So, long time no posting, thanks to the last semester of university and life in general. However, I stumbled onto this blog post by Jonathan Morin, Creative Director at Ubisoft Montreal.
In the post, Morin talks about the subconscious decisions we make while playing a game, and the fact that most games ignore them. It’s a rare game where a player’s decisions even slightly relate to the theme portrayed. An example Morin used was Prototype, but it’s a similar problem for many action games, the theme of the game is inner conflict, but players are simply trained in how to take out enemies faster, and inner conflict has no bearing on subconscious decisions.
Of course, since so many games released have tacked on stories, or barely worked out themes, this lack of relevant decision making doesn’t really affect them. For example, RTS player decisions generally involve how to best use your little men to destroy the other little men, with more subconscious decisions based on how to most efficiently convey instructions to your characters. Occasionally a story may pop up in intervening cutscenes, but I have not yet played an RTS with a theme beyond ‘Domination’ (but I’d be happy to be given one!)
However, games, as with any storytelling medium, should have themes. And as the biggest advantage game shave over more traditional media is the interactivity, which can be used so powerfully to engage players with the themes directly. Without more games engaging players subconscious with their narrative contexts, we lose that advantage, and continue to be taken less seriously than other media.
