This is not a post specifically about the Pick Up/Seduction community, however it is very applicable to it, but it is applicable in pretty much every other area of study. Over my life I have come to notice that there are three different types of teacher you will encounter, and it can be very useful to know the differences in that it can be very resource saving in terms of time, money, effort, etc. The three types as I see them are as follows:
The first type are those that should teach, in the traditional sense, they are people who have the knowledge and experience of a given subject, and ability to relay this knowledge and experience to a student effectively so as to get the best out of the student. This is the type of teacher who has earned the right to exchange teaching for money or another commodity, although they may choose not to do so, that is their perogative. I have been fortunate enough to come across a few of these people in my life, both in pick up and in other areas, but they are not all that numerous.
The second type are those that get too far ahead of themselves or do not have the best interest of a student at heart, they are the 'teachers' who like to think they are capable and worthy of teaching, but in fact they lack the necessary knowledge and experience, or the ability to replay those things to a student effectively. they may also be those people who are more interested in the potential personal gains of teaching for themselves such as finanacial gain or another commodity, rather than being interested in the benefit of the student. This is by far and away the the most common type of teacher I have encountered.
The last type of teacher are those individuals who are aware that they are still a student themselves, but understand that by teaching what they have learned thus far they will reinforce and improve their own knowledge base and skills, as well as developing it into new areas through observation and having their ideas challenged as they develop. These are the type of teacher that do not expect anything in return for their tutorage because by teaching they are being rewarded, they do it either because they genuinly feel they can help their student, or because they are accutely aware that in fact by teaching, they are teaching themselves and also being taught by their student.
Looking at any teacher I have ever encountered I can place them into one of these three categories fairly easily, but I also believe that it is entirely possible for someone to move fromone category to another, and in fact it might even be necessary for some people to experience being one of these types in order to become another type, for whatever theor reason for wanting to change, whether that reason is a conscious descision or not.
This template can be useful on two fronts, firstly if you are a teacher of anything, which one of these categories do you think you fall into? Now try to imagine which one you appear to fal into from the perspective of a student or prospective student, is that the best tyoe of teacher for you to be and if not which one is and what can you do to become that type?
If you are a student looking for a teacher, make sure you know what kind of teacher you are looking for. Try to bear in mind that what people offer you and what they are cabable of delivering can be very different things, try not to fall victim to the second type of teacher if you can help it.
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Moral Justification
Ok, so me and my wing were out in a club we hadn't hit before, not doing an awful lot and we'd been hitting the piss again (getting drunk for anyone who doesn't know that expression), but by a stroke of luck a girl stood on my foot on the dance floor, resulting in immediate reaction from me, kino, negs, etc.
She was a mature fresher, meaning she was 25 and just started her first year of uni. There is the often quoted ethical code of a PUA which is 'leave her better than you found her', this isn't really something that I've thought about much while gaming, probably because I haven't really needed to... however that was not the case here. After a while of leading her round, building comfort, push pull, yada yada yada I found out she had a boy friend back in her home town, that on it's own did not concern me, I've come to realise that 'boyfriend' is a pretty ambiguous term used by girls and if they are showing signs of attraction then it isn't all that serious. About 1.30AM my wing decided to bail and I stayed in set, I could see the IOI's plain as day from this girl and I felt it in my bones that this was on. Yet it turned out to be anything other than easy, I could see she was into me, but she was playing really hard to get, moving around the dance floor, flirting with other dudes, which of course meant I had to act totally indifferent towards this behaviour and do my own bit of flirting with other girls, although my effort was more subtle, which in turn seems to have come off as being higher value than her need to get attention and possible try to make me feel jealous. This went on for a while and every time I got close for the k-close she pulled away, and it got past the point where it was her playing hard to get, I could see something was really stopping her from going for it even though everything else in her behaviour and attitude was screaming for it.
I forced myself to stay in set longer than I normally would, I normally run a set in about 30 mins to an hour and half, any longer than that without a close is pretty much wasted time, to be honest 30 mins is normally my limit but go up to an hour and half in special cases. But there was something shouting in my head that let me know I could do it, I believed in my abilities like I never had before, I had this in the bag,, even though I wasn't sure how to progress to get it I felt the power to do it. We shifted venue, picked up 4 of the weirdest dudes I've ever met on the fly outside a closing pub and brought them with us, one of them made a play to steal my hard work, but I just back turned him when we were in the next bar, did some very obvious kino escalation in plain sight and he buggered off of his own accord. Even here I still couldn't get the k-close, I could feel her resisting it but I had my hands rubbing up and down the inside of her leg and seriously solid eye contact that just wouldn't break, so there was no way she didn't want something to happen. We went down to the dance floor and similar shit happened to before, we both started approaching and dancing with other people, but again hers was clearly aimed at getting my attention, and my behaviour appeared to be aimed more at the other girls int he club, even though it actually wasn't. I'd now been in set for 4 hours, all my canned material had been used up ages ago and I was free styling hard. We end up dancing with each other again in a very dark area of the club, hands end up running all over each other, scratching, grasping, all the things that people do when they madly make out with someone, but only there was no actual making out! The tension was now extreme and I knew full well she was rubbing herself against my hard on, I can see in my peripheral vision that all the people around us are watching... finally it happens... then she pulls away and her eye's have a look in them not to dissimilar from Luke Skywalker finding out Darth Vader is his father. There is a clear look of panic on her face, she shouts 'FUCK' and sprints up the stairs and out of the club. I have just enough time to see the look on my audiences faces, as if they had just seen a live bit of soap opera in action. I debate my options, I could call it a night... but I go after her, obviously something has gone on that I'm unaware of, I could have really screwed something up here and at the very least I should find out if I made a mistake in my game so I can avoid it in future.
I leave the club and see her down the road, I chase after her and when I catch up I can see she's drying her eyes and is now trying to stop herself from crying. We sit on a nearby step and I get it out of her; she is 'head over heels' for her boyfriend, they've been together for 5 months, and she's never cheated before... at first I think, ok, so she's not cheated on him before, these things happen right?... Nope, these things don't happen with her, she's so messed up about this because she has made it to the age of 25 without ever cheating on ANYONE before! With that plot point reveal the whole night is suddenly given a new perspective, I understand it all, and more to the point I now realise that I'm not just wielding a power, I'm wielding a weapon, I had no idea I could cause so much effect on people's emotions or lives, up until now I have never seen any effects of running game that have lasted longer than a night, a few weeks at most, but this is something that is going to have lasting effect on some level.
However, things did not stop there, sometimes people just need to get something out, and now we're hooking into each other again, then she's swearing at herself again for being a 'bitch', then we're necking again. this cycle went on for 30 mins while we walked back to her place. But now I'm starting to think that any further escalation will be really screwing with her unnecessarily, I was feeling guilt about what had happened, but was the guilt actually mine or did it transfer to me from her due to the level of rapport I had reached over the course of the night, the connection between us had become really strong and the gate swings both ways when you build a rapport if you're not filtering things out. Or was it social conditioning from society that was making me feel guilt? Most media portrays this type of situation as something people should feel guilt for, as do most people, maybe it isn't something I should feel any guilt about, or maybe that is just wishful thinking. Was all of this worth doing to further my own skills? I certainly pushed my skills and abilities during this pick up, is this progress I wouldn't have otherwise made had I not been in this situation? Does that justify it? Is that just an attempt to justify it and appease my guilty conscience?
