Jimquisition: Lugoscababib Discobiscuits

[Bruce]

Actually I would say the real problem with ludonarrative dissonance is it misidentifies a problem.

Bioshock Infinite's violence isn't jarring because it breaks theme, it is jarring because it is used as padding to make the game longer.

And this is a very common issue with a lot of games. When people talk about ludonarrative dissonance, I think what they are actually getting at is they are noticing the filler, and getting bored of it.

 

[nuttshell]

Smudboy explains what's wrong with the story:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiWzMOLohpMm7SHPvti22PeAUfS13oEfp

Wow...this is everything and much more, why I thought B:I's story wasn't good.

 

[Branindain]

If you cut the intros and outros out of these videos I might be able to stand this guy. Every time I hear them I want to punch something.

Oh my Jim, how boring that would be! I hope you realise he's not actually like that.

 

[Deathfish15]

Yeah, no, that crap can happen in real life. In fact, that's not a disconnect at all. The only kind of disconnects this Luto thing would apply to is a dissonence between motivations and actions or atmosphere and actions. You know... a character who, in every cutscene, talks about how they hate most everyone alive but then the game rewards you for helping strangers. Or a game that's trying to set up an atmosphere of oppressive horror and then gives you an AK 47 with 360 rounds.

But a situation where some blowhard takes credit for the work you're doing? Not this Psuedo-Science Lutoism.

So is it a change of heart/mind based on the situation risen, or is it persistent throughout (having never played the new Tomb Raider)? I ask because take for example Bionic Domain. In it, the main character plays a by-the-books soldier boy who despises robots throughout the entire story. But, at the end he pulls a 180 and helps a robot escape while simultaneously killing his General in a disobedience of orders given.

I guess I just don't like the word in general because A) it's hard to pronounce and B) it's hard to lock onto specific games that may be grey areas ...oh, and C) name-calling is bad, mkay?

 

[LAGG]

Spoilers!

The problem with Infinite is that it's not a Bioshock game up until the "Winter Gap". That part should really have been shifted a LOT towards the beginning of the game. Not only would it have solved the atmosphere and gameplay, but also cause the whole plot to fit together better and made the relationship with Elizabeth a lot deeper. Of course it would be on thin line of falling into Hero's Journey and Damsel In Distress cliches, but really Columbia only really Bioshocks-up after that point, the place, the mood, Booker's goal, everything is better than in the entire game, yet it's too short. The game took too long to become Bioshock and it lasted too little.

That and also turn the enemy count down a lot, get rid of the stupid arenas and bring actual stealth mechanics from Bioshock back.

 

[Vegosiux]

what about people who play the game for the violence?

Well, they obviously don't complain about said violence then, and likely don't care a bit about the story either...

 

[Pebkio]

Yeah, no, that crap can happen in real life. In fact, that's not a disconnect at all. The only kind of disconnects this Luto thing would apply to is a dissonence between motivations and actions or atmosphere and actions. You know... a character who, in every cutscene, talks about how they hate most everyone alive but then the game rewards you for helping strangers. Or a game that's trying to set up an atmosphere of oppressive horror and then gives you an AK 47 with 360 rounds.

But a situation where some blowhard takes credit for the work you're doing? Not this Psuedo-Science Lutoism.

So is it a change of heart/mind based on the situation risen, or is it persistent throughout (having never played the new Tomb Raider)? I ask because take for example Bionic Domain. In it, the main character plays a by-the-books soldier boy who despises robots throughout the entire story. But, at the end he pulls a 180 and helps a robot escape while simultaneously killing his General in a disobedience of orders given.

I guess I just don't like the word in general because A) it's hard to pronounce and B) it's hard to lock onto specific games that may be grey areas ...oh, and C) name-calling is bad, mkay?

The dissonance for this specific Ludobad thing has to specifically cover both gameplay and narrative. So, in this situation, of the guy pulling a 180, Ludonarrative Dissonance would only be present if the game's mechanic was somehow built around... actually, no, because they could then just change the mechanics in time with the character's motivation.

