Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

What kind of game is system shock? I've heard lots about it, and I hear its pretty good. Is it a FPS? or is it more liek FPS RPG like Deus Ex.

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

It's an FPS/RPG/Survival-Horror.

Seriously, it's pretty hard to place the game in any sort of genre. It's played from a First-Person Perspective, but is much less action-oriented than an FPS. There are similarities to Deus Ex in the game interface and character development, although not in the way that the character determines the plot in Deus Ex.

That, and it's one scary game. (Although there are many and frequent arguments about why the first game is better and vice versa.)

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

Theres a store around here that has a copy of System Shock 2, should I just go ahead and buy/play it, or should I try and play System Shock 1 first?

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

No need to buy- Home of the Underdogs has it for download.

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

You should definately buy System Shock 2... it's usually pretty cheap, and definately worth it. You don't need to play the first to enjoy the second by any means. The first is hard to find, and also very hard to get running... I actually have a cd version of the original, but can't figure out a way to run it well enough on any of my computers. It kindof runs on a few of my old ones, but the framerate looks really jerky... does anyone here know if that's just part of the game's old technology, or is there a way to get it to play smooth at all?

And.. as far as I can tell, bioshock is still a long time, maybe years away... and I'm already looking forward to it. Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3 have taught me nothing.

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

System Shock 2 is one of my top twenty as well - definately a step in the direction I'd like to see FPSs headed (too early to tell if Bioshock is another step in that direction).

One question though - am I the only one who doesn't think 'emergence' is the future of gaming? I mean, sure it's fun to play in a sandbox for a while, but doesn't it get old after a while? Guess I'm just a story guy.

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

That's funny, I'd always heard of emergence used to describe something being played in a way other than it was designed to - people attempting to do things that hadn't been intended by the programmers, not in a way that breaks the game, but in a way that turns it into a different experience - although I should have guessed that wasn't the correct meaning, I mean, how on earth can you try to have players doing things you didn't expect them to?

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

I guess emergence is just one of those things that's a little too nebulously-defined to be comfortable for me - as in the example you used with go, or chess, the idea of strategies that players make up within the framework of the designed rules seems so natural that it doesn't need a word to describe it. After all, isn't that just how games are played?

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

I see what you're saying (and that was an excellent powerpoint presentation, although I assume it would have been less dry if I'd seen him give the speech), but I still think there's an element of over-intellectualizing going on, and a bit of forced mystification as well.

When they define it as your program doing something that surprises you, I can more see what they're talking about - really, I feel like emergence is more something for developers than for players - as in your doom example. Now, while it might be a little surprising for the player, it's not like the player is figuring out something that the designers didn't specifically put in there - after all, enemies being able to hurt one another was coded into the game's program. And the fact that certain enemies will attack comrades that attack them, while others will not, also had to be coded in - since it's a hard-wired, intended part of the gameplay, it doesn't feel like 'emergence' in the way they discuss it. While the player has to 'discover' the 'trick', it's still just another specifically designed gameplay mechanic. In fact, there are a few places in the first levels of Doom and Doom 2 where the enemy layout makes it impossible not to observe this happening.

Which is what I mean when I say that emergence is more about the developers than the players. They're the ones who notice AI quirks such as the enemies shooting one another (if it wasn't, in fact, intended specifiacclly from the beginning), and it's fresh and new and interesting to them, so they design sequences in the game to feature this quirk, and it becomes just another part of the gameplay, maybe not expected by the player, but intended by the designer. A good example of this is the 'TK Surfing' in PsiOps - I believe that the designers didn't anticipate the combination of havok physics and psychic powers would enable the main character to float around atop boxes, but once they did discover it, they rejiggered the level design so that it had to be used to solve puzzles - it's no longer 'emergent gameplay', it's just another mechanic.

Sure, every now and then there's a bit of truly emergent gameplay, one that players discover and they game hadn't been changed to take advantage of, like the oft-discussed wall-mine ladders in deus ex, but in those situations the 'emergent gameplay' usually amounts to little more than a cute easter egg. After all, what's the point of being able to climb a building or hover up a wall if there's nothing up their to find?

To me it seems that emergence is something that's more for developers than players - they're the ones who experience these unexpected things, and have the time to polish them from quirks into features. Frankly, I'd rather my games be full of features planned for me than odd quirks for me to discover.

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

Oh, I think you'll find I'm as anti-intellectual as they come. :)

Intellectuals have a way of swooping into a field and sucking all the joy out of it. Feeling the intense need to quantify and name and categorize all the little details that make something wonderful and unique and special until they've been reduced to a series of impenetrably-named concepts. And it breaks my heart to see them turn their dark eye to a medium that I know and love. I mean, 'ludology'? I can't imagine a more alienating name for the field.

