control content. Some of the content can be modded to affect the way the game plays out - for example, I could make subways vastly less efficient to give a sense of place. But I want to make a system for conflicting mana types. Perhaps after the first three mana types, the last three cause unhappiness...
Looking at all this modability, it just breaks my heart that the core game mechanic is so uninspiring...
The bad news is that the game really sucks. It's basically Magic: the Gathering, but without an enemy. Some structures give you "mana" of a given kind - creativity, industry, research - and some structures require mana of a given kind.
Unfortunately, there's no game behind it. There's not even any implicit goals worth mentioning. While you can simply build and build and build, I don't find the algorithm to be very interesting. Basically, making "the perfect city" is too easy. There are NO tradeoffs.
In order to make an interesting city, you have to cripple yourself on purpose.
The easy example is power plants. While you can get cheap power plants that shoot smog into the air, it's only a little more expensive to get cleaner plants, to the point where there's almost no reason to ever get the nasty ones.
There's no sense of location in the city. Plunking down something that gives off creativity allows you to plunk down something that absorbs creativity anywhere else on the map. Once you start putting down subway stops (or bus stops, although they're a dominated strategy), your sims don't really care how far away anything is.
Also, as I mentioned, no trade offs. I can have a city that's got tons of all six elements. While there's not necessarily anything inherently exclusive about any of them, allowing me to have all six without struggle is just poor game design.
Look, I can understand a creative, religious, industrious community. I can understand a religious, industrious, controlled community. I can understand an industrious, controlled, scientific community. But a religious, industrious, creative, controlled, scientific community? Makes no sense.
Also, they don't let you drag a road to the edge of the map and connect to other cities. Which would have been way cooler in this game than in any of the games they actually let you.
That's the bad news.
The good news is that the game is heavily modable.
The bad news is that I don't think it's modable enough. I want to change the underlying game rules, but the modable files just control content. Some of the content can be modded to affect the way the game plays out - for example, I could make subways vastly less efficient to give a sense of place. But I want to make a system for conflicting mana types. Perhaps after the first three mana types, the last three cause unhappiness...
Looking at all this modability, it just breaks my heart that the core game mechanic is so uninspiring...
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Motion in Motion
Today I was busily getting lost when I stumbled across the coolest building around. I tried to find some big images I could label for you, but the biggest image on line is about two hundred pixels wide, which isn't terribly useful. However, looking at that Google map, you can see the building is unique.
When I saw it, I started picking out details I particularly liked. The stepped decks are perfect for jumping up or down, floor to floor. There's several square crevices ideally sized for chimney climbing. The staggered roof provides a variety of complex views, and there are different roofs, providing complex navigation. There are window walls you could climb a'la Crackdown, and some overhangs you might need a double jump or something for.
If the inside is anything like the outside, you could base an entire game around it pretty easily. In fact, it almost writes itself: you're an X-games star who tried a stunt that didn't work out, cracked your skull. You're spending time in the hospital when terrorists attack (although it turns out they're corporate shills after a particular patient rather than terrorists)! You start off kitten weak, but as your medication wears off, you recover your x-treme skills. You're trying to get the patients to safety by using your greater mobility to open a path for them. You can't kill the terrorists because they'll kill the hostages, but you can turn them against each other or lure them into "death by misadventure"...
Anyway, earlier this week I was watching my friends play Super Mario Galaxy which, if you've been living under a rock, is a 3D Super Mario game featuring an abundance of mind-boggling gravities and geometries. Slightly before that, I was playing Naruto, which seems to be largely about jumping around like mad until you get into a fight, at which point it's about getting your ass kicked. Slightly before that, I was playing Assassin's Creed, which is basically a slightly gimpy Prince of Persia running around a more freeform world. (It also has the WORST FIRST HOUR for a game that gets such reviews.)
Before that, I played Skate, Crackdown, and the newer, more Persian Lara Croft. In fact, almost half the games I've played recently are about leaping around. The other half are about controlling terrain.
Is it just me, or does everyone, everywhere, have motion on the brain? And not just any motion, but really deep, complex motion?
Maybe this is just a temporary glut, like that year with six "asteroid hits the planet!" movies. I hope not, though, because I think it's nifty keen. I think that once you start thinking in terms of motion, you can't ever be really satisfied by turn based combat again.
