Notgames Forum

I found this Half-Life commentary very interesting. It has some really good points to think about, not just for the Half-Life series...

http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/?p=151 (http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/?p=151)

Good stuff!

I thought his reformulation of the film (and writing) rule of "show, don't tell," into "do, don't show," for games was an interesting idea.  I'm not totally convinced it should be looked at as a rule, but I am intrigued by the thought process and to the implications for the game medium in relation to other more traditional media.

I'd say it works as a rule for games about as well as "show, don't tell" works for linear storytelling. It's a nice adage, but in truth any story that attempts never to tell is going to be long, complicated and inaccessible. I'm not sure such a story even exists - yeah okay, I guess there are stories with so little actual content than they can survive just indicating all of it, and some of those do work. My point is, I think it's a sweet ideal to "do, don't show", but in practice most games need their fair share of not only showing, but also telling, in order to make sense to its audience.

Can't watch the video right now, so maybe I got it all wrong... Just going by the idea of "do, don't show" that I've come across earlier.

Well, the way I see it after studiying cinema is: "you should show wheneaver you can". Sometimes you can´t avoid telling to comunicate effectively some information to the audience, but if you can show it instead of telling it, it becomes much stronger. The best example is Hichcock´s first shot from "Rear Window" in which he introduces the character, setting and situation in just some seconds.

So I guess we should think "make the player do wheneaver you can", as it should be stronger both emotionally and dramatically forcing the player to do something rather than forcing him to watch it.

I agree that showing produces a stronger effect. Facts you've put together yourself stick with you, and scenes you've created in your mind are a lot harder to defend yourself against than scenes you've actually seen. At least for me, that's the psychological reality behind the saying. But for that reason, I'd go with "show when it's important" rather than "show when you can", and using it as a tool for focusing the telling. Otherwise you might waste the audience's cognitive resources on stuff that doesn't really matter.
As for do, don't show, I think the effect is similar. By letting the player act out the action herself without heavy-handed guidance from the game, the action becomes more personal and more real. But it's also taxing in a way that most audiences aren't comfortable with, and so you'll need to dumb it down here and there. Does that make sense to you?

I agree that the saying is too simplistic to be useful at an advanced level.  Obviously you don't show (or do) everything or else your work will be very tedious.  In fact, that's one thing that games have been having a lot of trouble with - lots of tedious running around and searching useless nooks and crevices which is boring and ruins any attempts at pacing.  A novel would get around this with a sentence, "not finding the Orb of Omnipotence in any of the ruined walker hulks, Shenana ran the 10 miles to the next checkpoint," but games have not really solved the problem yet very well.

I guess my takeaway, though, is to remind us of what the strength of our medium is and to deliberately find ways to apply it to the most important actions and themes in the project.  Look at the climactic part of your experience and ask yourself, "Can I put more doing into this experience?  Are there more doing mechanics I can add that will drive this home harder?"  Or similarly make conscious decisions during the initial design process to match up your strongest doing game mechanics with your most cherished theme.  Basically just recognize your strongest tool and make sure it is used as impactfully as possible.

As a bonus, when we decide something does not deserve our strongest tool, we have both showing and telling still available to us.

I like the idea of "do, don't show" as long as the CPU can also "do" things, not just the player.

I like that the idea of conveying meaning through action instead of depiction completely invalidates virtually all game mechanics ever created. I think it's a step in the right direction (of video-games as media, rather than games) if we think of all activity in the game as contributing to the expression. Usually, activity in games is part of the structure to "keep you busy" while the story happens in the graphics and the sound.

But, reiterating my comment above, I do feel that the CPU's activity is equally important as the player's activity. Inter-activity is the process between those two, it's not about simply giving control to the player.

The "Show, don't tell" thing (or do, don't show) is a good idea, but I'd say that the important thing isn't to show as much as you can, it's to be selective over what you show (//do) and to show whatever fits most with the effect you're going for. For example, if you were to follow it strongly, (the no telling one, that is) then everytime someone remembered something you would show it explicitly. But often it would be more effective to show the person telling about their experiences since, while you may be telling the information, you get to hear their interpretation of it which can be loaded with their emotion and coloured by their memory, and you can see how they react to thinking about it and hearing themselves say it. This could be much more powerful, depending on what you're trying to achieve. As this applies to videogames, it doesn't matter if some things are shown to you rather than you doing them, as long as what you're doing is more powerful and interesting than what you're shown (which is is the part most videogames fail at). Also, it's probably desireable for what you're shown to relate to what you're doing (which videogames are a little better at).

I didn't read all the previous posts before writing this and it appears what I've said is similar to what Chris and Hugo said. Oh well.

I also have comments on the video itself.

The first thing that seems off is that he claims (in the writing under the video) that he's trying to find fault with the half-life series. Nothing's perfect, so you can find fault with anything if you try. The faults not being noticable is as good as it's going to get so if they have to be looked for then they probably don't matter too much.

His whole Gordon Freeman being designed to seem godly and to make the player feel good is also not a fault with half-life, it's actually probably one of its strengths. Contrary to what he says, it isn't particularly overbearing (at least, I didn't find it so) and it's a perfectly valid design choice (one that's done very well in this instance). On the other hand, the fact that pretty much all games do this is somewhat of a problem, not so much with the games themselves, more with the people who create and consume them for not demanding variety. It's not a fault with half-life, but with video game culture.


His issues with alex vance are also not that great. She comes across as being quite nice to everyone, little is said about her past relationships to my knowledge, contrary to the assumptions made in the video, and if you knew someone had singlehandedly fought off an alien invaision and saved loads of scientists, I think you might look up to them and perhaps even be a little smitten. It's true that she's not an amazing character, but I've never seen anyone argue that she is (perhaps I just don't read enough attempts to glorify the half-life universe).


Complaining about variety is complete nonsense.


And complaining about having no effect and that "I didn't cause these events, I have no choice in how the world is saved"* is somewhat contradictory to the fist part which is full of clips of people revering you and aknowledging your existence. That's quite a bit of effect. And then lots of what you do is destroy things that no one else does. In the video itself there's a clip of some soldiers saying that now you're here they can finally make some headway. How is that not making a difference?


I do quite like the analagy of valve being the gman though, and the linear train tracks metaphor thing.


*quoted from memory