The feelings of guilt subsided fast after the event so I'm inclined to think it was more her than me and I just picked up on her emotions empathically. But even if I don't feel any guilt now, should I feel bad? Have I become too desensitised about this kind of thing or is it a necessary evolution of my emotional maturity? And besides, she is a fresher, so surely this behaviour is natural and she's just not used to it yet?
Going back to the events; outside her place the mood has become strange, guilt is being felt by both, but we're still kissing, however now feeling sober and questioning the credo of 'leave her better than you found her' I am holding myself back from attempting to escalate any further for an f-close, we agree not to have any contact with each other as she is freaking out about seeing her boyfriend the following week (admittedly this was a total balls up on my part I now realise so let's not even talk about this, no discussion is needed), and I leave to walk back to my wing's flat, praying he'll wake up to let me in or I'm sleeping in my car (he woke up thank god!).
Should I have pushed for the f-close or was I right in thinking that was taking it too far? After all I proved my point which was that I knew I could pull her despite her resistance, f-closing would have been unnecessary and purely for cheap thrills and would have caused more damage right? Right?... No, I'm not convinced either.
What is concerning is that this was just one of a string of pulls I had recently from girls with 'boyfriends', and I think that factor in itself is something that makes me want the pull, I've always had a tendency to do thing's that make me feel 'naughty', so is this a new trend for me? The feeling of 'being naughty' as a motivating factor, a feeling that I get from gaming girls in relationships. I hope not, that can ultimately only lead to bad places and is not why I got involved in the game. Is it something I will continue to actively do? Only time will tell.
She was a mature fresher, meaning she was 25 and just started her first year of uni. There is the often quoted ethical code of a PUA which is 'leave her better than you found her', this isn't really something that I've thought about much while gaming, probably because I haven't really needed to... however that was not the case here. After a while of leading her round, building comfort, push pull, yada yada yada I found out she had a boy friend back in her home town, that on it's own did not concern me, I've come to realise that 'boyfriend' is a pretty ambiguous term used by girls and if they are showing signs of attraction then it isn't all that serious. About 1.30AM my wing decided to bail and I stayed in set, I could see the IOI's plain as day from this girl and I felt it in my bones that this was on. Yet it turned out to be anything other than easy, I could see she was into me, but she was playing really hard to get, moving around the dance floor, flirting with other dudes, which of course meant I had to act totally indifferent towards this behaviour and do my own bit of flirting with other girls, although my effort was more subtle, which in turn seems to have come off as being higher value than her need to get attention and possible try to make me feel jealous. This went on for a while and every time I got close for the k-close she pulled away, and it got past the point where it was her playing hard to get, I could see something was really stopping her from going for it even though everything else in her behaviour and attitude was screaming for it.
I forced myself to stay in set longer than I normally would, I normally run a set in about 30 mins to an hour and half, any longer than that without a close is pretty much wasted time, to be honest 30 mins is normally my limit but go up to an hour and half in special cases. But there was something shouting in my head that let me know I could do it, I believed in my abilities like I never had before, I had this in the bag,, even though I wasn't sure how to progress to get it I felt the power to do it. We shifted venue, picked up 4 of the weirdest dudes I've ever met on the fly outside a closing pub and brought them with us, one of them made a play to steal my hard work, but I just back turned him when we were in the next bar, did some very obvious kino escalation in plain sight and he buggered off of his own accord. Even here I still couldn't get the k-close, I could feel her resisting it but I had my hands rubbing up and down the inside of her leg and seriously solid eye contact that just wouldn't break, so there was no way she didn't want something to happen. We went down to the dance floor and similar shit happened to before, we both started approaching and dancing with other people, but again hers was clearly aimed at getting my attention, and my behaviour appeared to be aimed more at the other girls int he club, even though it actually wasn't. I'd now been in set for 4 hours, all my canned material had been used up ages ago and I was free styling hard. We end up dancing with each other again in a very dark area of the club, hands end up running all over each other, scratching, grasping, all the things that people do when they madly make out with someone, but only there was no actual making out! The tension was now extreme and I knew full well she was rubbing herself against my hard on, I can see in my peripheral vision that all the people around us are watching... finally it happens... then she pulls away and her eye's have a look in them not to dissimilar from Luke Skywalker finding out Darth Vader is his father. There is a clear look of panic on her face, she shouts 'FUCK' and sprints up the stairs and out of the club. I have just enough time to see the look on my audiences faces, as if they had just seen a live bit of soap opera in action. I debate my options, I could call it a night... but I go after her, obviously something has gone on that I'm unaware of, I could have really screwed something up here and at the very least I should find out if I made a mistake in my game so I can avoid it in future.
I leave the club and see her down the road, I chase after her and when I catch up I can see she's drying her eyes and is now trying to stop herself from crying. We sit on a nearby step and I get it out of her; she is 'head over heels' for her boyfriend, they've been together for 5 months, and she's never cheated before... at first I think, ok, so she's not cheated on him before, these things happen right?... Nope, these things don't happen with her, she's so messed up about this because she has made it to the age of 25 without ever cheating on ANYONE before! With that plot point reveal the whole night is suddenly given a new perspective, I understand it all, and more to the point I now realise that I'm not just wielding a power, I'm wielding a weapon, I had no idea I could cause so much effect on people's emotions or lives, up until now I have never seen any effects of running game that have lasted longer than a night, a few weeks at most, but this is something that is going to have lasting effect on some level.
However, things did not stop there, sometimes people just need to get something out, and now we're hooking into each other again, then she's swearing at herself again for being a 'bitch', then we're necking again. this cycle went on for 30 mins while we walked back to her place. But now I'm starting to think that any further escalation will be really screwing with her unnecessarily, I was feeling guilt about what had happened, but was the guilt actually mine or did it transfer to me from her due to the level of rapport I had reached over the course of the night, the connection between us had become really strong and the gate swings both ways when you build a rapport if you're not filtering things out. Or was it social conditioning from society that was making me feel guilt? Most media portrays this type of situation as something people should feel guilt for, as do most people, maybe it isn't something I should feel any guilt about, or maybe that is just wishful thinking. Was all of this worth doing to further my own skills? I certainly pushed my skills and abilities during this pick up, is this progress I wouldn't have otherwise made had I not been in this situation? Does that justify it? Is that just an attempt to justify it and appease my guilty conscience?
The feelings of guilt subsided fast after the event so I'm inclined to think it was more her than me and I just picked up on her emotions empathically. But even if I don't feel any guilt now, should I feel bad? Have I become too desensitised about this kind of thing or is it a necessary evolution of my emotional maturity? And besides, she is a fresher, so surely this behaviour is natural and she's just not used to it yet?
Going back to the events; outside her place the mood has become strange, guilt is being felt by both, but we're still kissing, however now feeling sober and questioning the credo of 'leave her better than you found her' I am holding myself back from attempting to escalate any further for an f-close, we agree not to have any contact with each other as she is freaking out about seeing her boyfriend the following week (admittedly this was a total balls up on my part I now realise so let's not even talk about this, no discussion is needed), and I leave to walk back to my wing's flat, praying he'll wake up to let me in or I'm sleeping in my car (he woke up thank god!).
Should I have pushed for the f-close or was I right in thinking that was taking it too far? After all I proved my point which was that I knew I could pull her despite her resistance, f-closing would have been unnecessary and purely for cheap thrills and would have caused more damage right? Right?... No, I'm not convinced either.
