Anyone who wants to argue that the video game industry isn't seriously sexist (and just about any other -ist you can think about) ought to spend a little time watching this fake ad for the Wii, which appeared on the G4 network. Oh, and the game industry says it's all about grrl gamers...right. And, don't get me started about the Ubisoft-backed Frag Dolls. Ugh.
There is, however, a great article in this month's The Atlantic about attempts to create immersive environments in which characters actually respond to your words. Facade, a freeware "interactive drama" from Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern, is a pretty engaging first attempt. They're hoping to push the genre of these environments.
“There’s no drama genre, there’s no comedy genre,” Andrew Stern told me recently. “What exists right now are action movies, basically.” He might have added: silent action movies. The video-game industry’s annual trade show in Los Angeles, called the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3 for short, is one of the loudest places I have ever been. Also one of the most silent.I've tried out Facade and found it...well, interesting. It is more of an environment, rather than a game per-se, but I'm glad folks out there are actually trying to push the boundaries of video games far past the stereotypical point-and-shoot action genre.
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It was only after I left the hall that I realized there was something odd about all the noise. The thunderous sound effects were masking the absence of conversation. In real life, much of what’s interesting involves talking to people. The characters in games could deliver scripted lines like “I’m ready to kick some ass!” or drop prerecorded comments on the action, but conversing with me or each other was completely beyond them. It occurred to me that if video games seem inhuman, that is because they lack humans. Their esoteric syntax is an artifact of a stunted environment in which blasting someone’s head off is easy but talking to him is impossible.A month later, I asked Andrew Stern what he thinks of E3. “I shake my head a little,” he replied. “All this effort and money being poured into all this derivative and uninspired work. I’m bored and slightly disgusted.”
