Hi Sean,
A lot of the talk about Bunton made it sound like his/her games were mostly aimed at the same purpose as board games but doesn’t the hardware setup hurt videogames like that? When you sit around a board game players sit on all sides of the table, they can look each other in the face and the board is in the middle, with a videogame the players sit next to each other and looking at the screen. That doesn’t really foster social interaction, you can talk but you cannot see gestures or expressions. Action games allow seeing those much more because ingame characters move directly as the player tells them to and can express the player’s mind to a certain degree and now with the Wii we can even make actual gestures in games, not full body language yet but at least somewhat more expression than just talking to people you aren’t looking at.
LAN parties. Wii Sports parties. Even in your past, I am sure you had multiplayer fun with other people. You don’t need to see their faces to have the experience.
Bunton’s point was that the gamer should feel like he is battling psychology of the opponent, not going through a mathematical exercise. This is how single player is successful as well. Bunton’s point is that single player is based on multiplayer, rather than the other way around. In single player, the consumer shouldn’t feel like he is in an obstacle course but against psychology of the opponent. Most single player video game experiences is an AI mimicking a Human (which can never truly be perfected).
Instead of seeing single player games as a ‘Pavlovian experience’, Bunton was pointing out that the player felt like he was battling a psychology. This might explain why successful villains are more popular than successful protagonists in single player games. In 1982, everyone knew ‘Donkey Kong’ but no one knew Mario. Mario and Zelda games had Bowser and Ganon as villains (and the commercials of the time highlighted the villains, not Link). Most people will recognize SHODAN from System Shock but not the protagonist.
I suspect the reason why single player games are failing these days is because they are not built on the core gameplay of multiplayer, and that the game doesn’t strive to make the player feel he is going against a psychology. Single player games are being made because the designers feel like they are a ‘movie director’ and that they are creating a ‘narrative’ and a ‘story’. This is not why people play games.
Blizzard designs their games on multiplayer first and then single player only afterward, often as an after thought (many companies do it the other way around, alas). With Warcraft 2 or Starcraft, you can feel how the single player campaign was mostly just a tutorial to play multiplayer. With Warcraft 3, they really began to go the ‘I’m a movie director’ route and made many not-fun levels as they moved away from their multiplayer gameplay. With Starcraft 2’s RPG experience, it seems like they are moving even further away. I think Blizzard is going to be shell shocked to realize how many people won’t be buying the Zerg and Protoss editions of the game.
And talking about board games, those are still an “industry” driven by individuals designing games, not huge companies focussing more on selling points that appeal to the buyer before he buys rather than afterwards, they are limited in the complexity they can include because players have to do everything by hand and big calculations will hurt the fun. While there are some “blingy” games that advertise mostly on whatever plastic doodad they install on the board and mostly sell to kids, forgotten within a month after the TV ads stop there is still a focus on creating classics that sell for a long time. Maybe such constrained hardware would be helpful for the videogame industry as well?
This brings us to the discussion of content.
The “Game Industry” publishers have been organized as if the medium was what they are selling, and the content is irrelevant. In the 16-bit and earlier, it was ‘cartridges’. Later, it was CDs, then DVDs, then Blu-Ray discs. And, at long last, toll charges (which is what digital distribution is: a toll road).
Newspaper companies were designed to sell paper, not sell their content. This is why they are in a content crisis as even newspaper companies cannot figure out how to sell on the Internet. They think the ‘business model’ is broken. No. It is that they were never in the content business so much as the paper business.
Book publishers have the same attitude toward paper. In their view, customers buy paper, not the stories or content that is on them.
This is why formats keep changing. Publishers see it as a way to charge more.
On the consumer side, no one gives a damn whether their game comes on a cartridge, CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray disc. Consumers just want a good game. DS software sales show that people don’t mind paying for cartridges even if PSP games are on UMD.
The “Game Industry” treats the software printed on its discs as a textile manufacturer treats patterns on its fabric. The price is set on the cost of producing and distributing, not on the content.
The “Game Industry” cannot survive with constrained hardware. They need new formats. They need new bells and whistles. They are not in the content business in the first place. (And, apparently, neither is Nintendo as their embrace of ‘user generated content’ shows.)
The ‘digital distribution’ of turning the game into a bunch of 1s and 0s streamed in through the Internet is not helping, but it is just another new format. It is not content. Customers do not look at 1s and 0s as the content.
Games truly aren’t as good as they used to be, and they are getting worse. Acknowledging this wouldn’t matter as publishers are not in the content business. They are realizing that any medium they put out can be resold, given away, or whatever. So now they are going to make toll roads to get to the game called ‘digital distribution’.
iTunes is like a toll road too. But it works because the costs are very, very small. It is like a tax that is not noticeable. Buy a song? $0.99. Most people don’t notice that.
A game for $50 or $60? hahahaha Everyone will notice that. The ‘Industry’ is on the course for death. Gaming will belong to the content creators, not the medium creators (or the ‘business model’ creators).
I haven’t played MULE but from the descriptions I’ve always wondered if it couldn’t have been made as a board game.
MULE cannot be turned into a board game for the same reason that Mario Kart cannot be turned into a board game. The two games have more in common than anyone imagines (such as loser having ‘fortunate’ rolls while the winner having ‘unfortunate’ rolls). Both games strive to get people together.
Don’t focus on the board game but on what the board game does.