Forgive me if this is a dense question, but why is this choice being presented as an either/or? We have room in the medium for both kinds of experiences, and both have been very successful.

Your two examples, Bioshock and Left 4 Dead, have both been lauded as amazing examples of game design, and the option to play either, both, or neither rests with the individual. So why do we need to determine that one game's philosophical approach to design is preferable to the other's?

A very interesting article. I wrote a paper at university last year about authority on the internet and blogging vs. journalism and all that stuff, and the topic of this article hits pretty closely to that. Interesting stuff.

i found, at least in traditional medias like journalism, while the Internet and online social gathering is a great challeng to the authoritive voices of the media corporations, the media corporations have historically proved themselves to be very versatile. Whenever a new technology comes along, they adapt. So now every news company has it's own website, it's own blogs, it's own youtube tunnel. And the other point that kept reoccurring in readings I did--where do most blogs get their info in the first place? The news companies. So while relations of authority have changed , the media companies are still on top, even if it was a bit wobbly for a while there.

I feel the same will be for games, with 'UGC' being the equivalent of blogging. There's going to be a lot of it, but just as most bloggers are reliant on news networks, UGC developes still need the game in the first place. LittleBigPlanet, for example--you can do whatever you want in it, as long as you can do it with the tools supplied by Media Molecule.

But on the otherhand, the resitrctions put in place by the game developers just make it so much more amazing and intruiging when someone creates something entirely different.

But on the third hand of some crazy three-handed mutant, at the end of the day, who decides what content is more readily distributed than others? The game developer/publisher (ie, with 'Spotlight' levels, etc).

I guess I am in the Spector camp because I like a good story told to me well. I like a game where I can make choices that affect the plot and the characters around me but ultimately, I am aware that the game developer has specifically tailored the consequencesof each of those choices so really, my choice is only superficial.

Ah, I could ramble on about it for ages, interesting stuff.

*Bookmarks article for when he finally goes back to uni to do an Honours thesis*

@Eric:

You are completely right, i think. It doesn't have to be one or the other.. Left 4 Dead is jsut as fun as Bioshock as LBP, etc.

I find it interesting because in literature studies there is always debate over the writer's authority in a work. Like, one camp would argue the writer gets to say how something is and that's it and as the reader you just accept it. The other camp would argue the reader brings their own experiences and presumptions to the work when they read it and interpret it completely differently than the next person.

I think the UGC thing in games is interesting because it is pretty much that authority power struggle between the camps being played out right before us.

Well... that's how I see it.

I agree with Eric; the choice rests on individual designers and players to follow their own visions for what they want to produce and/or play.

As for me, I'm very intrigued by the possibility of games becoming tools for creative expression. Of course, arguably they have been for years; people have thought up their own ways of playing games--challenge runs, minimal playthroughs, exhaustive playing--and just look at all the "Let's Play" videos on YouTube...

Interesting article, however I think it's viewing the situation for games as very black and white.

A game designer is going to create a world with certain rules and limitations and then allow the player certain freedoms to explore that world.

In the example of Bioshock, the world is fairly tightly constrained, in the case of Left 4 Dead the world is very open, but even in a "open" game there are still fundamental constraints which the player must work within.

A game designer has two tasks, and depending on their choices the two will have a diffirent priority. In a game like bioshock, the designer invests most of their time and energy on passive elements of the design primarily to keep the player engaged and believing they contribute to the story, even though the story is quite rigidly scripted. In open games the designer puts a lot less effort into plot but must invest MUCH MUCH more effort into world design so that a players broad range of options will hopefully provide meaningful results in the world. Again, back to bioshock, since the play is much more linear, the designer doesn't have to implement any game elements outside of the plot, they'll just never come up.

And games will fall along a continuum between tightly constrained linear plots, multi branching scripted plotlines, through to open sand boxed loosely plotted games.

The big issue shouldn't be about which is best, for gamers or developers, because both present different options and challenges to both sides. The issue is the potential that some game publishers might decide that one extreme or the other is "better" not in terms of quality of experience, but in some other marketing or profitability sense, and it would be a sad day for everyone if we further erode the diversity of gaming experience available in the name of game publishing economics.

The 'problem' Spector is talking about certainly isn't unique, but has become far bigger with the creation of computer games...

