Of dialog wheels and player-characterization

As part of the run-up and subsequent write-up of my talk on Mass Effect, I've been doing a lot of thinking on the relationship between gaming, narrative, and the status of the "player character." I just read a great post by Greg Rucka on Mass Effect 2, and it hits on so much of what I've been mulling over, and what's currently keeping the Mass Effect series from jumping the barrier between an excellent game and a great work.

First, consider the dialog-wheel. The dialog system is not just a handy way to handle choice structures on an xbox controller, it also expands your storytelling capacity. By selecting only the general gist of your response, and letting your fully voiced Shepard speak for him/herself, you get much more immersive conversations. Longer speeches and exchanges can be made, Shepard can reveal details about the world or his/her background that the player wasn't party to, or shoot an uncooperative criminal in the face. (It makes it a lot easier to be a jerk, as well.) You cede some of your direct control over the character in order to create a more interesting experience. So, while you can decide some of the parameters of Shepard's backstory and psych profile, and you can make the decisions that Shepard takes, there's a slight remove between you and "your" Shepard.

But, and this is what Rucka's analysis really brings out, once you cede any amount of control to the designer/storyteller "the onus is on the storyteller and not the player to fulfill the demands of the character’s journey." And I wish they did more towards that end. Shepard is, perhaps necessarily, the least-defined member of the Normandy's crew. Lots of people will have lots of impressions of what their Shepard will say and do. What the voice actors do is already amazing if you think about all the different variables they're juggling. So I can understand the lack of customized dialog for and reacting to the different choices and personalities you make. But that's not an excuse.

 Mass Effect drives me up the theoretical wall because there are so many things it does so well, it makes us wish it could do the rest, and finally give us something that we could put up on the mantelpiece and point to when asked about why we game. It raises so much potential, so many possibilities, sets our minds racing about the possible ethical quandaries we could be faced with until we realize sadly that, no, the game doesn't actually figure that in. A lot of issues that initially seemed very important were basically hand-waved once you're given a ship and bad guys to point it at. You get precious few chances to express what's really going on with your character.

I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite blog on the Citadel.

Today at around 3pm in San Francisco I'm speaking on the issue of romance in narrative games; specifically, interspecies romance in the Mass Effect series. Yes, it's kind of a weird topic. But if it weren't, it would be out of place at Arse Elektronika, Monochrom's crazy celebration of sex, technology, and all the intersections thereof. This year's topic being "Space Racy," it seemed like the perfect topic. Mass Effect not only takes place out there in space, but games can best be understood critically as reactive spaces for action. There's some really interesting stuff in how Bioware constructs its romances, especially in Mass Effect 2. There's a lot to unpack, but hopefully I can cover it all in 45 minutes.

Anyway, if you're in the area, AE's "conference for brainy pervs" is happening at Parisoma, ostensibly at 3 but possibly later (people tend to run over time.) 

Love on a Wire

This past Sunday, as part of Vienna's Paraflows Conference this year on digital reconceptions of mind and matter, my girlfriend and I gave a talk on the technology and strategies of long-distance relationships. That we were able to jointly give the talk despite the fact that she was in New York at the time is just one more indicator of the futuristic present in which we live.

I'm not going to reiterate the content of the talk here (that can wait for when we write the paper), but based on the comments we got, it presented a good balance of the technical, media-theoretical, and poetic dimensions, just as talk on Long-Distance Relationships ought to. Johannes Grenzfurthner, one of the organizers of the conference (and partner in a LDR himself)  thought it systematized neatly a lot of the observations and stresses he had experienced in his own relationship.

I think it went really well, considering the number of possible technical failures that can happen when you hook up speakers and a projector to carry a skype video call through a netbook. Kudos to the organizers who had apparently upgraded the bandwidth after a failure of that sort of thing last year.

If you're interested in the basic content of the talk, our outline is available at http://www.southwaite.org/love_on_a_wire.html