What is concerning is that this was just one of a string of pulls I had recently from girls with 'boyfriends', and I think that factor in itself is something that makes me want the pull, I've always had a tendency to do thing's that make me feel 'naughty', so is this a new trend for me? The feeling of 'being naughty' as a motivating factor, a feeling that I get from gaming girls in relationships. I hope not, that can ultimately only lead to bad places and is not why I got involved in the game. Is it something I will continue to actively do? Only time will tell.
Sunday, 4 October 2009
The Moment It All Falls Apart
So a few weeks ago I went to a friends wedding, got pretty drunk, then went out to a club afterwards with a few of the other wedding goers. Inside the club I spotted a bar maid who ticked a lot of my boxes, and this woke up my gaming senses enough for me to start acting up a bit. I grabbed the best man and opened a mixed 2 set by us by telling them he had just got married but his new wife had passed out at the hotel, then I ejected from set and left him to it. A little while later he comes up to me and tells me not to do that again because he was stuck with them for 10 minutes talking about his imaginary wedding and wife, with that I grabbed him and we walked around opening as many sets as I could find with the same thing and quickly ejecting, I could see he was enjoying it as much as I was and this started to really boost my state, and sober me up. While we were doing this another mixed 2 set walked past us and I got some solid eye contact from the girl. Later on me and the best man were sat on a sofa discussing game, he's one of my best mates and has been aware of my involvement in pick up from the beginning, but this was the first time he'd really seen me gaming since I had become competent at it. The mixed 2 set that I had the IOI from came and sat adjacent to us, but due to my alcohol intake I didn't recognise them, despite her giving more IOI's. My friend spotted the IOI's and assumed they were aimed at him, and as a result he asked for an opener, which I supplied, and went in to open the set. Within seconds the girl jumped across the room and parked herself next to me, leaving my mate and her friend chatting.
Now my state is pumping, I start stacking forward with my usual stuff, she's lapping all of it up, she's a cute little American girl who's just got into town that week, we're connecting, flirting, playing, and having an awesome time. I lead her round the place once, we get a drink, I run some sexual framing routines and it's all totally on the cards. We're about 20 mins down the line and it's looking like a done deal, which is when I get the impulse to bounce her to the dance floor, and for some reason, I questioned this instinct. This was when things started to go south, because I questioned my instinct, I then started trying to think about what I should do next, and nothing seemed to be good enough, so I figured I'd eject from set for a bit to give her time to miss me while I come up with a plan - mistake number two. I hit the dance floor for a bit with some of the other people from the wedding, we're actually in a student club and had somehow blagged our way in, so the fact they we are all suited and booted is generating a lot of attention, but I can see some of the dudes I know forming crystals around groups of girls. Deciding to show them up I start jumping into the centre of the groups and dancing around like I own the place, which again is building my state and social proof. this is when I spot the American girl again, she's with another of her guy friends (it turned out the set was a lot bigger than the 2 I originally thought it was) and looking over at me, but this place is so rammed I couldn't get over to her without making it look very clunky and/or needy, so I give it some time then go try to find her again. she's back at the seating area with her mates, so I sit down and start chatting to them, which is when she kicks out the words 'you're a really nice guy aren't you?'. Being drunk I totally miss-calibrated and assumed this was an IOD or a challenge, and as such assumed I'd botched the set, this was when things really fell apart... or at least, I THOUGHT it had fallen apart, and that's what is important here, I thought it. The fact of the matter is that in all likelihood it was an IOI, I had social proof to the max, was probably the highest value guy in the venue, we'd made a good connection and she's bought into all the frames I'd put forward, if anything, this was her trying to build rapport.
But like I say, I thought it had fallen apart, that was my reality at that moment in time, so I ejected and went back to the dance floor. I didn't have to wait too long to discover that my perception had been incorrect, because while I was back on the dance floor I caught the eye of another girl, a Welsh red head (I don't know what it is with me and red heads), I quickly escalated and got into heavy k-closing. About 10 mins down the line, while I'm against the wall with this new girl, I see the American girl in my peripheral vision about 2 feet away from me, with a look on her face of utter disappointment and anger. At that moment it all pretty much became clear to me, but thankfully I didn't react to it, I held the frame I was in and 10 minutes later left with the Welsh girl, so I can't really complain.
the lesson here is that you should follow your instincts, if you find yourself questioning them logically, ignore your logical mind unless it actually has a course of action for you to follow, but if it is just questioning your impulses you need to switch it off, or you'll just end up second guessing yourself. How does this look to a girl? It looks like you have lack of conviction in your actions, like you are sexually un-confident, and a whole load of other unattractive behavioural traits. If you want to do it, and no one is gonna get hurt because of it, then just fucking do it.
Also, drinking and game do not mix, trust me on this, it's a cocktail I have sampled many times lately and it always leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.
Now my state is pumping, I start stacking forward with my usual stuff, she's lapping all of it up, she's a cute little American girl who's just got into town that week, we're connecting, flirting, playing, and having an awesome time. I lead her round the place once, we get a drink, I run some sexual framing routines and it's all totally on the cards. We're about 20 mins down the line and it's looking like a done deal, which is when I get the impulse to bounce her to the dance floor, and for some reason, I questioned this instinct. This was when things started to go south, because I questioned my instinct, I then started trying to think about what I should do next, and nothing seemed to be good enough, so I figured I'd eject from set for a bit to give her time to miss me while I come up with a plan - mistake number two. I hit the dance floor for a bit with some of the other people from the wedding, we're actually in a student club and had somehow blagged our way in, so the fact they we are all suited and booted is generating a lot of attention, but I can see some of the dudes I know forming crystals around groups of girls. Deciding to show them up I start jumping into the centre of the groups and dancing around like I own the place, which again is building my state and social proof. this is when I spot the American girl again, she's with another of her guy friends (it turned out the set was a lot bigger than the 2 I originally thought it was) and looking over at me, but this place is so rammed I couldn't get over to her without making it look very clunky and/or needy, so I give it some time then go try to find her again. she's back at the seating area with her mates, so I sit down and start chatting to them, which is when she kicks out the words 'you're a really nice guy aren't you?'. Being drunk I totally miss-calibrated and assumed this was an IOD or a challenge, and as such assumed I'd botched the set, this was when things really fell apart... or at least, I THOUGHT it had fallen apart, and that's what is important here, I thought it. The fact of the matter is that in all likelihood it was an IOI, I had social proof to the max, was probably the highest value guy in the venue, we'd made a good connection and she's bought into all the frames I'd put forward, if anything, this was her trying to build rapport.
But like I say, I thought it had fallen apart, that was my reality at that moment in time, so I ejected and went back to the dance floor. I didn't have to wait too long to discover that my perception had been incorrect, because while I was back on the dance floor I caught the eye of another girl, a Welsh red head (I don't know what it is with me and red heads), I quickly escalated and got into heavy k-closing. About 10 mins down the line, while I'm against the wall with this new girl, I see the American girl in my peripheral vision about 2 feet away from me, with a look on her face of utter disappointment and anger. At that moment it all pretty much became clear to me, but thankfully I didn't react to it, I held the frame I was in and 10 minutes later left with the Welsh girl, so I can't really complain.
the lesson here is that you should follow your instincts, if you find yourself questioning them logically, ignore your logical mind unless it actually has a course of action for you to follow, but if it is just questioning your impulses you need to switch it off, or you'll just end up second guessing yourself. How does this look to a girl? It looks like you have lack of conviction in your actions, like you are sexually un-confident, and a whole load of other unattractive behavioural traits. If you want to do it, and no one is gonna get hurt because of it, then just fucking do it.
