TKretts3 said:
vercardo said:
When it comes to immersion or projection yourself into a character, I think the following:
We don't identify ourselves with the character in the game on the basis of the character, we do so on the basis of the symbolic action that is key to game mechanics. If you press a button on the controller and the character in the game swings his sword, YOU then get the feeling you swung the sword. Through this process a bond is constructed between player and character, because of the symbolic relation between the real-life action of the player and the in-game action of the character.
Also, there is a difference between games and movies when it comes to characters:
Movies have engaging characters to immerse the viewers in the movie. Games have actions to immerse the player in the game.
As people said above, when you play with a fully developed character like Jason Brody, there are moments when that character takes over and takes you out of the game, because then the game simply becomes a movie.
The reason Portal and Minecraft are such immersive games is because they are based solely on the actions of the player and the character. Actions and choices are what constitutes a personality.
The reason why silent protagonists in games feel like empty husks is because they are. Because they are meant to be filled by the player. Nothing a game does to create a wonderful, complex protagonist can trump the feeling of you yourself being the protagonist, as is the case in Minecraft.
Games with great stories and complex characters will always have the problem that there is a certain preprogrammed path for the character to follow. A good game makes the player forget that and gives him the feeling that what happens in the game is really because of him. Portal does this perfectly. It has a great story, and never, ever de you feel limited by the game itself (e.i. invisible walls or being stuck in the geometry). The more complex a game is, the more difficult it becomes to achieve this feeling for the player. Movies can permit themselves to have complex characters and intricate stories because the viewer doens't expect to be able to change anything.
To get back to the point: I feel like you're thinking more about games in terms of them being interactive movies instead of games. Movies are about the characters and the story. Games, essentialy, are about you, the player. A movie doesn't necessarily need an audience to exist, but a game needs a player. Both have their ways of immersing you into a world, but for games I feel, silent protagonists work better for that.
Actually, if I press a button to make a character swing a sword, I get the feeling that I've just pressed a button on a controller. A game can 'immerse' me into it's world all it likes, but if the story and characters are bland then it's going to be a bad experience. Some of the mechanics may be fun, I'll admit fully that I liked playing around with the portals, but after I finished Portal I had no desire whatsoever to replay it. It was fun to play around in, but it felt more like a funny tour than anything else.
For the record I'm not saying that all game characters feel like empty husks, some of them are done well. A great example of this is Lee Everett from Tell Tale's The Walking Dead. That game, as a whole, is a great example of a good mix of player choice and fleshed out characters. It's a game which featured the player character being able to make certain choices, but never sacrificed the integrity of the character. The character had personality other than the ones the player gave him, had a story besides the one the player imagined for him.
You brought up Minecraft, though I can't imagine why. Less of a game, Minecraft qualifies more as a building/exploration simulator. Playing survival I find myself getting bored with the first half hour and go back to creative in order to build. To put it in perspective, Left 4 Dead is more fleshed out than Minecraft, though they are two very different games, yes.
Games, like any other medium, need that 'preprogrammed path', or as it's actually called, a character arc. Movies are not, at their core, about character and story. That's what every story-telling medium is about; film, book, video game. What sets these medium apart is how they achieve this in an engaging fashion. Books have detailed and creative descriptions that let your imagination put the pieces together. Film has its amazing and often wild visuals combined with actual actors (Live-action, anyway). Games have interactivity. To say that games need characters who are blank slated in other to succeed is akin to saying that offer more than minimal (or no) descriptions of it's world's and character's appearance are failures because they don't let the readers imagination do everything.
Interactivity is only a tool to tell the story and advance the characters, it can't replace them.
You're operating under the premise that a game is a story-telling medium and that a story is essential to a game.
The formal properties of a game (all games, not just video games) are the following (cfr J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens):
- It is a free, conscious act.
- It is not real, it's pretending.
- It stands outside ordinary life.
- It has the potential to completely enthrall the player.
- There is no material or functional gain attached to it.
- It is limited in time and space.
- It happens in an orderly fashion, according to certain rules.
- It creates a bond of community and that community profiles itself as different from the ordinary world.
In other words, a game takes place in a closed, fictional (virtual) dimension. However, it's not easy for a game to enthrall or immerse the player into its own world. A game requires the player to cross a barrier between reality and fiction. For video games this is even harder, because that barrier is amplified by the distinction between the actual and virtual world. The interactivity, the bond between player and avatar is a way for the player to access that virtual/fictional dimension. And as long as we can't plug ourselves into the matrix, we need to achieve this bond by means of controller or mouse and keyboard.
A story, a character arc, background information all serve to make the fictional world more internally realistic and coherent. Which in turn makes it easier for the player to accept that fiction and enjoy playing around in it. Normal games, like freeze tag for instance, don't need background info because the transition from factual reality to fictional game is very easy to make. Video games need all the help they can get, because not everyone makes that transition from reality to fiction easily. So the fiction needs to be as inviting as possible. An internally realistic and coherent world is the best way to achieve this and a good, coherent, realistic story with a character arc is a part of that.
So, story and character development certainly enhance and improve a gaming experience, but that's not the same as being necessary, or even the core, for a gaming experience. I'll admit freeze tag would be more interesting with a little background on how it came to be that a person is able to freeze people by simply touching them, but it won't make any essential difference to the game itself.
Saying that interactivity is a tool that helps the story along is like saying the little vegetable garnish you get when you order steak improves the overall quality of the meal and helps you to finish the steak. And that's true, but you're not ordering steak, you're ordering salad. That garnish is not a garnish, it's the essence of the meal. Because that's what a game is, it's a salad. Interactivity is not a tool to tell the story and advance the characters. Telling a story and advancing the characters both serve the interactivity, and activity that is gaming.
However, there is one extra thing a game needs to do: to make the player forget it's a game. Because a game is always pretending, it's never real, it's always ?just a game?. A game needs to make you forget that, because if you remember it's ?just a game? nothing that happened in it matters anymore and your engagement to it and immersion lie in ruins before you.
So, blank slated or characterized protagonist doesn't matter, because as long as a game manages to sustain the fiction that the game itself is, well, not a fiction, then we can say the game succeeded.
And this is where it all gets tricky. Because people are put off by different things and are able to overlook or forget others.
This is what a speaking protagonist does: the moments he speaks he reminds you that you are not him, that you are a player. Merely a player, and therefore just playing a game, which in turn ruins the gaming experience.
However, a gaming experience can manifest itself as a story. Then a person can complain about the protagonist being blank-slated, which doesn't make sense in the story or doesn't seem like a realistic, coherent character, or doesn't feel right to play with. A game isn't a story-telling medium, but if there is a story, it needs to make sense, be realistic and coherent. If a silent protagonist ruins that coherence, it ruins the gaming experience, because the virtual world loses its internal realism and is revealed as a fiction.
Silent and blank-slated protagonists depend on the symbolic relation between the actions of the player and avatar to engage the player. Characterized protagonists use character to engage the player.
In the not-so-exciting-conclusion: if a characterized protagonist serves to bolster the internal realism and coherence of the game, a characterized protagonist is needed. Because then it will be easier for the player to overlook the inconsistencies within the game itself. The same goes for silent or blank-slated protagonists.
It could be argued that silent protagonists are superior because they are more in touch with the fundamental mechanic of a game (action; because a game is, above all, an act, a deed, something you do.) and characterized protagonists rely on a structurally non-essential element in the game (story, which enhances a game, but isn't essential to it). But when it comes to immersion and engagement, there isn?t really a difference or better choice. It all depends on how the game plans on engaging the player.