And this is a perfect example of how it works - they take a simple concept like "We want game mechanics to feel natural, so that when players try a strategy that works in real life, it will work in the game" and they saddle it with a name like 'emergence', a name designed to make the people using it sound smart (an accusation I level at any academic term that inspires nothing in the mind of a well-edjucated adult other than the desire to track down a dictionary), and then go on to explain it in the driest, most alienating way possible.

Obviously you're not doing this, and this back-and-forth has allowed me to understand just what emergence is because you've used practical examples (although, let's face it, it took me way longer than it should have... :confused: ) - but I still feel that 'emergence' really is the field of pretentious game developers, and here's why:

If you told an average gamer that emergence was the new paradigm or trend the gaming industry needed to follow to stay relevant and realize the medium's potential, you'd have to spend a good amount of time explaining what emergence is, and provide them with complex examples, and they still wouldn't understand exactly why the term 'emergence' represents that idea. But if you were to forget about labels and overcomplication and just tell them the 25 word explanation I wrote above, or your 25 word explanation, they'd probably just respond 'Well, duh - isn't that what all games are trying to do?'

This 'emergence' is a natural, obvious thing, and it's being buried under a mountain of off-putting jargon and over-analysis. Most gamers just assume that as games get higher-tech, they're going to get more and more natural until we're all playing in holodecks - they don't need it explained to them, and it doesn't really need to be studied - it's one of those things that just is.

For now, anyway ;)

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

Danny, I think you've not quite grasped the meaning behind emergence and how it can be applied, but a part of that can be attributed to Moron Lite's not-quite-perfect description of its meaning (though his second post came closest to it). Can't say anything about the powerpoint presentation, and don't care to read it at the moment.

Perhaps a better example would come from Conway's Game of Life. Not technically a game (Aarseth and Juul, for instance, classify it outside of that set), but it can be 'played' if you enjoy a 'sandbox' more than narrative.

Briefly: You are presented with a grid of boxes ('cells'). You create the initial conditions by selecting which cells are 'alive.' Others are left 'dead.' By pressing a button you can advance the world by one generation, or set it to auto-play by continuously advancing generations. The rules are simple: In each successive generation, a cell stays alive or comes alive if it has two or three neighbours that are alive. Any fewer than two or any more than three and the cell is dead the next generation.

By starting with a simple '+' pattern you can evolve some fantastic crystalline shapes in a few generations. Others might fall into three or four generation loops that will cycle perpetually as long as there is no interference. Others still will become stable, immutable, unchanging: a two-by-two square is a prime example of this. As you might expect, however, most starting worlds will result in complete extinction (loneliness or overpopulation) in fewer than 100 generations.

None of this has yet to deal with emergence. These are all expected consequences or outcomes of the simply defined rules.

Amazingly, there are at least two known simple patterns called 'floaters' that transverse the world across generations. They will never die without interference, they may never find the same location twice, and they will repeat their three-to-seven generation cycles that keep them moving, nomadic tribes crossing their world. Even more incredible is that patterns can be created that are best described as 'floater guns.' A bizarre set of initial conditions allow cascading patterns to converge, coalesce, release a floater as if in radioactive decay, and from this morass reverse their direction of flow, looping back to whence they came, and stimulating another floater to be born when they reach their origin. Furthermore, these emitted floaters can, on crossing the world, collide with another seemingly abstract pattern to trigger the construction and bootstrap another set of floater guns into beginning their sisyphean task.

That is emergence. Some very simple rules that anyone can toy around with -- all that's needed is some paper and a pencil -- out of which are born unexpected, complex, and unintended behaviours; actions and reactions that on discovery make basic tenets suddenly and vastly more interesting.

Edit: Despite the amount of hype surrounding this term of late, I personally do not believe any videogame (one which we can all agree is a game) has demonstrated any proper sort of rule-based surprises that can properly be termed emergent behaviour.

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

"Emergence" isn't defined as "making mechanics feel natural" though, rather its a method of making them feel natural, or consistent and logical, rather, as they don't necessarily have to trace their inspirations to real life. Designers can probably still script everything they want to happen in a game and still have it feel as natural as any "emergent" game that has yet come out. I don't know whether or not doing so would be more or less work based on todays standards, but I do believe that as emergent systems get more and more complex and interesting the predominantly scripted approach will become unfeasible. Scripting will never go away completely of course, but I think the balance will/should shift towards the emergent end of the spectrum over time.

In a sense I guess I agree with you that emergence is a field of more interest to designers than players. Afterall, the player doesn't care why his games feel more natural, just that they do. But the proponents of emergence aren't being pretentious with all their categorizing and quantifying, they're trying to make their case to the rest of a very stubborn industry that they have a better way of accomplishing a large number of gaming's common goals.

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

I'm having a little trouble following this discussion. Every example of "emergence" given so far is basically something you can do that wasn't intended. An accident. How could anyone deliberately put that in a game? Not to mention make sure that none of these possibilities "break" the game?

