COLUMN: Alt Space: 'Losing Control'
July 16, 2009 8:00 AM |
['Alt Space' is a regular GameSetWatch-exclusive column by critic and writer Phill Cameron, discussing the relationship between the personal computer and gaming. This time, he's looking at how the unique and diverse control scheme of the PC is pushing developers to ever more ambitious heights.]
Tracer fire sails over my head, a visual reminder of the situation.
'Enemy gunner, to our front, close!' The amalgamated speech patterns add to the surreal atmosphere, but don't make it any less deadly. I search the horizon, trying to find the offending target, pinpoint him, then struggle to remember how to give the order.
It's 2, then 3, I think. No, first it's 1, then 2, then 3? It doesn't matter, the bullet has entered my brain, and my commands are as useless as my leadership. War is hell.
ArmA 2, the startlingly expansive army simulator from Bohemia Interactive, can only be a PC game. There's no way it could work on anything else, not least because of the attitude and unhindered ambition it possesses. It mostly could only work on the PC, because the keyboard is the only thing with enough buttons to cover its complicated order system -- while at the same time allowing you such privileges as an entire button dedicated to climbing over fences, even when the fences aren't around.
It's a testament to the brilliant excesses of what makes PC great. The whole mouse keyboard setup has been trumpeted by gamers as superior since it was introduced, not least for the versatility it provides when moving from word spewer to bullet dodger. It's perhaps the defining characteristic of PC gaming to the outsider, the thing they first encounter when sitting down at a PC to play the game. It's not just a input device, however. It can also dictate how a game works, and how beautifully complicated it can become.
As consoles become larger and larger, games are starting to utilise their control schemes to become fluid and simplistic in the way they handle, creating clever ways to use context sensitive buttons, so one press can mean many things at once.
In the name of saving your fingers a stretch, the same button for jump can also be used to climb ladders, run across walls, and cling to ledges. The confines of the controller dictate how the game plays, on a fundamental level, and it's producing some wonderfully inventive ways of interacting with your games.
The opposite, however, is true of the PC. With over 100 keys to choose from (back of the box quotation right there), the possibilities are near endless, if you start to think of shift and control functions altering the purpose of keys.
It means that, when the developers start to make their game, they don't have to worry about the limitations of the interface, knowing that, if all else fails, they can always assign the compass to K, even if that's a bit of a stretch to all but the pianists. The keyboard is the friend of ambition, and ArmA 2 is the testament to that, in all its surrealist, broken glory.
The example may grow tired, but ArmA 2 also demonstrates the flip side of the coin, where systems grow convoluted and counter-intuitive. Squad commands are assigned to each of the number keys, with each one tending to a different aspect of how your men can fight. Coupled with this is the quick menu, which resides in the space bar, which has the most simple and contextual commands accessible.
Problem is, with so much to choose from, in the middle of a firefight your brain shuts down, and you can hardly remember where your men are, let alone remember which number corresponds to sneaking around behind the enemy force to take them by surprise. You just default to letting them take care of things, and hope you're not too useless. Perhaps it's an issue of technology. The single key presses I can remember with no problem, like how to climb over fences, or throw myself into the prone position. Little thought is necessary when it's my survival I need to think about, but when it's ordering around three slightly stupid bots, confusion sets in.
Playing with friends, and this problem disappears; I can tell them what to do using my voice, that wonderfully intuitive input device, and they can instantly understand me. Maybe Tom Clancy's EndWar was the step in the right direction when there's so much that needs to be said, but only so many buttons to say it with.
The point that's emerging from the mist like the Flying Dutchman is this: ambition is hindered by limitation. ArmA 2 is the living proof of that, but it would've been even more heavily neutered if it had tried to fit itself to the considerably more limited confines of the Xbox or Playstation controllers.
That it exists is down to the keyboard, and the versatility of the platform that is the PC. In the coming months, as it's modded, patched and refined, it will undoubtedly become easier and easier to use, until it loses all those little quirks that pull you from the experience.
I don't fault it; that I can't order my men around doesn't change the fact I'm in absolute adoration of the ability to complete military objectives with almost no restraints put upon myself, bar the ethical and legal ones a soldier faces. I'm thankful that it even exists at all, and that the PC is there to support it.
It's the same reason RTS games have found a home on the PC for so long, able to use the skills people accumulate moving around windows and clicking on icons to command troops and manipulate their battle lines. Developers taking advantage of what we already know, to teach us something we don't, is what gaming is all about.
[Phill Cameron is a regular writer at The Reticule, a PC gaming website. You can contact him here, and follow him on Twitter here.]
Categories: Column: Alt Space
7 Comments
Not having a personal experience of my own with this game - and I seriously doubt that I will ever have one - I can assume that Arma2 is nothing close to a simulator of the army, the army life or actual battle.
War is too often portrayed in the pure form of a game, considered by these game developers as something one can build an inconsequential simulation from, as one could do from the rules of sports for instance. I'm sure that the first real war simulator would prove to be an experience that the majority of the videogame playing audience would not care to play. And in what way does this lack of appeal enable these studios to create products that portray this horrible act of mankind as a meaningless exercise of strategy on the battlefield, of target practicing and squad command issuing?
These games approach War in a carefree fashion as if the simulation consisted of a friendly paintball session: free of consequence, subjective perspectives, emotions and serious health repercussions.
