One of the most interesting
developments in the last few years in creative circles has been the
increasing ability to weave non-traditional concepts through the
metric of gaming. Rather than simply being a platform in which
player intention is irrelevant and the outcome is a purely binary
win/loss states, gaming has started to demonstrate the ability to
expand storytelling beyond the limits necessarily imposed by purely
linear works like oral or written storytelling.
The recent Middle Earth: Shadows
of Mordor is an excellent example of the increasing breadth of
gaming's ability to tell a story. The protagonist is purely
functional, a tool through which the player interacts with the world,
and as a result it should not be surprising that the protagonist is
generally considered to be the most forgettable aspect of the game.
Instead, what has repeatedly impressed players and reviewers has been
the rich world the protagonist operates in, a world in which a dozen
or so rival enemy leaders continually gain and lose standing based on
the actions of the player. These gains can come through the failure
of the player, with those who manage to kill the protagonist gaining
standing, but they can also come through the player choosing to
manipulate the surroundings in order to advance the causes of certain
enemies, either because they will ultimately be less challenging as
final opponents at high levels or because they have been co-opted and
can therefore be made to serve the player's own ends rather than
those of the computer against which the player competes. Combined
with a series of general character traits unique to each individual
unit, including names, weaknesses, and preferred strategies and
styles of engaging the protagonist, this gives the game a richness as
a social simulator, in addition to its apparently solid, if not
spectacular, combat systems.
More interesting still, however, are
the games that are starting to engage players through online
platforms to engage with one another in unique ways. Things like
World of Warcraft were the first and most basic systems, of course;
MMORPGs are basically just old MUDs with graphics, nothing
particularly unique there. Mass Effect 3 tried something
interesting, with online gaming affecting the single player campaign,
and the ability for more experienced players to help new ones is one
of a host of interesting features built into the absolutely gorgeous
Journey. But it's the upcoming Elegy for a Dead World that strikes
me as truly reflective of the next stage of gaming, and the general
gamification of creativity in general.
Elegy for a Dead World is barely a
game, more of an audio-visual writing prompt, a bare-bones framework
around which players can construct their own narratives. While this
has always been something of an option, with players actually having
to make up their stories back in the earliest days of gaming, before
there were cutscenes or dialogue boxes or the like, Elegy for a Dead
World seems intent on building it in as a feature, rather than
accepting it as a necessary limitation. More than that, however,
Elegy intends to leverage the connectivity built standard into video
game systems to make the playing of the game as much a work of art as
the game itself. By providing a platform for interaction amongst the
player base, Elegy allows for game players to begin crafting the same
sort of shared spaces that writers got with livejournal and
fanfiction.net, musicians got with MySpace, comedians and amateur
filmmakers got with YouTube. Elegy for a Dead World serves as the
logical next step for the trend towards unlimited freedom for
self-expression, offering up yet another avenue, as different from
the others as they are from the rest, through which individuals can
demonstrate their own unique talents to their fellows. This started
with things like Let's Plays on YouTube, but Elegy is, to the best of
my own admittedly-limited knowledge, the first game system to built
in this kind of shared personal expression as a core mechanic of the
game system.
As a casual game player, Elegy for a
Dead World looks gorgeous, and pleasantly immersive. As a writer, it
looks like a wonderful way to stretch my mental muscles. And as a
futurist and techno-utopian, it makes me excited to see yet another
step being taken by people interested in encouraging their fellows to
ever more varied and variable forms of creative expression.
Elegy for a Dead world will help make
our own world just a little bit more alive.
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