Also, drinking and game do not mix, trust me on this, it's a cocktail I have sampled many times lately and it always leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.
Quantum Leap
Ok, this is a totally abstract concept, and I know similar scenarios have been debated before, but this caught my imagination enough for me to post about it here. anyone who has seen Quantum Leap will be familiar with the idea of your consciousness time travelling and jumping into someone else's body, and I think there may have even been an episode of the show where something like this happened, but I want you to imagine what it would be like to quantum leap into yourself as a teenager. This is obviously way out there, but how do you think you would be able to cope with that, on the surface it sounds great, getting to live through it all again but with all the knowledge and skills you've developed since then, it sounds like a doddle, then again, maybe not.
In the years since you were a teenager you've grown up psychologically, and the events you experienced since then have formed your persona, what kind of impact would this have on your behaviour if one day you woke up to find yourself back as 15 year old again? What would be your initial impulses? What things would you want to go and do? What would be the first thing you try to change about your past? Would you even want to change anything about your past when you consider that the events that occurred are what have made you the person you are? If you felt the need to change events, would that mean that you are not happy with who you are or would there be other reasons for changing events?
I think some of the factors that I would find most difficult would be the way people would treat me, I was a very different person at that age, so to suddenly find myself back in that time, place and body but with the mind I have today, it would be one hell of a shock to the system. I also had a very different opinion of a lot of people back then to what I do now, as well as a very different attitude and outlook on the world, so as far as other people would be concerned, my behaviour would take a very sudden and dramatic turn, and I imagine that behaviour would not suit a 15 year old for the most part. Of course, it's also entirely possible that you would start to think and act like you did at that age the first time around, all the influences around you would be pushing you to adopt the thoughts and behaviour expected of you, and also there would be some many associations that might cause you to regress.
I'm not really getting at anything with this post, I just found it an interesting debate topic and I'd like to know what other people think would happen.
In the years since you were a teenager you've grown up psychologically, and the events you experienced since then have formed your persona, what kind of impact would this have on your behaviour if one day you woke up to find yourself back as 15 year old again? What would be your initial impulses? What things would you want to go and do? What would be the first thing you try to change about your past? Would you even want to change anything about your past when you consider that the events that occurred are what have made you the person you are? If you felt the need to change events, would that mean that you are not happy with who you are or would there be other reasons for changing events?
I think some of the factors that I would find most difficult would be the way people would treat me, I was a very different person at that age, so to suddenly find myself back in that time, place and body but with the mind I have today, it would be one hell of a shock to the system. I also had a very different opinion of a lot of people back then to what I do now, as well as a very different attitude and outlook on the world, so as far as other people would be concerned, my behaviour would take a very sudden and dramatic turn, and I imagine that behaviour would not suit a 15 year old for the most part. Of course, it's also entirely possible that you would start to think and act like you did at that age the first time around, all the influences around you would be pushing you to adopt the thoughts and behaviour expected of you, and also there would be some many associations that might cause you to regress.
I'm not really getting at anything with this post, I just found it an interesting debate topic and I'd like to know what other people think would happen.
Monday, 28 September 2009
How Long is Long Enough?
This is not a post about penis size, let's get that out the way now before all the comedians out there pipe up and get the two pence (cents) worth in.
I find myself getting frustrated with the length of video games, and it's a problem that has seemingly been present since I got my PS2 back in 2001, and has steadily become more of an issue since then. I don't know if it's just me that finds this, but most modern games have a very short length, which is something that I found to be an issue in both of my recent reviews for Wet and Halo 3: ODST. I find this to be an issue with a good 80% of the games I have played through in the last 7 or 8 years, even COD4 and Halo 3 were not as long as would have liked, it seems to be a common trend now that singleplayer campaigns average out at around 7 - 15 hours, which leads me to ask: is this long enough?
The games I played through prior to 2001 had much longer length, and while I wasn't anywhere near as involved in video games than as I am now, I played a variety of games across SNES, Megadrive (Genesis), Master System, PC, PlayStation and N64, all of which had some good sized games that kept you playing for hours upon hours. In my childhood, I spent hours on the SNES, playing games like Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda, and even games where saving wasn't common place, they were huge adventures that would absorb hours upon hours of button bashing, brightly coloured, imaginative mayhem. But then again, time is relative to the observer, and when you are a kid time seemed to move much slower, so is this all a figment of my imagination? I also have to appreciate that my gaming sessions had time limits placed on them by my parents to an extent, so probably only lasted 1 or 2 hours at a time as opposed to the 5 or even 10 hour sessions I sometimes clock in at on a lazy Sunday these days.
I think not, because even today there are a few games that just seem to last forever, and a stark contrast exists between these long epic adventures compared to the short chapter like games that account for most of what is out there. Final Fantasy games can easily suck up over 100 hours if you try to accomplish everything on offer, and a couple of these are so good that you want to play them through a second, or even third time. The gargantuan offerings from Bethesda that take the forms of The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Fallout 3 both have had me clocking in over 100 hours each, and with such gigantic single player adventures such as these I can't help but feel other game developers are simply lazy and looking to make a quick buck.
It's a difficult to take a side on this argument, because I am also aware that there are limitations on technology, story, and ideas, as well as limitations posed by the type of games. when a shorter game is released, is it because the developer has spent their time trying to make a more solid gaming experience, so that what is offered may not be very long, but is of extremely high quality? This is certainly the case some of the time, COD4 and Halo 3 being the two examples used above that would also fall into this category, but there are also some very low quality items produced that are also very short in length, but maybe due to their poor quality that is a blessing, I've had a run in with a couple of less than amazing games recently (reviews pending), and I find that I can't be bothered to finish these.
The other factor that changes the shape of the argument completely is the presence of multiplayer, I may hammer my way through most FPS' in 2 or 3 sittings, but if the multiplayer is good, there really is no limit to the amount of time you could spend interacting and shooting other human beings, and I'm sure the same is true for many other genres such as racing games. But should a game rely on multiplayer? For me, multiplayer is an afterthought when I consider buying a game, unless I know ahead of time it's something that me and my friends are all going to get heavily involved in.
I don't really have a conclusion or direction to take this debate to, but if anyone has any thoughts or opposing views I would love to hear them.
I find myself getting frustrated with the length of video games, and it's a problem that has seemingly been present since I got my PS2 back in 2001, and has steadily become more of an issue since then. I don't know if it's just me that finds this, but most modern games have a very short length, which is something that I found to be an issue in both of my recent reviews for Wet and Halo 3: ODST. I find this to be an issue with a good 80% of the games I have played through in the last 7 or 8 years, even COD4 and Halo 3 were not as long as would have liked, it seems to be a common trend now that singleplayer campaigns average out at around 7 - 15 hours, which leads me to ask: is this long enough?
The games I played through prior to 2001 had much longer length, and while I wasn't anywhere near as involved in video games than as I am now, I played a variety of games across SNES, Megadrive (Genesis), Master System, PC, PlayStation and N64, all of which had some good sized games that kept you playing for hours upon hours. In my childhood, I spent hours on the SNES, playing games like Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda, and even games where saving wasn't common place, they were huge adventures that would absorb hours upon hours of button bashing, brightly coloured, imaginative mayhem. But then again, time is relative to the observer, and when you are a kid time seemed to move much slower, so is this all a figment of my imagination? I also have to appreciate that my gaming sessions had time limits placed on them by my parents to an extent, so probably only lasted 1 or 2 hours at a time as opposed to the 5 or even 10 hour sessions I sometimes clock in at on a lazy Sunday these days.
