Free play: the politics of the video game

Reason, April, 2004 by Kevin Parker

Likewise, Microsoft's Freelancer is "specifically structured" to offer both a story and an open-ended universe. At least two games, Vampire: The Masquerade (Activision) and Neverwinter Nights (Atari), allow users to be "game masters" for groups of players, providing them with architectural tools and control of all game events save the players' own actions. This role was originally created by the gaming legend Gary Gygax for the original pen-and-paper role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons. For his part, Gygax has said storytelling "has little or no connection" to role-playing games, which differ "in all aspects" from novels, films, and other narrative arts.

Finally, there is the top-selling game of 2001 the infamous crime romp Grand Theft Auto III, by Rockstar Games, which sets players loose in Liberty City ("America's worst city," the publishers say) to tackle the plot-advancing missions only when and if they want to. ABC's Nightline homed in on GTA3's graphic violence in a 2002 program pitting a 17-year-old gamer against a police veteran and a child development academic who was already sure media violence begets the real thing. By focusing on the superficial, they missed what is truly revolutionary about the game.

The players didn't. "The only controversy should have been explaining why it took the industry so long to design such a brilliantly free-form game" PC Gamer asserts. Robert Holt's review for National Public Radio stresses the depth of the simulated city. "Sure, there's a quest in there," he says, "but the larger world is what makes this such a rich experience." Interestingly, players begin both GTA3 and Morrowind in the role of a freed prisoner. Captive audience no longer.

Playing with the Real

Twitchy kids with little patience for stories are not the only kink in the railroad to cinematic game design. Realism has become an ever-present selling point in the gaming press and on game packaging--not merely realistically rendered detail but a deeper sort of reality: a world with more consistent rules, more room for autonomous behavior, and therefore more resemblance to the outside universe. For games, "realism" means not only that graphics have leaped into fluid 3D but also that sound, physics, and character behavior have advanced in kind. Programmers of the 1980s added color to computer games, but they could scarcely anticipate sound reflection, complex friction models, and flocking behavior--all now stock in trade for the industry.

Realism replaces micromanagement with player responsibility. Traditional designs have players guessing what solution the designer had in mind for each obstacle--"a huge buzz-kill when playing a game," says Holt. Some newer games, sporting realistic physics models, simply set victory conditions and let players find solutions through trial and error, logic and innovation. Designers of free-form games cannot assume that all the players will solve problems the same way in the same order. Such a diversity of outcomes makes it hard to impart the cinematic touch.