What do you think?
When I saw it, I started picking out details I particularly liked. The stepped decks are perfect for jumping up or down, floor to floor. There's several square crevices ideally sized for chimney climbing. The staggered roof provides a variety of complex views, and there are different roofs, providing complex navigation. There are window walls you could climb a'la Crackdown, and some overhangs you might need a double jump or something for.
If the inside is anything like the outside, you could base an entire game around it pretty easily. In fact, it almost writes itself: you're an X-games star who tried a stunt that didn't work out, cracked your skull. You're spending time in the hospital when terrorists attack (although it turns out they're corporate shills after a particular patient rather than terrorists)! You start off kitten weak, but as your medication wears off, you recover your x-treme skills. You're trying to get the patients to safety by using your greater mobility to open a path for them. You can't kill the terrorists because they'll kill the hostages, but you can turn them against each other or lure them into "death by misadventure"...
Anyway, earlier this week I was watching my friends play Super Mario Galaxy which, if you've been living under a rock, is a 3D Super Mario game featuring an abundance of mind-boggling gravities and geometries. Slightly before that, I was playing Naruto, which seems to be largely about jumping around like mad until you get into a fight, at which point it's about getting your ass kicked. Slightly before that, I was playing Assassin's Creed, which is basically a slightly gimpy Prince of Persia running around a more freeform world. (It also has the WORST FIRST HOUR for a game that gets such reviews.)
Before that, I played Skate, Crackdown, and the newer, more Persian Lara Croft. In fact, almost half the games I've played recently are about leaping around. The other half are about controlling terrain.
Is it just me, or does everyone, everywhere, have motion on the brain? And not just any motion, but really deep, complex motion?
Maybe this is just a temporary glut, like that year with six "asteroid hits the planet!" movies. I hope not, though, because I think it's nifty keen. I think that once you start thinking in terms of motion, you can't ever be really satisfied by turn based combat again.
What do you think?
The Steadily Growing Scandal of Jade Raymond
Because I like commenting on things I know nothing about.
Recently, I saw a comic I didn't understand about Assassin's Creed. I don't remember where I saw it, but it certainly wasn't SomethingAwful, because I don't read it. So I Googled around, didn't see anything particularly worthy of notice, and dropped the matter.
Game Girl Advance apparently found the same comic deeply disturbing. She's just a liiiiiittle bit closer to the concept, so that makes sense.
Now, let's lay out the field: there are, in fact, attractive women in the games industry, especially on the art side of things. They seem to make up somewhere around 1/20-1/30 the population, at least here in Boston. It's roughly the same as the other tech industries I've worked in.
All of these women may catch local flak from the people they work with. I don't have a clue. But they don't catch flak from the game industry or players at large. They are completely unknown, no more or less popular than anyone else doing their job.
The only one catching anyone's attention is Jade.
I have to put the responsibility squarely on Ubisoft. I think that if any of the companies I've seen out here tried the same tactic, their front-woman would also catch flak.
This kind of backlash happens whenever anyone is made a front-person to the geek crowd, regardless of their qualities and abilities... and regardless of their gender.
Just do a search for "Jared Fogle sucks". You'll find tons of sites bashing that poor Subway Schlob, often in far more personal ways. Anyone can be drawn in a pornographic situation. It takes a real determined ass to tell everyone you were "the porn king" in college. I'd take the former over the latter any day.
Search for anyone who was made a spokesperson in something big, you'll find site after site after site lined up to knock them down. Hell, there are sites dedicated to slaughtering the Mythbuster's reputation, and they never even claimed to have one.
I'm not acting as an apologist. Or at least, I'm not trying to. I'm saying that if you toss someone to the sharks, there will be blood. It is always messy and ugly. This is not extraordinary, it's pretty run of the mill. It's a bit more graphic than usual, but a bit less personal than usual.
So, yeah, I'm sorry Jade got to meet the sharks face to... face. Being a spokesperson exposes you to the cesspool at the bottom of the barrel, and it always gets messy.
So think carefully if your company wants to make you The Face.
Recently, I saw a comic I didn't understand about Assassin's Creed. I don't remember where I saw it, but it certainly wasn't SomethingAwful, because I don't read it. So I Googled around, didn't see anything particularly worthy of notice, and dropped the matter.
