{"id":26480,"date":"2015-04-14T15:37:05","date_gmt":"2015-04-14T20:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=26480"},"modified":"2015-04-14T15:37:27","modified_gmt":"2015-04-14T20:37:27","slug":"experienced-points-5-things-to-do-if-you-use-cutscenes-in-your-video-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=26480","title":{"rendered":"Experienced Points: 5 Things To Do If You Use Cutscenes in Your Video Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

My column this week is a list of ways in which games are failing in their attempts to be movies<\/a>. Last week sort of descended into an argument over whether games should be trying to tell a fixed narrative at all, so this time I thought I sidestep that by coming at it from a different angle: If you’re going to make a game-movie, then you at least need to get the movie parts right.<\/p>\n

Some people have mistaken my story-nitpicking for a position that story is paramount. That’s not really the case. I just strongly believe that whatever story we do get should be serviceable. This is actually kind of challenging for a lot of reasons. You just can’t get away with things in a ten hour game the way you can in an hour and a half. Movies are usually consumed in a single sitting. But if a story-driven game can be consumed in a single session it’s considered a huge failure, or at least a bad valueAssuming we’re talking about full-price AAA games, here.<\/span>. Games are consumed over the course of days, with long breaks between sessions. That gives the audience a lot of time to think about, replay, and discuss the plot. Details that might be glossed over in a movie will become major sticking points in a game. <\/p>\n

Worse, we’re a little more picky about character actions when we’re the ones driving. If Commander Shepard works with Cerberus in a movie, I might argue that it’s out of character or dumb, but it’s not nearly as infuriating as being forced to push the buttons to work with Cerberus even though I can see it’s clearly a stupid idea. It’s the difference between seeing someone else fall for a prank, and being the unwilling victim of an obvious prank that I saw coming a mile away. <\/p>\n

But game developers seem to be going out of their way to give us the worst of both worlds. They insist on ramming movie-like structures down our throats, but then they slap the story together all half-assed like it doesn’t matter. <\/p>\n

Further note: I think it’s time for another mailbag column, so if you have a question for the column then askshamus@gmail.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My column this week is a list of ways in which games are failing in their attempts to be movies. Last week sort of descended into an argument over whether games should be trying to tell a fixed narrative at all, so this time I thought I sidestep that by coming at it from a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-column"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}