I think not, because even today there are a few games that just seem to last forever, and a stark contrast exists between these long epic adventures compared to the short chapter like games that account for most of what is out there. Final Fantasy games can easily suck up over 100 hours if you try to accomplish everything on offer, and a couple of these are so good that you want to play them through a second, or even third time. The gargantuan offerings from Bethesda that take the forms of The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Fallout 3 both have had me clocking in over 100 hours each, and with such gigantic single player adventures such as these I can't help but feel other game developers are simply lazy and looking to make a quick buck.
It's a difficult to take a side on this argument, because I am also aware that there are limitations on technology, story, and ideas, as well as limitations posed by the type of games. when a shorter game is released, is it because the developer has spent their time trying to make a more solid gaming experience, so that what is offered may not be very long, but is of extremely high quality? This is certainly the case some of the time, COD4 and Halo 3 being the two examples used above that would also fall into this category, but there are also some very low quality items produced that are also very short in length, but maybe due to their poor quality that is a blessing, I've had a run in with a couple of less than amazing games recently (reviews pending), and I find that I can't be bothered to finish these.
The other factor that changes the shape of the argument completely is the presence of multiplayer, I may hammer my way through most FPS' in 2 or 3 sittings, but if the multiplayer is good, there really is no limit to the amount of time you could spend interacting and shooting other human beings, and I'm sure the same is true for many other genres such as racing games. But should a game rely on multiplayer? For me, multiplayer is an afterthought when I consider buying a game, unless I know ahead of time it's something that me and my friends are all going to get heavily involved in.
I don't really have a conclusion or direction to take this debate to, but if anyone has any thoughts or opposing views I would love to hear them.
Smashing Solo Game
Following on from my post recent post I had a serious brainwave about how to go about blasting through the sticking point of struggling to sarge solo. I want to share this with you, but in order to do so I will need to explain what 'Project Skywalker' is.
I've mentioned 'Project Skywalker' in a couple of other posts already, but I've not really explained what it is, until now. 'Project Skywalker' is the working title of a document I have been writing over the last couple of months, it started life as a written routine stack for my own reference so that I could ingrain it all into my head, it was what a lot of guys would call a cheat sheet, even though I had no intention of taking it out with me. What happened next was that a guy I know, from outside of the game and PUA community, showed some interest, so I decided to write some commentaries on my routine stack document that would explain each stage of the interaction and the purpose of each routine or technique. This is when it seemed to take on a life of it's own, once I started, I couldn't stop, I kept having more and more ideas that I had to get out of my head and into writing, until it started ti take the form of a full blown treatise on the system and style of game that I have been running and learning recently. I started structuring it all into a series of 20 lessons, each of which containing a theory, practical, and homework section designed for even the most inept guy to learn game. Now this isn't to say I had, or have, any intentions of marketing this out, in fact, it has been primarily for my own well being, and has already assisted me in a number of ways.
Primarily, it has allowed me to un-jumble much of the information I have taken in over the last 2 years, I've been throwing so much shit at the wall trying to get it to stick, that I didn't notice that so much had stuck to it that you couldn't tell it was a wall anymore, and all I was left with was a mound of shit. In a sense, writing Project Skywalker has allowed me to peel it all away and organise it into coherent piles of... shit... ok, bad analogy, but you get what I'm saying.
Secondly, the 'inept guy' I had in my mind when I was working out the lesson structure and content, was myself 2 years ago, I wanted to come up with a system that would have helped me learn and understand a swifter pace, should the opportunity ever arise that I could teach someone, I would already have the method laid out.
How is all this going to help me start gaming solo? Well, I realised that now that I've done all of this, I should work through everything within 'Project Skywalker' alone, there are a lot of exercises and missions I have placed within it that I haven't done myself, so it's only fair that I go out and do them, I can't expect someone else to do what I tell them if I am not prepared to do it myself or have not actually done it myself. In doing this I've given myself a reason to go out on my own and run game, essentially I've re-framed the entire scenario.
In a sense, I'm starting to feel like a mad scientist trying out a new formula on himself, will this be like Dr Jekyll & Mr Hide, or the more modern equivalent of Dr. Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk? Will I end up overshooting my goal and heading in a direction I hadn't intended? Quite possibly I think as through learning game I already seem to have done that in some ways, but none the less, that will be interesting in itself.
Having now had this idea, I find myself wondering if this is what many of the so called 'gurus' in the PUA community have done, do the experts all find a way to reinterpret everything they have learned into a form that they best understand, thus allowing them to reteach it to themselves and then upon succeeding, teach it to others? At this point I just want to reiterate that despite that last sentence, I have no interest or intention of teaching this to other people at present, I'm starting to feel as if the PUA scene is becoming very saturated with 'sure fire' new systems for learning game, and it's getting harder and harder to find genuinely new material, but as I also see a flip side to this debate, I'll leave it for another day (that isn't too far away by any means).
Going back to the topic at hand, is this what David DeAngelo means when he says 'become your own teacher', maybe I've drilled the concept down to too much of a fine detail, but do you think it would help you to work out how you would teach what you know, put it into a concise system for relaying and practicing the information and skills, then teach it to yourself?
I'm theorising that by doing this I will solidify own skills, test the system for any glitches that I might have missed, seeing as I didn't learn this system from scratch, it was something I transitioned into from a different system of game, and maybe by going through everything from scratch the system I am using will evolve further and become more effective along with my actual skills.
Obviously all of this will mean going back to basics, but that's not often a bad thing in any area of life, sometimes it's necessary to go back where you've come from in order to see things you missed the first time around, which is something often portrayed in detective stories, where the vital piece of information that ties all the clues together was the detail that was so obvious that it was overlooked. this isn't going to stop me going out at the weekend and gaming as I normally do with friends, but it will give me a focus for weekdays when I wouldn't normally sarge.
Another bonus of this is that it will give me a solid reason to post field reports, I'm not a huge fan of general field reports outside of my own hand written journal. I see a lot of them as being boastful and self indulgent, and only really useful if there was a revelation contained within that has a positive application for the future (I do actually have two such revelations and accompanying field reports which I will post in the near future). But again, this new active phase of 'Project Skywalker' has re-framed the idea of field reports for me, I will be able to analyse and feedback on the events of the lessons, specific to the subject matter of each lesson, almost like a hybrid of someone who is relatively experienced practicing from a newbie perspective, which will allow you guys to get more of a feel for what I am actually doing and how you can apply this to yourselves.
There are also two factors that will ensure I stick to doing this, firstly, posting it here, as I said in the previous post where I highlighted this sticking point, writing it for the whole world to see makes me accountable for carrying through with it. Secondly, the guy I go sarging with most, who also had an equal hand in forming our current system of game, has also expressed an interest in testing this out solo, and will keep me moving forward with it to compare notes.
Please feel free to leave any comments or ideas you have on this.