I grant you it's a very poor way to tell a story, but it's not Ludonarrative Dissonence.

You have to stop thinking of videogames as -just- a medium for a storytelling. Games are both, and equally, the mechanics that drive the interactivity and the narrative that drives the need to play. Just having stupid changes in one of those isn't enough to classify something as "Ludonarrative Dissonance". All there has to be is a difference between the story or setting that the writers are trying to say and the actual story that the mechanics are telling.

Here's a strong, very straightforward, example:
Mindjack has the main character not knowing what Mindhacking is even though you've been doing it in gameplay all game long.

 

[cefm]

Actual example would be any Superman game in which you don't just press A to win.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

If anything, Lugonerfinive Discoballs exists or is perceived by some gamers because we haven't been able to think of a deeper and more altering gameplay mechanic than killing people. When you're ending lives, you're an agent of something. You're effectively altering the initially present game plan. You might be a noble revolutionary or a grinning sociopath, you might be a freaking murder robot or a mounted gun turret - but you're altering the initially presented setting in a pretty deep fashion.

Considering, killing indiscriminately brings a sense of progress. "I've cleaned out this area so I've made some headway!" is what a lot of single-player FPS players tend to think. Dissonance shows up when the devs get in their heads to discuss issues that go deeper than strictly toppling a regime or vanquishing some sort of foe. Considering that mechanic, you can even expand to strategy games or 4X types. Brokering an alliance with another world power in Civ V basically gets them off of your potential shit list. They've been effectively "dealt with" - they're just not dead or destroyed.

As soon as some complexity gets thrown into character motivations, just flat-out killing adversaries starts to lose its effectiveness. The trash can-rifling in Infinite was dissonant; the violence itself wasn't. Booker was already established as a violent man with a troubled past - what he wasn't established as was a vagrant or a garbage-rifling type.

A non-dissonant game would need to have some sort of almost impossible ludonarrative cohesion.

Or, well, it is entirely possible - but then we're shifting debates and considering what is and isn't a game. Gone Home didn't need elaborate jumping puzzles, and Dear Esther would have been particularly weird if an utterly useless gun and ammo counter had been part of the experience. The main problem is that AAA games with high-concept narratives need to *sell*, and you can't just create a streamlined structure for something that cost millions to produce *and* simultaneously expect to make a profit.

System Shock 2 wasn't dissonant because of its basic theme, it being Survival Horror.
BioShock wasn't dissonant because its basic theme is also Survival Horror - even if the challenge has been considerably lessened.

Infinite's dissonant elements are minor and don't ultimately detract from the experience.

Jim's right, really. The Tomb Raider reboot put Lara through a pretty severe identity crisis. Is she a traumatized young woman who overcomes her fear with some effort, or a one-woman commando?

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

I hate to say it, but I think Jim somewhat missed the mark here with regards to Bioshock Infinite. From what I could gather, the issue wasn't that the game was violent so much that it was gratuitously gory. That it was putting on a grand guignol spectacle for the player to cathartically revel in that was completely at odds with the rest of the game's aesthetic experience. Booker could have been violent, even brutal, WITHOUT the painstakingly detailed sequences of him clawing someone's head off in a fountain of blood. It felt awkward and out of place, rather than a deliberate contrast. After all, if it was SUPPOSED to intentionally create a moral dissonance that made the players uneasy, the very fact that people identified and highlighted it as a flaw in the game would imply that it FAILED to do so properly.

I first recall this issue, albeit without the overly elaborate techno-jargon description, being raised by Yahtzee in his review of FFXIII with regards to the character of Hope, a whiny, crybaby, sadsack loser who nevertheless picks up his weapon and hurls himself into combat with relish the moment a random battle starts.

 

[rbstewart7263]

Lugoscababib Discobiscuits

This week, Jim loads his gun and shoots holes in the argument that certain games suffer from ludonarrative dissonance, just because they're violent.

