The condemnation is a little much, and attacking the man for stating his opinion is unnecessary. But to be fair to the commenters as well, he did start it.

Yes, it’s an opinion piece. He’s got his opinion, and he shared it, and that’s fine. We all love to read someone else writing about something we were just talking about the other day, or just thinking about. You feel less alone when you realize someone out there thinks just like you do, and they’re willing to say it, out loud and in public like this.

But to take the position that your particular flavor of gaming is somehow superior to someone else’s is going a little far. You like a certain type of game. Good for you. That’s fine, we all have our favorites. That yours is somehow the Bastion of Goodness and Light in Gamerdom, and the rest is cancer and rot, that’s going a little far. You’re being derogatory, insulting, and arrogant, without cause or invitation.

It’s a huge leap to go from claiming that you prefer a game with little backstory or exposition all the way to telling someone else that they’re somehow using less of their brain by playing the games they do. They prefer a little something else. Who are you, who is anyone, to tell them how much imagination they invest in the games they play?

I know a man who can argue for hours about the cultural significance of the architecture used throughout Gears of War, what it says about the world that was created, and how that all adds to the atmosphere, and thereby to the game experience. I know another who can be very detailed and precise while he talks about the effect of blending military fact and fiction in the Metal Gear Solid series. These guys are thinking on more levels that some people still have access to, and it’s all invested in the game they’re playing.

There’s a certain breed of gamer that pride themselves on their imagination. On identifying with, on becoming, their character. On living through the game, not just playing it. Gamers who will readily admit to being moved to tears by a Metal Gear Solid, or a Silent Hill game. Gamers who play the games they do for the experience, to get caught up in something huge and bright and exciting.

You could not be more abrasive and insulting to this gamer than to say that his game requires less imagination or intelligence. That he is somehow less creative, or mentally stunted, because he enjoys a different style of game than you.

Games are only getting bigger. The industry is still growing, and is getting more and more attention. There are game types yet to be created, and yes, older ones to learn from. The types of games you like are going to stay, right beside a whole slew of games that you don’t. Find the ones you like, and play them. Let us know what you like about them, even. But for fuck sake, let the guy next to you play the games he likes without you looking down your nose at him.

Oblivion IMO is an example of too much freedom though. Sure you can spend hundreds of hours leveling up and exploring, but after about 3 or 4 hours, I felt a big sense of POINTLESSNESS. What was I doing it for? Completely bland experience if you ask me, I don’t know how it got game of the year besides technical achievements with streaming and scope. But yeah, Final Fantasy, DQ, Dark Cloud, the recent Odin’s Sphere-these are great examples of limited imagination that works.

LBP is definitely a breath of fresh air though, I think it’s PS3’s killer app in fact…

On the one hand… I too look back fondly on the games of old, their limited graphical abilities, shortness of narrative, and simplicity of gaming. But this gave us great game play instead (had to). SensiSoccer on the Amiga, graphically simplistic, audio, rubbish. But by god the game lasted. Yes imagination, game play and light control over the players experience was the standard fare, and we should indeed try to capture and perhaps build upon those early foundations…
BUT…
I also love to play in a movie. What can be better than lush cinematics, great voice acting, and story that you acting within. Yes, my actions may be more controlled, the narrative driving my experience, but that’s okay, because that’s also what I wanted.

Take the movie analogy. Sunday afternoon, it’s raining, you’re halfarsed about what you and the bird fancy doing, oh look, an Arnie movie is showing on the telly, or the first Italian Job, whatever. Bish bash bosh, a couple of hours are dealt with. It’s another leave the brain in neutral, big load of entertaining rubbish. Brilliant.
Now, another time, you fancy a proper movie. What’s it going to be? Apocalypse Now, Heat, Children Of Men?

You’re arguing about a trend of where gaming is running the no brainer route and are worried about it. But that’s okay mate, the gaming world is simply going through a phase. As you said, there are already changes afoot. We’ll soon be able to choose the feel of our games.

What do I feel like tonight?

As a gamer since Invaders I agree with your sentiments. We need a challenge; we need an engaging story line that may be formed as much by our imaginations as by what is in front of us. We do not need to be held by the hand like a movie story line.

Give us freedom to explore and to imagine. Stuff on rails has always been boring to me.

I wasn’t slating the use of storylines in general, rather the use of movie-style narratives within games. It’s interesting that a couple of you bring up the Half-Life series. They were written by a science-fiction novelist, Marc Laidlaw, who did a splendid job of fitting a storyline into the games without making it feel like a movie. He actually said in an interview that with the Gordon Freeman character “We just wanted to create somebody who didn’t get in the way of the player exploring on their own yet feeling like they had a specific role”. This is just the kind of characterisation that allows the 50/50 balance between content and imagination that I’m advocating.

Greg, I’m sorry you think this piece is just a shill for Little Big Planet. Actually, no. I take that back. I don’t really care what you think. It’s not a shill. I just picked that game as an obvious example of one that’s been developed to stretch the boundaries of gaming by bringing imagination back into the picture. I hope there’ll be many more. It’s refreshing for me to know that there are still developers who can think of better things to do with the awesome hardware we’ve got than to just portray sweatier men with shinier guns.

Early games had people coming from a culture where books (without pictures!!!) were commonplace, even the “TV” (in the general way, covering channels to youtube or cameraphone snaps) wasn’t anywhere as ubiquitous.

In a way, marketing has won the battle, there is very little opinion that is vanilla. This opinion included

Cheers

If you guys want an honest readership, start doing some honest writing. Telling me how much Tomb Raider Anniversary is an example of taking lessons from gaming, when in fact it’s a recreation of a ten year old game (and one of the all-time best sellers at that) just for the sake of making LBP look good is more than stupid, it’s shortsighted. I expect more from the stuff I read, and if I want press releases regurgitated at me I can do it in another blog.

Get some integrity, and while you’re at it, some passion.