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

I think emergence is a lot more unpredictable than scripting though, because you're opening doors rather than closing them (or am I wrong in that assessment?). I would think the chances for a "gamebreaker" to be discovered would be higher in a game that focused on emergent gameplay as opposed to a heavily scripted one.

And I kind of understand what you're saying about accidents/harnessing/surprising. I was just wondering more or less how someone could intentionally take advantage of emergence while still ensuring (as best as possible anyway) there won't be any "breaking" going on.

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

You see, I think the problem here is that I, like a lot of people, judge a group mainly based on my personal experiences with them, and it seems that I've only met and read the books of the bad ones (partially my fault for studying literature and film...) - so when I talk about a hatred for academics, I'm guessing I'm really talking about all the ones who have wasted my time with their redundant over-analysis of films, books, and now video games. Just like when I talk about a dislike for schizophrenic people who don't take any medication, I'm really talking about the kind of unmedicated schizophrenic people who attack strangers on the street :)

You're right though, academics do provide a valuable service most of the time - a valuable enough service that some of them get it into their heads that they have to go looking for material in places that they really shouldn't be - this wouldn't be so bad, if other teachers didn't then take those useless theories and books and teach them to a whole new generation as fact, rather than one person's theory - it's really the people who misuse this type of thinking that I'm talking about - too bad then, that the ranks of the academics working in the arts seem full to bursting with the bad kind.

As for dicitonaries, my distaste for them comes from my unwillingness to support the work product of murderers :p

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

*tsktsktsk*

Dude, you just have to realize it just is worth waiting for something that'll be less than they originally promised. This past year (was it?) has definitely taught me that, what with Deus Ex 2, Thief 3, and then Fable. It's much easier on the heart to be all curmudgeonly and not expect much, then be pleasantly surprised. :)

Btw, that doesn't mean I'm not "looking forward" to games anymore, but I'll be damned if I believe they'll be the "end all be all" of anything, anymore.

As for this whole emergence spiel going on:

I consider myself fairly smart, but frankly, I have trouble with jargon. Ludology and critical theory are the two particular areas within which the jargon used, and discussions about, seem particularly difficult for me to grasp.

The comp here at work (and at home *sigh*) won't show the PowerPoint presentation, so can anyone out there point me to a kindergartner's version of the "argument" y'all are trying to make. (God, I hate this all makes me feel so stupid :o , but I refuse to give up.)

Oh, and one quick question: What's the relationship between ludologists and ludites (if there is one)? Because the root is the same, it's always perplexed me.

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

Moron,

Thanks for the vow of helpfulness. Yes, I'm sure Kant can give me a great "view" of critical theory, since that's his doctoral focus. (Is that even how you say that?) My best friend, though he does not live in the same city as I do, is also a critical theorist. So, yes, I'm certainly inundated with the ideas. Just sometimes I have to tell Rob, "Speak English already!" *lol*

I really meant I need further help with this whole ludology crap.. I mean study. :p And I'm sure you, ior, lemmy, kant (do you study that too?), and a host of others can give me a hand. BUT, pretend you're talking to a stupid person (almost), because the language is circular in that those areas use jargon only commonly found within its particular study to explain itself. They often, I've found, forget to use terms of typical speech to explain the more complex and convoluted ideas within. Does that make sense?

And as for the "luddite" / "ludite" question. Oops. A mere letter difference means quite a lot, doesn't it? :eek:

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

Well, before all this I thought "emergence" was just a bunch of crap. Every game I've seen that's been cited as an example of emergence has been pretty underwhelming.

But now I think it's not totally garbage. Just completely over-stated. A few of us GCers (yes, YOU MLite :p) tend to come off sounding like it's the only way for games to go in the future and quite frankly, I think that's BS.

Oh, and a question. Would DDR have any place in this discussion? I imagine it didn't begin right where it is now, and I also imagine a lot of it's evolution is owed to the way players used the game in it's many incarnations.

Re: New! From the makers of System Shock 2...
 

I think you guys got off on the wrong foot by trying to explain emergence as something designers "don't expect" players to do. Emergence is self-explanatory. It just means that something--an event or series of events--emerges from the rules of the game. When I crash a car and get arrested in GTA because of the combination of physics and cop AI, that's emergence. When I watch a cinema of the exact same thing happening, that's not emergence. Emergence is anything that emerges out of the system of the gameplay, including it's flaws. When a player exploits a bug that's also emergence. An easier way to say "emergence" might be "unpredictability" for some.

Emergence is a pretty easy concept to understand in games. I wasn't coined by academics but designers trying to understand their craft. It occupies about the same level of jargon as "mechanic" or "gameplay."

There's a debate in the industry (which spills over into academia) as to whether or not emergence can be used to create stories. This is where discussions of emergence can become complicated or confusing, but don't judge the term based on these debates alone. It exists utterly by itself as a cornerstone of what makes games games.


-Matt