Watch Video

SOmething some of you including jim might find interesting. I didnt experience this ludonarrative dissonance because at first I couldnt hit shit within the game. As lara I always held the bow too long and would never settle for the weaker half shots often getting myself shot in the process. Id miss so many of those head shots it wasnt funny. it wasnt until later that I had gotten to be a beast with a bow. It was later when Id finally become such a badass that all my past blunders and near deaths(and deaths when you count the retry's) were finally being paid off. So due to my fumbling with the aiming system I experienced probably less dissonance than most.

 

[Havoc Himself]

I actually do have a problem with Bioshock Infinite and the violence, however I don't have a problem with the violence being in the game. I just find it odd that I am playing a character in a story that is taking itself very seriously and trying to draw me in, and trying to make the characters in the story as real as possible, but I don't feel like I am fighting as one of the characters, I feel like I am playing as a psychopath who had a love child with the most efficient soldier ever conceived. My issue is just that the combat doesn't feel like it fits, it feels like you should almost be having to sneak through Columbia, not taking on the armies of the whole city single-handedly. I still love the game and its story, that was just something that bugged me a bit.

 

[PoloniumFist]

That suit jacket is awesome.

 

[Hellfireboy]

I want direct examples!! For all the alleged criticism of Bioshock and The Last of Us.

But really what difference would it make? Ludonarrative dissonance is a big word that an academic came up with because academics like big words to say simple things. The big word for that is sesquipedalian loquaciousness. It's often a means of intimidating those who would argue against your point by making yourself seem really smart by using really big words like saying, "you have fallen into sesquipedalian loquaciousness," rather than saying, "you talk too much using words that are a foot and a half long," which is literally what that term means when you drop the pretense and just use words that everyone can understand.

http://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludonarrative-d.html This is the article where the term came from but really it's nothing more than an exercise in verbal masturbation and comes from the fact that games really haven't become comfortable with their own medium yet. This will happen over time as it did with film. If you look at early films from the twenties and thirties when the medium was still young you will notice that the shots are blocked with patterns appropriate for the stage. It was much later with films like Citizen Kane where they started doing things in a way that can only be done with film. Games are currently pursuing film paradigms the way that film pursued the stage paradigm. It takes a few generations before that changes since what you really need, short of a visionary genius which are few and far between, is a generation that grew up with the medium and therefore is starting from a different place.

I don't like terms like this though on the general principle that I believe any argument must be understood and the use of these terms tends muddle comprehension of the idea. An argument is not about winning or losing but about the advancement of ideas. So, as George Orwell said in his rules for writers, "Never use a long word where a short one will do."

 

[Strazdas]

So bioshock infinite didint have chupacabra bisquits and Tomb Rider did. this... what... um... i fail at making an arguments against your point. Sir this is very embarrasing, i always find arguments agaisnt....

well done JIm, another great episode, you deserve the jacket, wear it with pride.

 

[DTWolfwood]

I honestly cocked an eye brow when Bioshock Infinite and Last of Us were brought up on this. Did the people who played the games understood the setting they were in? They apparently did not if the outcry was "ludonarrative dissonance." I still cringe when people throw that phrase around.

While i cant speak about Last Of Us (i havnt played it) the issue i see brought up when refering to bioshock infinite is not that its violent but that when Elisabeth sees you murder she freaks out at you (very understandable) but less than 5 minutes later shes throwing ammo at you and such and enabling you to kill, thats where the issue comes in.

What is wrong with someone caught in a life or death situation to help out by giving you the means to defend you and yours? It would be odd to for her not to help when they are being shot at is it not?

She flinches the first time as she has never seen someone killed. But when people start shooting back i would assume you would get over that quite quickly. Soldiering depends on it.

 

[TheUnbeholden]

No I think you completely missed the point here Bob. This is not a dissonance issue here, instead there is wasted potential.

Bioshock Infinite has a incredible idea... but the gameplay does nothing to support it. Being able to rip holes into other realities, they took zero opportunities to use this idea to enhance the "same old" gameplay.. that same old bioshock formula, which is just a slightly watered down SS2 formula.