Update: 11th Oct 09
Psych from PUA Training has just put a post on their blog that presents a very similar idea to what I have presented above, I suggest checking it out for a comparison by clicking here
I've mentioned 'Project Skywalker' in a couple of other posts already, but I've not really explained what it is, until now. 'Project Skywalker' is the working title of a document I have been writing over the last couple of months, it started life as a written routine stack for my own reference so that I could ingrain it all into my head, it was what a lot of guys would call a cheat sheet, even though I had no intention of taking it out with me. What happened next was that a guy I know, from outside of the game and PUA community, showed some interest, so I decided to write some commentaries on my routine stack document that would explain each stage of the interaction and the purpose of each routine or technique. This is when it seemed to take on a life of it's own, once I started, I couldn't stop, I kept having more and more ideas that I had to get out of my head and into writing, until it started ti take the form of a full blown treatise on the system and style of game that I have been running and learning recently. I started structuring it all into a series of 20 lessons, each of which containing a theory, practical, and homework section designed for even the most inept guy to learn game. Now this isn't to say I had, or have, any intentions of marketing this out, in fact, it has been primarily for my own well being, and has already assisted me in a number of ways.
Primarily, it has allowed me to un-jumble much of the information I have taken in over the last 2 years, I've been throwing so much shit at the wall trying to get it to stick, that I didn't notice that so much had stuck to it that you couldn't tell it was a wall anymore, and all I was left with was a mound of shit. In a sense, writing Project Skywalker has allowed me to peel it all away and organise it into coherent piles of... shit... ok, bad analogy, but you get what I'm saying.
Secondly, the 'inept guy' I had in my mind when I was working out the lesson structure and content, was myself 2 years ago, I wanted to come up with a system that would have helped me learn and understand a swifter pace, should the opportunity ever arise that I could teach someone, I would already have the method laid out.
How is all this going to help me start gaming solo? Well, I realised that now that I've done all of this, I should work through everything within 'Project Skywalker' alone, there are a lot of exercises and missions I have placed within it that I haven't done myself, so it's only fair that I go out and do them, I can't expect someone else to do what I tell them if I am not prepared to do it myself or have not actually done it myself. In doing this I've given myself a reason to go out on my own and run game, essentially I've re-framed the entire scenario.
In a sense, I'm starting to feel like a mad scientist trying out a new formula on himself, will this be like Dr Jekyll & Mr Hide, or the more modern equivalent of Dr. Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk? Will I end up overshooting my goal and heading in a direction I hadn't intended? Quite possibly I think as through learning game I already seem to have done that in some ways, but none the less, that will be interesting in itself.
Having now had this idea, I find myself wondering if this is what many of the so called 'gurus' in the PUA community have done, do the experts all find a way to reinterpret everything they have learned into a form that they best understand, thus allowing them to reteach it to themselves and then upon succeeding, teach it to others? At this point I just want to reiterate that despite that last sentence, I have no interest or intention of teaching this to other people at present, I'm starting to feel as if the PUA scene is becoming very saturated with 'sure fire' new systems for learning game, and it's getting harder and harder to find genuinely new material, but as I also see a flip side to this debate, I'll leave it for another day (that isn't too far away by any means).
Going back to the topic at hand, is this what David DeAngelo means when he says 'become your own teacher', maybe I've drilled the concept down to too much of a fine detail, but do you think it would help you to work out how you would teach what you know, put it into a concise system for relaying and practicing the information and skills, then teach it to yourself?
I'm theorising that by doing this I will solidify own skills, test the system for any glitches that I might have missed, seeing as I didn't learn this system from scratch, it was something I transitioned into from a different system of game, and maybe by going through everything from scratch the system I am using will evolve further and become more effective along with my actual skills.
Obviously all of this will mean going back to basics, but that's not often a bad thing in any area of life, sometimes it's necessary to go back where you've come from in order to see things you missed the first time around, which is something often portrayed in detective stories, where the vital piece of information that ties all the clues together was the detail that was so obvious that it was overlooked. this isn't going to stop me going out at the weekend and gaming as I normally do with friends, but it will give me a focus for weekdays when I wouldn't normally sarge.
Another bonus of this is that it will give me a solid reason to post field reports, I'm not a huge fan of general field reports outside of my own hand written journal. I see a lot of them as being boastful and self indulgent, and only really useful if there was a revelation contained within that has a positive application for the future (I do actually have two such revelations and accompanying field reports which I will post in the near future). But again, this new active phase of 'Project Skywalker' has re-framed the idea of field reports for me, I will be able to analyse and feedback on the events of the lessons, specific to the subject matter of each lesson, almost like a hybrid of someone who is relatively experienced practicing from a newbie perspective, which will allow you guys to get more of a feel for what I am actually doing and how you can apply this to yourselves.
There are also two factors that will ensure I stick to doing this, firstly, posting it here, as I said in the previous post where I highlighted this sticking point, writing it for the whole world to see makes me accountable for carrying through with it. Secondly, the guy I go sarging with most, who also had an equal hand in forming our current system of game, has also expressed an interest in testing this out solo, and will keep me moving forward with it to compare notes.
Please feel free to leave any comments or ideas you have on this.
Update: 11th Oct 09
Psych from PUA Training has just put a post on their blog that presents a very similar idea to what I have presented above, I suggest checking it out for a comparison by clicking here
Emotional Investment of the Virtual
Having just seen the new, 7 minute, Japanese trailer for Final Fantasy XIII (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/tgs-09-final-fantasy/56840) I find myself wondering how important a story is to a video game. In this trailer alone I find myself sucked in by the drama of the events, the way the characters speak and interact with each other with complex body language and facial expressions. Various emotions are carried in their voices and it is all very clear that the world in which this takes place is breathtaking and awe inspiring place to be. Most of the trailer seems geared towards pulling someone into the story rather than the game play, but how important is a story to a video game?
Over the years, the Final Fantasy series has been a treasure trove of imaginative story lines, sub plots, archetypes, and characters that captivate the imagination. I first fell in love with the series, with Final Fantasy VII, and to this day I consider it to be one of the best video games I have ever played, if not 'the' best in fact. I didn't play it when it first came out, in fact I already owned an N64 when I finally got my hands on a PSone and a copy of the game, a good 3 years after it was released, so standards of video games had gone up. The character models were blocky, the animations had a low frame rate, most of the game took place in 2D pre-rendered backgrounds, some of game mechanics were fiddly, there was no voice acting, and some of the menus were confusing... but none of that mattered, simply because the game oozed character, imagination and charisma. The story was one of the most fantastic epic tales of good and evil (and the shades of grey in between) that I consider to be more imaginative and awe inspiring than anything modern cinema has thrown at us. The characters within the story were all so well written that even by reading their dialogue on screen you could almost hear their individual voices and personalities in your head, and you quickly grew to love all of them in their own way, causing explosive excitement whenever a piece of back story for any of them was revealed. As the story progressed and the lines of friendship, love, and heroism became blurred, you become so involved in the story and the fate of the characters, that anyone who claims not to have shed a silent tear for the pure and innocent Aries (Arith to Americans) when she met her untimely end, half way through the game at the hands of the game's misguided and disillusioned antagonist, can be nothing short of liar.
Obviously all final Fantasy games are story centric, which is no surprise as series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi is famous for saying "I don't have what it takes to make an action game. I think I'm better at telling a story" at the time of the first Final Fantasy game in 1987, however none of the others that I have played have ever been as engrossing as FFVII, despite most of them being technically more proficient. after VII I played VIII, which, despite two separate attempts, I never finished. this had nothing to do with difficulty, I just didn't care enough about the plot or the characters, not totally surprising for a follow up game to one of the most successful RPGs of all time, although there is debate among fans as many believe it to be superior to VII. Personally, I consider VIII to be more generic, less mature, and akin to a Hollywood plot. A better game that I played following VIII was IV, and despite going back to the 16 bit graphics of the SNES, this for me was a very good game, as complex, if not more so than VII, and I did see it through to the end despite a crippling level of difficulty, but ultimately I didn't care as much about the story or characters, the whole thing just seemed a little fragmented. XI is a game I finished, but again, didn't find it as engrossing and it almost seemed sparse in places. X was very different take on things and heralded the evolution to the next gen of consoles for the series, and while the characters felt more real and caused the player to become more emotionally involved in them and their relationships, the main story arch wasn't as dramatic as the almost opera like VII.
