Monday, September 05, 2011

Debating on Bonus

Over on Game Trailers the most recent episode of Bonus round (a panel discussion show about games) featured two of my favourite game directors, Ken Levine and Todd Howard.

During this episode an interesting debate broke out about story telling in games. Seeing as how my last video blog was about this exact subject, I was quite surprised, and riveted at the same time. Even though the third panel member, David Jaffe, was both long-winded and unsavoury in how he put his thoughts forward, one thing was agreed upon by all three panel members.

Games and movies are not the same thing, if you want to tell a story through cut scenes go make a movie.


I didn't say this explicitly in my video, but I was pointing toward the idea the whole time. Games are all about interaction, not about story. If that wasn't true people wouldn't spend hours playing multiplayer matches, or grinding through levels in MMOs. For that reason interaction should never suffer for the sake of story. Therefore the story in a game should be intertwined with the gameplay, and not presented in a hands off cutscene format.

If your' interested in watching the episode of Bonus Round that this whole post has been about, then check the link below. Sorry but there's no embed code for the video.

Bonus Round With Ken Levine, Todd Howard, and David Jaffe

----CP Out----

1 comment:

wiremu walker said...

man that really was something special ken todd and and david are some of my absolute favourate game developers i remember how amazing exploring rapture was and playing the twisted metal games with my friends when i was a kid not to mention all the hours ive spent on the planet nirn discovering the continent of tamriel completeing quests this one time i killed a mud crab(pretty impressive i know) i cant beleive ive never heard of bonus round before a would have missed this gem of gaming goodness thank you for posting and keep up the good work <3

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