Notgames Forum

Gravity Bone was quite good ... s spy comedy.

The new game
http://blendogames.com/thirtyflightsofloving/

Anyone on this forum tried it? What are your thoughts? Game? Notgame?

Hey! I was just gonna post this! :P

Loved it and I think it is a great example of what is possible by sticking to a notgames attitude. The creator could have so easily added combat and ruined everything. Would have been interesting to know what his inspirations were.

I would have liked some more interaction to just increase the belivability of the world a bit. But then in a way the game works very well as is. In any case, of interest to note that all interactions in game serve no gameplay purpose and are just there to engage. At the beginning I was sure picking up ammo, etc would be used but it never is and I think that is fantastic.

Also, it is 15 minutes long and has zero fillers. More games like this please! :)

then I have to check it out...

I didn't understand it at all*. But I completely agree with

* Is there a condition like story-blindness? If so, I suffer from it. I just don't get linear sequences. They never make sense to me.

The story is open for interpretation :) There where lots of stuff I did not get either, but I still liked the experience.

I would not call it a linear sequence though, it is more of a random order of scenes.

Also, do a second playthrough with developer commentary on, I found that to be fun.

I thought it was one of the most inspiring things I have played in a long time. The way it was cut together and the way scenes were made really made me think that almost any game of a reasonable pace could be incredibly improved by jump-cutting. I even think that a traditional game, such as Half Life 2, could be improved with jumping between different scenes, in and out of combat, in and out of the car... and it would all be more snappy.

It even offers a solution to the Death Problem that shows in horror games; the moment the monster has almost mauled you, one could jump cut to an unrelated (but complimenting) scene and later jump back, contriving that the monster has not actually caught you. That way you can even turn death into exposition and get rid of things which 'were shown but did not happen'.

What I think Thirty Flights of Loving made me see was that games have been making films in the traditional 'show everything' way, minutely opening doors, crossing the threshold, closing the door - whereas, really, it would be so much more impressive if we got rid of the 'must make sense as one continued experience' stick and gave it a bit of flair. Adding some cross-fades, jump cuts, time cuts, throwing around the story. All, of course, outside of cutscenes.

The airport sequence is brilliant, as is the party, for rapidly jumping forward through time. Suddenly I feel that really making the player descend all those stairs again is not just unimaginative, it is also plain lazy and lacking in aesthetic judgement to make the player suffer through some childish hanging-on-to of 'since conscious moment' acting. Seeing cutting happen makes me feel that not cutting is the strange choice, and suddenly it makes no sense we have not been cutting for so many years.

I am incredibly excited, which is exciting in itself by now ;)

I agree that the cutting is fun in Thirty Flights. And that a lot of games could be improved with it. But I would not completely generalize this. One of the most interesting things about the realtime 3D medium for me is that it allows us to think away the rectangular frame, and consider the art work as an environment, a world, filled with life. Extreme cutting, and other film editing language brings the focus back to the rectangle, back to the frame, back to the representation. Away from the simulation. This is quite fitting for many games I'm sure (especially games that rely on sequences) but not all (truly non-linear environments would be destroyed by it eg, unless, perhaps, the player could control the cutting; but even then, it needs to fit with the aesthetic style and the narrative implications of such cuts -like transition of time).

I agree - it takes control of pacing, framing, &c, away from the player and would only fit a game where that is the intent.

While I would not advocate it, I have been pondering whether you could tell Dear Esther by starting with the fall in the caves, and while you explore those do smooth cross-fades back to the island; occasionally bringing you back into the caves from the 'flashback' of the island. I wonder how this would influence the manner in which the game would run.

I should probably mention I am inching closer to being more interested in games representing reality rather than simulation, so I will impatiently welcome film language used with interaction. I do not advocate rash cutting; I am just startled by Thirty Flights doing it so confidently and getting it right that it is like finding that one spice you never knew you liked, and suddenly wanting it in everything. ;)

Oh did not consider that. Very neat idea indeed!

