277: The Devil Inside

[beema]

Excellent read!

 

[Brainstrain]

I agree that your initial argument is flawed. The Devil was originally an angel, struck down and given a lesser role. Gamers aren't designers and certainly don't work for all the studios whose games they play.

Also, your "Why can't I be a horseback circus rider?" isn't an epistolary question (and made me stop reading). Games are interactive stories, not microcosms of Earth and divine politics. You've spread yourself pretty thin.

 

[jimduckie]

gee i only play nice if i have too, fallout 3 drove me quackers , being nice just to get all achievements in the game ,but in gta 4 ... idgas , i'll be so bad even the devil would dry heave ... because doing so in the real world would make fellow gamers mad and get me very dead

 

[Nevyrmoore]

How many of you passed the time during Half-Life 2's locked-room exposition scenes by smacking Eli, Alyx or random pieces of scenery/NPCs about the face with a crowbar, shooting mugs around the room or just bouncing up and down on top of a nearby surface like a gibbon?

Am I the only one who didn't do this? Seriously, whenever these scenes popped up, I either listened patiently, or, under certain circumstances, took a closer look at something interesting, like the mini-teleporter in Dr. Kliner's lab.

 

[olicon]

Interestingly enough, a recent piece by Eskil Steenberg (creator of Love) compares players who blindly follow scripted events to creationists. "If something happens they think it is because of a decision taken by a designer rather than as an effect of the logic of the universe," Steenberg writes. It's up to us, as active players, to take back the power to impact game worlds in unusual ways. We have to struggle out of the straightjacket that we would be placed inside by certain designers. Let's be the Devil we know we can be.

That's a very flaw idea..
If the developers are good enough, the events would draw you into the universe. It will play to the universe's rules, and you will think that it happens precisely because it is an effect of something that happened within the universe.

 

[Weed Parade]

Wow, I didn't know the escapist was going to start mirroring geocities pages.