Blog - More on Jericho and Games...

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

So, now having seen the first episode of the new season of Jericho, I've got some further thoughts that I'll toss out there as relevant to games:

I don't want to spoil the major cliffhangers from the end of season 1 for if you haven't seen the show. However, let's just say the town is gearing up for a big, high-tension event full of potential conflict.

Well, the new season skipped ahead and starts us after said event has already occurred.

This bugged me:
1.) Stories feed on conflict, and the show just gave away a huge well of conflict without even really using it. They draw conflict from the event's aftermath, certainly...
But dude, they could have really pulled an entire season out of this one event. Instead they skipped it entirely. That's a damn risky move for a storyteller to make, but for the most part I can see that the show has enough directions to still take and enough new conflicts that it won't matter. THAT brings me to:
2.) In film/television, there's the saying "Show, don't tell", and although they showed at least bits and pieces, overall by jumping ahead in time, they essentially just told us what happened rather than show it.
Even though the show is doing fine enough despite skipping that event, I was dying from anticipation waiting for the show to return so I could see where they would take that particular plot twist. I wanted to see the action. And... I didn't get to see it. I got to see SOME action, but it wasn't the action I was looking for. It was like if someone was reading you a story and skipped over the part you most wanted to read.

In games, the saying is changed to "Do, don't show," or in other words "Let the player do it."
If this was a game instead of a TV show I would have wanted to PLAY that action. Games tend to get so wrapped up in being stories that all too often they forget to let the player do the cool stuff. To continue my metaphor from above: Nobody wants to play the game where the game plays the fun parts for them.

So game developers, remember: the more conflict you can find in your narrative to draw from, the better. Stories and even non-narrative games benefit from and feed off conflict.

And let your players do the cool stuff.

Labels: design, writing