Amazingly, a great number of people play these increasingly realistic games whose visual and aural semblance to the actual combat has grown exponentially from the early days of "Tank", "Contra" or "Green Beret"; while the reality of War, the tragedy, the death, the pain and trauma remain at the same tactless and absurdly infantile level.
Moreover, some people actually think these watered down versions of War for entertainment purposes are "fun". Others think that War is something not serious enough and therefore it can be stripped down to a level when it becomes an amusing pastime - an acceptable exercise of military propaganda, even.
Do these games teach anything about War? About the ideologies that lead to it, about the interests that move it? About the system of politics, society and economics? They promote a culture of weapon worshiping and remorseless assassination where a straight shot to the head is rewarded and praised by the very game as an achievement.
dieubussy | July 16, 2009 2:40 PM
@teach anything?
whichever ww2 game it was that had me in the normandy beach attack was pretty educational -- just getting killed over and over until i found cover. started to appreciate that luck+skill each in massive quantities at the right times were the only thing that would get somebody out the other end alive.
war sucks ass.
Raoul Duke | July 16, 2009 2:44 PM
@dieubussy
Such a misguided argument. I'm not really sure you've played a game or not, and that lends itself to the possibility that you're some sort of moral guardian imposing themselves on a topic they know little about. Simply put, gamers are not morons. They understand the difference between war and a game, and know that the experience they're dealing with is not realistic. Furthermore, there are plenty of war games, just like movies, that delve into the politics, the ideologies, and the interests. Please quit polluting this nice article with your refuse.
Haplo | July 16, 2009 4:22 PM
I've been playing videogames for over 20 years now. Any (war)game you can think of I've either played it or watched someone playing it. I'm even acquainted with some industry people related to companies designing many of these war games. Want to exchange résumés?
I found it interesting that you assumed I didn't play videogames because I have a sense of moral and a sensibility of my own. That in itself is… revealing, at least.
One good War game? Some did quite well: Defcon (yes, Google it) is a great game about War because it is actually created by intelligent game designers. Not Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, Battlefield or Arma. Gamers might know the difference between reality and fiction. Some might, I agree.
But the creation of a game where war is depicted as a sport is a deplorable act in itself, not to mention it is an affront to the very reality of war. The bigger the effort to reproduce the equipment and battlegrounds of actual conflicts, the more lamentable it becomes.
If I was in the US Army training newly recruited soldiers I’d use many of these games to sensitize them as it could lead them into believing that the war scenario can also be entertaining: go ask the some of the Gulf-War II soldiers that returned if they still play Counter-Strike now.
Some of these videogames teach you military history, at best, and most of the times they present meaningless encyclopedic facts that are biased most of the times – as an Historian, I grieve over that too. Conflicts where western nations were successful like the WW2 are permitted; but, and to prove the point of how biased these games are, where is the game about the desperate Iraqi solder trying to fight for his beliefs against the American invasion? Or the Japanese soldier invading Pearl Harbor?
Oh, I’m sorry, those are the "bad guys", the "chinks" and the "nazis" and the dark skinned "terrorists". (I'm ashamed of how videogames deal with these matters). These studios don't create games about War; they make partial simulations based on interests. Yes, I know this allegation upsets many a couch soldier.
dieubussy | July 17, 2009 2:58 AM
I must side with dieubussy on this one. My brother was in Iraq two years serving the US Army and came back about eight months ago. We used to love playing combat games like Command and Conquer... man I still remember the night when America's Army was made available: we played in turns for six hours straight.
I noticed how little and little we stopped playing those war games like Counter-Strike or Unreal. It didn't happen from one day to the other... it was gradual. But everytime I'd challenge him to play he'd go "not in the mood now bro" and stuff like that. I guess he learned what it was really all about and I through him. I guess he knows what it means to put a bullet through another persons body, guilty or innocent. These games never taught me that, they never even tried.
So yes it's clearly absurd now I know that. I used to enter this simulations free of guilt and actually have fun doin it with friends. But now I'm not so sure these games should exist as they tell a very primitive version of these awful conflicts. They don't depict real war at all, just the part the army wants us players to see. Go watch an Errol Morris documentary instead.
TheDave | July 17, 2009 8:20 AM
This is why I stick to science fiction, racing, sports, and fantasy games.
I too have a "sense of moral and a sensibility of my own." Shooting someone in CoD just doesn't appeal to me because I've seen people getting killed. I happen to live in one of the most dangerous cities in America (Tijuana, Mexico).
The same goes for sick games like Manhunt, and horror movies like SAW. They are fun as long as you never get to see the real thing.
Rommel | July 17, 2009 10:20 AM
@ Rommel
I've heard about Tijuana, a friend of mine got mugged on a business trip there just some years ago. Anyway, yours seems like a very sane point of view.
@ The Dave
Dulce bellum inexpertis.
Yours is a sad story. And even those who've never experienced these events as a part of their reality, I say we live in a time where a global conscience is stronger than ever: we're constantly being informed of what is happening everywhere, we have endless information about the present state of affairs in most countires. Personally I can't stand the thought of having fun and laughter when playing a silly war simulation when across the globe there's actual people suffering its consequences.
dieubussy | July 17, 2009 1:04 PM