If we were to take a look another long running story driven franchise, you don't have to look very far to find the Metal Gear series. The metal gear games have always been based on stealth action in a world the resembles our own much more closely than the worlds presented in Final Fantasy. I came into this series at Metal Gear Solid, which was the third installment in the story, but that didn't leave me at a loss. The 4 'Metal Gear Solid' games happily stand on their own as a story and fill int he blanks for anyone that missed the earlier 'Metal Gear' games. the Metal Gear Solid games play much like an interactive action movie, and draw many elements from Hollywood action films. I only actually played Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2, but the story line is so enthralling and exciting that I have watched the cut scenes of Metal Gear solid 3 and 4 without bothering to play the games! doing this was actually a pleasure, they are well constructed cinematic sequences and the voice acting is totally top notch. And while it is a shame that I missed some of the finer details that would have cropped up during actual play sequences, there was still enough rich story and action content in the cut scenes to keep me on the edge of my seat throughout... and that actually says a lot when you consider that there was over 5 hours of cut scenes in Metal Gear Solid 3, and 10 hours in Metal Gear Solid 4! (which to be honest is something I didn't know when I sat down to watch it one Sunday morning). for this series in particular, the story was actually more important to me than the game itself, but had it been presented in any format other than a game, I believe many elements would have been dropped to fit the medium, and as such it would have lost some of it's charm and suspense, and had these elements not have been dropped, the production costs would have been either too high or corners would have been cut, causing it lose it's edge.
It's fairly obvious from my review of the new Halo game that I am a fan of the series, and the story there of, but it isn't as necessary to the the game as Final Fantasy or Metal Gear, but it is a sci-fi epic in it's own right. What I find interesting about it is the different way in which the story is presented, in the Halo trilogy the player takes the role of the Master Chief from a first person view to run a bloody assault against an alien army (or two), and for the most part this is the perspective that you assimilate the story from as well. The Chief doesn't have a lot to say, so it is very easy for the player top layer the Chief with their own personality and play through your mission almost as yourself, or how you would be if you were an armoured and fearless cyborg tasked with saving humanity. where the emotion comes in is through the characters you meet and fight along side, how they all depend on you to save the world and the sacrifices they make in order to help you accomplish your mission. The other very clever element is the character of Cortana, a female computer AI who spends most of the series plugged into the chiefs computer components, meaning she almost lives inside you and talks directly into your head. But she is also written with a very human, caring personality, and while her main purpose is the survival of earth, you get the feeling that she actually cares about the various characters and their well being, including you, the Chief, which makes her presence sorely missed throughout most of Halo 3 while her whereabouts and and condition are unknown, a time during which the Chief displays his most determined and human side throughout the entire series. Without all of these components, Halo would really have been the stereotyped mindless and violent video game so many non-gamers seem unable to release their mental grasp on, albeit a very playable one.
Some games only really have a story out of necessity, or even in some cases, habit. the legend of Zelda series has been using almost the same formula for all of it's games, where by a Hero dressed in green (often called Link but this is left up to the player) has to set about saving the world of Hyrule (occasionally another place) by adventuring around the world and into various dungeons or temples to vanquish evil, find magical items and tools to help him proceed with his quest, and sometimes save a princess (almost always named Zelda). Most of the series seemingly is unconnected despite these similarities, and while the story has become more developed in later installments, it never really ventures too far from this formula. Because of a few small elements that do seem to connect the stories of the various games, there are a number of fan theories connecting them, which include ideas of alternate time lines, parallel universes, and reincarnation, which if nothing else goes to show how video games can actually encourage the imagination.
Similar to the Zelda series are the, one time rival, Mario series and the Sonic series. these were both simple platform games, but given basic story lines to give some small element of sense and purpose to the player, but over time with more installments and associated fiction, the story arches and lore evolved until both series' had their own rich worlds for players to become engrossed in, so much so that books, comics, and in Mario's case a poor Hollywood blockbuster, all spawned from them. Would either of these series's survived if the fantasy world in which these loveable little characters existed had not been solidified around them and left to be utterly unexplained?
Coming back to more modern times, one in-development game that has recently caught my attention is Heavy Rain, a game set in a real world setting with a gritty tale of murder and various other adult themes. From what I can tell, the story has been written for this game with the actual game play being more of an after thought, the catch is that depending on how the player influences events, the story will unfold very differently. the game appears to have many possible paths for the story to flow down, with each 'scene' having multiple ways of playing out, all of which will alter the events to follow.
what about games that do not have a story, well these days they usually only come in the form of sports simulations, even other types of simulators have a story that develops, but they just happen to be stories built by the player. The Sims series is a rather obvious example, where by the player is given a canvas world to fill with what they choose, then place in the characters of their choice, just to watch the story unfold in it's own way, which must be very much like the way soap opera writers imagine their worlds, and that comparison alone explains why so many girls enjoy the Sims series (risky comment!). going back to sports games, even these have an element of story in the modern world in the form of a career mode, where the player writes their own story from the stand point of an athlete, or even a team of athletes, and is a simple easy to identify with, story of challenge and glory.
Before I wrap up, I want to quickly suggest the notion that a bad story can ruin a game, the same way a bad story or poor acting can ruin a high budget Hollywood movie. If a game is perfect to play, in that it is utterly, sublimely enjoyable to perform what ever tasks or challenges have been set, but the story makes no sense, or the acting, certainly with today's increasing standards, was so bad that cerebrally I couldn't stand it, I would have no choice but to turn it off. The same however would also be true if the story was superb and well acted, but the game itself was diabolically crafted with bad controls, terrible visuals, and frustrating level design.
I believe that video games are like any work of fiction; books, films, cartoons, comics, etc, they are worlds and characters created in someone else's imagination and presented in a form that allows others to experience to a level that is not possible with other mediums. and this is why I love video games, because you actually get to enter and explore someone else's world, to live there for a short time, and the more fantastic the world and events, the more interesting and believable the characters that exist there, the richer the whole experience becomes.
Over the years, the Final Fantasy series has been a treasure trove of imaginative story lines, sub plots, archetypes, and characters that captivate the imagination. I first fell in love with the series, with Final Fantasy VII, and to this day I consider it to be one of the best video games I have ever played, if not 'the' best in fact. I didn't play it when it first came out, in fact I already owned an N64 when I finally got my hands on a PSone and a copy of the game, a good 3 years after it was released, so standards of video games had gone up. The character models were blocky, the animations had a low frame rate, most of the game took place in 2D pre-rendered backgrounds, some of game mechanics were fiddly, there was no voice acting, and some of the menus were confusing... but none of that mattered, simply because the game oozed character, imagination and charisma. The story was one of the most fantastic epic tales of good and evil (and the shades of grey in between) that I consider to be more imaginative and awe inspiring than anything modern cinema has thrown at us. The characters within the story were all so well written that even by reading their dialogue on screen you could almost hear their individual voices and personalities in your head, and you quickly grew to love all of them in their own way, causing explosive excitement whenever a piece of back story for any of them was revealed. As the story progressed and the lines of friendship, love, and heroism became blurred, you become so involved in the story and the fate of the characters, that anyone who claims not to have shed a silent tear for the pure and innocent Aries (Arith to Americans) when she met her untimely end, half way through the game at the hands of the game's misguided and disillusioned antagonist, can be nothing short of liar.
