mrowakus
Watchdog
- Joined
- December 13, 2010
- Messages
- 88
The way you put it makes this almost sound like artists should compromise their work at all costs for the sake of capturing their audience .
Allow me to make a statement: The artist that fails to intrigue his audience in any way is either a talentless hack or in training.
Even in art you have to hook your audience with something. Art without audience, is non-existent. Funnily enough in most visual arts the initial impression is very significant if not the most important factor for reception.
Let me make another observation A game does not have to be art to be good.
A hook in this case can be defined as pretty much anything internal to the work (internal, as in not the amount of money one paid for it, for example) that makes one continue to interact with the work (read it, watch it, play it).
Yes.
And if one doesn´t find anything such in there and stops, it still doesn´t automatically make the work bad or its beginning "hook-less". It may simply mean that, at least for the time being, one´s preferences are incompatible with the work.
I disagree. While the initial impression doesn't doom the product, a bad "hook" or lack of thereof is a significant flaw that should count against it.
Not really, I think. Everything may be ok, as long as it doesn´t make you stop, period.
Writing style may be enough for books. Art direction or quality of writing may be enough for games. For example.
So art direction and writing are your 'hooks' then? Granted intriguing art direction and dramatic events that push the game forward may be enough to to hold ones interest.
I really enjoyed Brazil. Someone else didn´t and stopped watching 20 minutes in. Does it mean Gilliam and co. failed their duty, or not?
The only objective failure here is compatibility check in the "someone else"´s case and I probably wouldn´t be happy if Gilliam and co. would have adjusted their film for the sake of that "someone else".
I and others are not arguing that everyone should have the same viewpoint or should be intriugued by the same thing. Besides, I myself was more referring to the need to learn the game mechanics for 5 hours in order to enjoy the game
I´ll leave other media aside since it would likely unnecessarily clog up the subject.
I don´t think the accent on "duty" to provide hooks in the beginning is all that relevant, really.
I think it is - especially in case of games which are primarly a form of challenge, contests of wits nad skills - not art for the art's sake.
Instead of potentially compromising their work for the sake of using game´s beginning as a showcase for full game or hooking customers right off the bat, developers´ duty should first and foremost be to provide sufficient and honest info about their game externally.
You lost me here. How making things intriguing and interesting from the start could compromise the authors' work? How having non-repetetive, creative stuff to do throughout the experience endangers their vision? And how providing infro externally could protect their achievement?
Customers´ "duty" to themselves should be to check this info out before obtaining the product. And there´s of course also journalists´ duty to inform about these products sufficiently, honestly and independently.
Well, don´t we have a lot of failures here .
Ideally, one should be able to determine if a game is worth investing one´s time to finish it before obtaining the full product.
Ok, you are referring to the misinformation and hype-driven sales policy where while proclaiming that Skyrim is the next best thing since mashed potatoes, only 2% of its buyers are actually going to finish it.
It seems that we are talking about same stuff but on differen layers. Anyway, agreed.
I´m gonna believe you that in the case of Bayonetta the first 15 minutes indeed provide enough info to determine whether the game is one´s cup of tea or not, but I´d say that doing so in the case of cRPGs this tends to be difficult.
For example, in a game that takes player character(s) from level 1 to level 30 and has combat in the spotlight, you usually have to trust developers on encounter design and character development for a while, if the main reason why you started the game were its supposed tactical intricacies.
Of course you won't see full tactical depth of the game 1 hour into it. However, remember that at the start you have only minor grasp of the rulest. If during this first hour of gameplay all you is partaking in repetetive, boring, run-off-the-mill gameplay (e.g. combat) it's odds on that the game won't sport any intircasies at all later on. On the other hand if the combat seems intriguing, let's you use some unconventional mechanics (e.g. combining spells), then chances are it could develop it something awesome.
I´ll give you a counterexample. Planescape: Torment. Now what.
(Not that I personally consider mortuary boring, I really dig it actually, but more than once I´ve seen other people mentioning it as a boring introduction after which the game becomes a lot more fun.)
I wonder if you´ll manage to reconcile this statement in a way other than saying that the people who found mortuary boring, but enjoyed the game afterwards, suck at assessing the game´s qualities .
Well, I was going to use PS:T as the example of good exposition. 2 minutes into the game you have mystery full setup, you are intrigued by the location, your companion, and are eager to learn more about the world. Then you go ask around and learn more about the setting which rewards you with new quests, companions, their history and all. Excellent use of 'hooks' throughout the gameplay.
As for the rest of the topic, I think that, at least nowadays, the main reason why people don´t finish video games isn´t the lack of "hooking material" in the beginning, but simply failure to maintain interest throughout. Developers are actually pretty good at this initial hook business, but the games tend to not live up to them later, repetition probably being the most usual culprit.
Yes and no. I disagree that these days developers are any good at 'hooking-up'. Sure they often start their games with some dramatic events - but they are of no significance to you. ME2 sequence where whole Normandy blows up - is walking across one corridor meant to make me care about the ship being blown off? Or in DA2 a character dying - everyone's acting like you should care except you don't.
I agree, however, that the devs are poor at 'hooking-on'. As I said before - their design decisons are formulaic. They cannot marry discreet elements of the game to form gameplay. You can easily imagine using music and graphics (also art direction) to reinforce the theme in creative fashion creating intricate gameplay. Things like that can turn a simplistic hack&slash into something exceptional (Diablo I). Not today it seems.
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2010
- Messages
- 88