No drama

[Michaël Samyn]

Chris Crawford is always very quick to point out how storytelling in games is primitive because it's not dramatic. I'm a big admirer of Mr Crawford but I'm starting to doubt if this is the best approach. I usually enjoy the non-dramatic realtime existence in games the most. Just being in a virtual world not doing much of anything, and not much of anything happening, is by far my favourite thing in games. Maybe we should just reject drama, and story, and simply embrace realtimeness, Just deliver a scene, a situation, nothing more.

[Kjell]

Preach!

[Jeroen D. Stout]

There can be something a little ironic about the desire for drama. I think games culturally inherits from the very narrow space of 'Big Drama' rather than, say, travelogues, pastorals or character-driven pieces. To some extent, some pieces of drama from the past aren't that dramatic by such standards. At least my experience reading older literature is frequently that of realizing I can calm down and just enjoy the act of reading itself, rather than reading for anything.

Like that, games can be about the pleasure of (inter)acting, rather than interacting for the sake of Big Drama. Not to say they cannot be 'dramatic'; Cheongsam is dramatic in a slow character-piece type of way. There's room for a lot in games but we need some different cultural heritage.

[Mick P.]

This fits a thought I just had regarding your Patreon post of late.

Games are primitive mostly because computers are primitive. We slap semi-photo-realistic skins on them, but that's divorced from their actual primitive nature. We'd be better off if games' appearances matched their primitive nature.

So, no we are nowhere close to Chris' concept, and should just embrace this primitivism for the time being. To every thing there is a season (edited: I don't mean to diminish Chris' approach; problems don't solve themselves.)

(I do worry about gamifying emotion. It's a novel way to make games less accessible. Input based storytelling is an evolutionary dead-end I'm certain. The only inputs that make sense are navigation. That can be navigating a landscape or navigating a tableau and even navigating a narrative, but it cannot alter the narrative and remain satisfactory. It will only satisfy the simple minded.)

[Mick P.]

Like that, games can be about the pleasure of (inter)acting, rather than interacting for the sake of Big Drama. Not to say they cannot be 'dramatic'; Cheongsam is dramatic in a slow character-piece type of way. There's room for a lot in games but we need some different cultural heritage.

What is Cheongsam? If it's a video game it isn't on the digital stores I've heard of or in web search results.

Strikeout: aha. It occurred to me to search these forums for mention of Cheongsam. It looks like it's something you are working on. I also noticed Dinner Date last night.

PS:  Funny "travelogues, pastorals or character-driven pieces" seems like a perfect description of non-arcade video games. If "Big Drama" is more dominant now it's a relatively new development, probably as new as the word "triple-AAA game". Most games that contain drama feel like a ghost town, or a ghost world. How would a travelogue game differ from a pastoral or either from a big drama game? I feel like if there is any kind of game we are drowning in it's colorful quirky gimmicky games. It seems like a lost cause to even talk about those, they seem interchangeable like children's action figures. Drama never enters into them. Games are generally drama deficient, more drama of any kind I think can't hurt, even if it's only implied or suggested, or perhaps even better under the present circumstances.