Obviously all final Fantasy games are story centric, which is no surprise as series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi is famous for saying "I don't have what it takes to make an action game. I think I'm better at telling a story" at the time of the first Final Fantasy game in 1987, however none of the others that I have played have ever been as engrossing as FFVII, despite most of them being technically more proficient. after VII I played VIII, which, despite two separate attempts, I never finished. this had nothing to do with difficulty, I just didn't care enough about the plot or the characters, not totally surprising for a follow up game to one of the most successful RPGs of all time, although there is debate among fans as many believe it to be superior to VII. Personally, I consider VIII to be more generic, less mature, and akin to a Hollywood plot. A better game that I played following VIII was IV, and despite going back to the 16 bit graphics of the SNES, this for me was a very good game, as complex, if not more so than VII, and I did see it through to the end despite a crippling level of difficulty, but ultimately I didn't care as much about the story or characters, the whole thing just seemed a little fragmented. XI is a game I finished, but again, didn't find it as engrossing and it almost seemed sparse in places. X was very different take on things and heralded the evolution to the next gen of consoles for the series, and while the characters felt more real and caused the player to become more emotionally involved in them and their relationships, the main story arch wasn't as dramatic as the almost opera like VII.
If we were to take a look another long running story driven franchise, you don't have to look very far to find the Metal Gear series. The metal gear games have always been based on stealth action in a world the resembles our own much more closely than the worlds presented in Final Fantasy. I came into this series at Metal Gear Solid, which was the third installment in the story, but that didn't leave me at a loss. The 4 'Metal Gear Solid' games happily stand on their own as a story and fill int he blanks for anyone that missed the earlier 'Metal Gear' games. the Metal Gear Solid games play much like an interactive action movie, and draw many elements from Hollywood action films. I only actually played Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2, but the story line is so enthralling and exciting that I have watched the cut scenes of Metal Gear solid 3 and 4 without bothering to play the games! doing this was actually a pleasure, they are well constructed cinematic sequences and the voice acting is totally top notch. And while it is a shame that I missed some of the finer details that would have cropped up during actual play sequences, there was still enough rich story and action content in the cut scenes to keep me on the edge of my seat throughout... and that actually says a lot when you consider that there was over 5 hours of cut scenes in Metal Gear Solid 3, and 10 hours in Metal Gear Solid 4! (which to be honest is something I didn't know when I sat down to watch it one Sunday morning). for this series in particular, the story was actually more important to me than the game itself, but had it been presented in any format other than a game, I believe many elements would have been dropped to fit the medium, and as such it would have lost some of it's charm and suspense, and had these elements not have been dropped, the production costs would have been either too high or corners would have been cut, causing it lose it's edge.
It's fairly obvious from my review of the new Halo game that I am a fan of the series, and the story there of, but it isn't as necessary to the the game as Final Fantasy or Metal Gear, but it is a sci-fi epic in it's own right. What I find interesting about it is the different way in which the story is presented, in the Halo trilogy the player takes the role of the Master Chief from a first person view to run a bloody assault against an alien army (or two), and for the most part this is the perspective that you assimilate the story from as well. The Chief doesn't have a lot to say, so it is very easy for the player top layer the Chief with their own personality and play through your mission almost as yourself, or how you would be if you were an armoured and fearless cyborg tasked with saving humanity. where the emotion comes in is through the characters you meet and fight along side, how they all depend on you to save the world and the sacrifices they make in order to help you accomplish your mission. The other very clever element is the character of Cortana, a female computer AI who spends most of the series plugged into the chiefs computer components, meaning she almost lives inside you and talks directly into your head. But she is also written with a very human, caring personality, and while her main purpose is the survival of earth, you get the feeling that she actually cares about the various characters and their well being, including you, the Chief, which makes her presence sorely missed throughout most of Halo 3 while her whereabouts and and condition are unknown, a time during which the Chief displays his most determined and human side throughout the entire series. Without all of these components, Halo would really have been the stereotyped mindless and violent video game so many non-gamers seem unable to release their mental grasp on, albeit a very playable one.
Some games only really have a story out of necessity, or even in some cases, habit. the legend of Zelda series has been using almost the same formula for all of it's games, where by a Hero dressed in green (often called Link but this is left up to the player) has to set about saving the world of Hyrule (occasionally another place) by adventuring around the world and into various dungeons or temples to vanquish evil, find magical items and tools to help him proceed with his quest, and sometimes save a princess (almost always named Zelda). Most of the series seemingly is unconnected despite these similarities, and while the story has become more developed in later installments, it never really ventures too far from this formula. Because of a few small elements that do seem to connect the stories of the various games, there are a number of fan theories connecting them, which include ideas of alternate time lines, parallel universes, and reincarnation, which if nothing else goes to show how video games can actually encourage the imagination.
Similar to the Zelda series are the, one time rival, Mario series and the Sonic series. these were both simple platform games, but given basic story lines to give some small element of sense and purpose to the player, but over time with more installments and associated fiction, the story arches and lore evolved until both series' had their own rich worlds for players to become engrossed in, so much so that books, comics, and in Mario's case a poor Hollywood blockbuster, all spawned from them. Would either of these series's survived if the fantasy world in which these loveable little characters existed had not been solidified around them and left to be utterly unexplained?
Coming back to more modern times, one in-development game that has recently caught my attention is Heavy Rain, a game set in a real world setting with a gritty tale of murder and various other adult themes. From what I can tell, the story has been written for this game with the actual game play being more of an after thought, the catch is that depending on how the player influences events, the story will unfold very differently. the game appears to have many possible paths for the story to flow down, with each 'scene' having multiple ways of playing out, all of which will alter the events to follow.
what about games that do not have a story, well these days they usually only come in the form of sports simulations, even other types of simulators have a story that develops, but they just happen to be stories built by the player. The Sims series is a rather obvious example, where by the player is given a canvas world to fill with what they choose, then place in the characters of their choice, just to watch the story unfold in it's own way, which must be very much like the way soap opera writers imagine their worlds, and that comparison alone explains why so many girls enjoy the Sims series (risky comment!). going back to sports games, even these have an element of story in the modern world in the form of a career mode, where the player writes their own story from the stand point of an athlete, or even a team of athletes, and is a simple easy to identify with, story of challenge and glory.
Before I wrap up, I want to quickly suggest the notion that a bad story can ruin a game, the same way a bad story or poor acting can ruin a high budget Hollywood movie. If a game is perfect to play, in that it is utterly, sublimely enjoyable to perform what ever tasks or challenges have been set, but the story makes no sense, or the acting, certainly with today's increasing standards, was so bad that cerebrally I couldn't stand it, I would have no choice but to turn it off. The same however would also be true if the story was superb and well acted, but the game itself was diabolically crafted with bad controls, terrible visuals, and frustrating level design.
I believe that video games are like any work of fiction; books, films, cartoons, comics, etc, they are worlds and characters created in someone else's imagination and presented in a form that allows others to experience to a level that is not possible with other mediums. and this is why I love video games, because you actually get to enter and explore someone else's world, to live there for a short time, and the more fantastic the world and events, the more interesting and believable the characters that exist there, the richer the whole experience becomes.
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