Most forms of 'entertainment' exist purely to TELL stories, such as books, films, music, plays etc., and a large industry exists just to manufacture and distribute them.

Games, on the hand, are about the OPPOSITE. They're about letting players WRITE their OWN stories whist playing the game, and generally competing or co-operating in trying to get the ending they desire.

Computer games, are not quite unique in this respect, but they DO have the most amount of scope in allowing games to encompass BOTH of these in the same product - i.e. both telling a story and letting the player write their own.

The PROBLEM, is that you can't do BOTH at the SAME TIME. They have to take it in turns. Now, because games are about story WRITING, their MAIN focus should be on letting the player have enough influence and power over the story they can create, rather than the story the game is trying to tell them, especially in computer games, where the amount of options that can be given to the player to do so are almost limitless.

Unfortunately, so many people involved in the computer games industry have come there from the normal entertainment industry, and are therefore more experienced in TELLING stories, rather than knowing how to give people opportunities in WRITING them.

This is one of the reasons why so many of the high-end computer games now seem to all about the story being TOLD, rather than the game and game-play experience of the player, and, unfortunately, sometimes to it's detriment.

The fact is, though, is that there is room for EVERYTHING, or at least, there should be. The only thing that matters is exactly what it is that you're trying to make - is it an interactive story, or a game, or some balance between the two?

For Spector to say that story writing, is lazier than story telling, however, only tells me that he doesn't appear to understand GAMES for what they really are. It merely tells me what his own opinion is on what games should be, and I'm sorry Mr Spector, but you're WRONG.

Unfortunately, this outlook doesn't seem to be at all uncommon atm., which I feel does a great disservice to both story telling AND writing as creative media.

In fact, I had a long argument with another person on a forum recently, (who also seems to be involved in the industry), about this very subject: She also said that games, (mainly role-playing games it has to be said), were more about the stories being told, than the ones being written.

I'm sorry, but the definitions of story writing (games) and story telling, are separate and DISTINCT - to try and define either by confusing one for, or involving, the other, is to belittle BOTH.

The only thing you need to decide, Mr Spector, is exactly which one of those it is that you wish to do: tell a story, or let someone write one for themselves, or interleave one with the other, and try and balance both of them out to your satisfaction, (which, yes, a lot modern games now seem to try and do).

To try and say that only one of these options is viable, or a better form of entertainment than the other is simply arrogant, misleading, or a result of misunderstanding about the subject matter. I'll leave other readers and yourself to decide which was the most likely outcome here.

Note: I've been thinking about doing a paper about story writing in RPG's, based upon this subject in reaction to, and following up on the argument I had recently...

Is it me or is that paper looking like a better idea all the time???

"I get it. Say what you will about the BioShock "choice," for example, but we're all learning from the differences in one another's experiences of the same event. Meanwhile, the story of your WoW raid is solely personal, and interesting only to you and your guild."

I completely disagree with this.

I've played Wow -- to use your own examples -- but never reached the raid level. That said, everyone who plays WoW that reaches the level of raiding fights through the same dungeons and experiences exactly the same content that other players raiding will experience. The difference is in the decisions they make in experiencing that content. That content was designed by the game designers -- and you're wrong if you think that that content doesn't require work to design, whereas your article implies that there's no work involved and it's "lazy" design -- and the players make decisions when presented with that content in EXACTLY the same way that two different players in a story-driven game must make their own decisions when confronted with the very same piece of content.

In fact, to use your own examples, when I've asked friends about their decision in Bioshock to save or not save the little girls and then compared that to my own decision, the conversation usually dies after two sentences. "Yeah, I chose not to save them. I wanted to see what would happen." It never goes beyond that. There is never a follow-up conversation about the moral fiber required to make that decision. No one actually cared that deeply about it.

But when one WoW player talks to another WoW player about the raid on Nyx the previous night, there could be a world of difference in their experiences that each player might find enriching. "Whoa, you guys wiped THAT early? We managed to make it through but then someone managed to make just the wrong pull near the end, we were SO close!!"

How is the former somehow more valid than the latter?

"As with most divergent perspectives, it's unlikely that reality will skew solely to one side or another; the rise of social games and user-generated content doesn't mean the author-driven video game will just poof away."

i dunno how anyone sees 'black and white' or 'one or the other' in this article. there's a philosophy polarity but it doesnt demand a single choice. cmon, reading comprehension!