As Michael says, I do not cutting can be used everywhere, and just moving through non-relevant areas can add huge sense of presence. I am really interested in games that flow on in a single stream as much as possible. That said, designing only this way is a huge problem, because it is hard to find enough interesting locations/interaction over a certain "story-line" (very vaguely meant here), and simply cutting would work. I have only tried it during loading scenes before, where I think it works nicely. But as shown here it seems to work very well inside actual gameplay.
When escaping the airport the cut not only help pacing, it also also opens up the space of interaction / exploration, because it does not really matter where the player choose to go, he just have certain zones that cut to another scene and the player needs to fill out the blanks.

Did you view the commentary Jeroen? If not, do not forget about that

It was entertaining, OK. I am not a fan of the cutting, though. It is put to good use here,
since it was a pretty short experience. But I felt to lose control too often. The game felt
more linear and directed that way. I am okay with it, wish it would have had more substance.
This is the spy/agent/killer story n+1 ... told in a new way. Give me something else...
(I do not mean Zombies). Something I could care more about.

I certainly do not want to have jump cuts in every future game.

It is interesting you put it like that, György, because I think I really liked the technique exactly because it made me less 'responsible' for the end product. Being so directed it gave a clear sign what to do; and being able to 'guess' within a split second what the game expected next was a pleasurable experience for me.

So I very much like a linear and directed experience which allows me to interact in some way. That said, I feel more and more of late as-if games do not as-of-yet have a form of interaction which works well enough to place them on par with film or literature. We are still stuck with 'walking around' or 'choosing an option'; and that combined with a lack of cinematic language (such as jump-cuts) quite makes me feel like games are being held back.

I was just thinking about this discussing a scene in a film with a friend; and he quite knew a way to turn it into a game in which you can 'explore' the scene; but ultimately that would ruin the entire pacing and wit of the scene (in my view). But apart from putting the player on-rails in some way, I am not even sure how to solve this. It needs another form of interaction and a director with a more fluent sense of cinematic language -- which is why jump cuts enthuse me. They solve at least the pacing problem.


It was interesting how unaware he seems of what is special :) I really liked his thinking and the details. And, of course, to discover that the cut-away scenes are indeed populated by clone-characters.

That brings me to the thought of the technical challenges of doing jump-cutting outside of this 'lone first person' format; having rooms with multiple lighting solutions, having the streaming capacity of 'jumping' everything simultaneously across time and, of course, not leaving behind particles of physics objects. And heaven forfend you want to do a cross-fade to 'a few minutes later' in the same space. It is a very interesting series of challenges.

I used jump-cuts in my notgame "Labyrinths". There were 10 labyrinths to explore, each maze had its own content like music, letters, images. The game was jumping around from labyrinth to labyrinth in a very formal way. It was an attempt to mock videogames by trying to emulate film, mocking expermimental short films from the 80's / 70's

Since cuts/jump cuts are taken from a different medium, film, I don't feel comfortable in using them in interactive software.
Some artists like Chung might make good use of it, but I fear the worst for the big developers. They appear to be very
naive, when implementing film techniques into games.

I bet 100:1 that we will have jump cuts in one of the next Call of duty games....
I remember, that Uncharted 3 was cutting seamless vrom one location to the next, without
any loading screen.


cheers,

I also played this the other day and I thought it was certainly one of the better games I've played recently. Only being 15 mins long was a big plus (I think pretty much all games could benefit from being shorter) and the non-linearity of the story and requirement for interpretation were also in its favour.

Jump cuts are hardly revolutionary for videogames since pretty much all older games had them whenever you went to a new level, though I guess that was a bit different due to the loading times and the fact that the games would come to a halt before restarting at these points.

I think that the reason the interpretive nature of the story worked so well was that the game exudes confidence. That makes it so that when there are bits of the story I don't understand I am willing to assume that there is some meaning there and that it's not just nonsense. I'm not entirely sure what it is that makes it seem confident though, lots of detail? detailed idiosyncratic elements? thematic consistency? general consistency? There's something about it...

Boldness.

I don't think you can fake confidence. Unless you're a daredevil.

That is more analogue to changing rolls of film than a 'proper' jump-cut. I had not seen anything like the cuts of going from the party back to the airport before; though I would much like to see a game which has done it.

Yes, the more I think about it the more I realise you are right. I'm sure there must be some games that have jumped from one time/location to another without a loading screen (although I can't think of any off the top of my head) but they always clearly signpost it as a transition with either a loading screen or some sort of "screen effects", it has a very different feel to it.

Well, that seems reasonable for this case :)