We saw in a early videos that Elizabeth could bring in trains or floods from another world, but they ended up throwing away all of that and bringing in... a slight hole into a another world where you see a static picture and hear somebody talking.
Yeah... using holes into other dimensions as a fucking audio tape. Thats the best they could give us??

 

[maninahat]

I want direct examples!! For all the alleged criticism of Bioshock and The Last of Us.

I'm the kind of person who might throw the term Ludonarrative Dissonance at Bioshock. Though that's more because the narrative is built around Booker feeling very guilty about what he did to native Americans, yet the gameplay involves you (and the protagonist) not giving a shit about burning the flesh off of cops and jamming their faces into spinning gears. That is an undeniable gameplay/story contradiction.

I also had a problem with the violence, though not for the reason of Ludonarrative dissonance. I disliked the violence because it was so gratuitous, OTT and prominent that it felt like it was undermining what was supposed to be a smarter, more sober story. It's not that there was violence at all, so much that the violence is leaps and bounds beyond what was necessary to be entertaining. It's like if in The Godfather, instead of shooting two gangsters in a cafe, Michael Corleone gradually fed them into a sausage machine, and we got to see every step of the mincing process, and it took up 90% of the movie. It just feels a tad tiresome and childish - that the game would have been better if it just showed a basic bit of restraint, and that perhaps an over the top FPS isn't the most conducive way to portray a story that wants to sell itself on blending introspective, human stories with outlandish and cartoony people and locales.

SO that's my fancy pants argument in a nutshell. The gameplay and story elements are contradictory, but more importantly, they aren't the most complementary ingredients in creating a cool, fun and interesting game.

 

[maninahat]

That's bizarre. Sometimes excessive violence really helps a story. I like Reservoir Dogs but the movie would IMO be unquestionably worse without a certain very violent scene in it. Why?

Spoiler: minor Reservoir Dogs Spoilers

The scene is Mr. Blonde cutting off the cops ear. Before that scene we hear about how during the heist Mr. Blonde started shooting civilians when they triggered the alarm, and he's unsympathetic about it. He gets called a psychopath. Problem with this is that so far it's all been told and not shown. Mr. Blonde talking to the cop, saying he'll torture him for the fun of it, and then slicing him up a bit and cutting off his ear to the tune of Stuck in the Middle in With You, that is a great example of show and not tell. That really characterizes the man. Sure you could've shown the robbery but I think the film benefits by not showing it, and only showing us the preparation and the aftermath. So yeah anyone who think excessive violence can take away from the story has a really shallow outlook on things.

I think there is a difference between your Reservoir Dogs example, and most violent videogames. In a movie like that, though the violence is extreme, it is also short and infrequent. There is probably only about ten minutes worth of violent action in the entire run time of RD. In a game though, violence is constant, to the point where it gets kind of numbing after a while. There must be about five hours worth of gunfire, gouging and screaming in Bioshock Infinite. By keeping it sparing and severe, movies can maximize the emotional effect. By over-saturating the audience with violence, a game reduces the effectiveness of what is supposed to be the more shockingly violent scenes.

 

[chikusho]

I'm the kind of person who might throw the term Ludonarrative Dissonance at Bioshock. Though that's more because the narrative is built around Booker feeling very guilty about what he did to native Americans, yet the gameplay involves you (and the protagonist) not giving a shit about burning the flesh off of cops and jamming their faces into spinning gears. That is an undeniable gameplay/story contradiction.

What I got was that Booker had been extremely guilty over what he did during the war, only he's done and gone through so much shit afterwards that he's grown actively apathetic towards it.
More below:

Spoiler

Booker exists as the polar opposite of Comstock. While Comstock praises his atrocities as right and pure, Booker has just accepted that he's a violent, irredeemable monster. He throws violence at everything because that's the only thing he knows how to do. So, even when put into a position where he can "do the right thing" - he does it by doing murder and violence so that someone else [Elizabeth]doesn't have to be corrupted by it.