Game Girl Advance apparently found the same comic deeply disturbing. She's just a liiiiiittle bit closer to the concept, so that makes sense.
Now, let's lay out the field: there are, in fact, attractive women in the games industry, especially on the art side of things. They seem to make up somewhere around 1/20-1/30 the population, at least here in Boston. It's roughly the same as the other tech industries I've worked in.
All of these women may catch local flak from the people they work with. I don't have a clue. But they don't catch flak from the game industry or players at large. They are completely unknown, no more or less popular than anyone else doing their job.
The only one catching anyone's attention is Jade.
I have to put the responsibility squarely on Ubisoft. I think that if any of the companies I've seen out here tried the same tactic, their front-woman would also catch flak.
This kind of backlash happens whenever anyone is made a front-person to the geek crowd, regardless of their qualities and abilities... and regardless of their gender.
Just do a search for "Jared Fogle sucks". You'll find tons of sites bashing that poor Subway Schlob, often in far more personal ways. Anyone can be drawn in a pornographic situation. It takes a real determined ass to tell everyone you were "the porn king" in college. I'd take the former over the latter any day.
Search for anyone who was made a spokesperson in something big, you'll find site after site after site lined up to knock them down. Hell, there are sites dedicated to slaughtering the Mythbuster's reputation, and they never even claimed to have one.
I'm not acting as an apologist. Or at least, I'm not trying to. I'm saying that if you toss someone to the sharks, there will be blood. It is always messy and ugly. This is not extraordinary, it's pretty run of the mill. It's a bit more graphic than usual, but a bit less personal than usual.
So, yeah, I'm sorry Jade got to meet the sharks face to... face. Being a spokesperson exposes you to the cesspool at the bottom of the barrel, and it always gets messy.
So think carefully if your company wants to make you The Face.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Reavers
If you haven't seen Serenity, don't read this.
The weird thing is that, when I learned what reavers were, I felt disappointed.
I couldn't figure out why. I couldn't see anything even vaguely disappointing. Ever since the movie first came out, it's been nagging at me.
I figured it out today, just a few minutes ago.
I come at the plot from the perspective of a game designer. To me, the big reveal should tie in new elements while tying up the old, so that you always have more room to explore.
Reavers are because of a flubbed Alliance science project? Okay, that's cool... but it doesn't bring any new elements in.
What kind of new play does that introduce? You hate the Alliance... even more? People you don't have anything to do with are... vaguely more suspicious of the Alliance?
From a plot standpoint, the reavers are great. But if you're going to use it as a springboard to new and more interesting play, it needs to introduce new and more interesting possibilities. We already know the Alliance is evil, and knowing more about the Alliance being evil doesn't give us any new ability to do anything.
It can be argued that publicly shaming the Alliance opens up new alliances and so forth. But new alliances aren't new play, not compared to something dramatically new. It doesn't open up a world of new possibilities (although, I guess it does open up a world...)
Anyway, to my mind, this shows a fundamental difference between Hollywood and games. A concrete example that doesn't relate to writing dialog trees.
What do you think?
The weird thing is that, when I learned what reavers were, I felt disappointed.
I couldn't figure out why. I couldn't see anything even vaguely disappointing. Ever since the movie first came out, it's been nagging at me.
I figured it out today, just a few minutes ago.
I come at the plot from the perspective of a game designer. To me, the big reveal should tie in new elements while tying up the old, so that you always have more room to explore.
Reavers are because of a flubbed Alliance science project? Okay, that's cool... but it doesn't bring any new elements in.
What kind of new play does that introduce? You hate the Alliance... even more? People you don't have anything to do with are... vaguely more suspicious of the Alliance?
From a plot standpoint, the reavers are great. But if you're going to use it as a springboard to new and more interesting play, it needs to introduce new and more interesting possibilities. We already know the Alliance is evil, and knowing more about the Alliance being evil doesn't give us any new ability to do anything.
It can be argued that publicly shaming the Alliance opens up new alliances and so forth. But new alliances aren't new play, not compared to something dramatically new. It doesn't open up a world of new possibilities (although, I guess it does open up a world...)
Anyway, to my mind, this shows a fundamental difference between Hollywood and games. A concrete example that doesn't relate to writing dialog trees.
What do you think?
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