Why things don't change

I haven't been around much recently; I've been in an intense learning phase, and in keeping relevant to this post, this learning phase has been triggered largely based on some conclusions I've come to regarding change and progress in the games industry.  I've come to similar conclusions in the past, but I haven't truly taken what I know to heart until recently; things won't change to where I'd like them to be, at least not yet, because there is no reason for them to.

You may object, as I once did, and retort "but everyone is so unsatisfied, eventually the market will pick up on this and great games will prevail!".  This is unfortunately not the case, and there are multiple reasons why it is not and will not be the case for a long time given how things are currently.

Notice the group name and notice what the majority of them are playing.  Logic and reason do not prevail, people lack the discipline to buy games based on calculated principle.  If a game isn't great or if it is objectionable for some reason, people will still buy it because playing something is better than playing nothing. The market pressure isn't based on games being objectively good games.

The industry is adopting specialists from many other industries while diminishing the value of their own specialists.  Writers, people who have little interest in games and only wish to make written stories, are being given leading positions, some of which are in the area of design.  It's progressed to the point that people consider written narrative an intrinsic part of games.

Games are simulations, they are active and not passive; reading a pre-written narrative is passive, and the act of choosing from a tree of story options to passively experience is a very shallow excuse for simulation.  I've been reading a lot about narrative versus mechanics lately, and unsurprisingly people are incredibly defensive when it comes to the place of narrative, and unsurprisingly if you ask them to describe a great narrative game they will refer to one in which you spend a large amount of time reading extensive trees of text.  Some of the more design savvy defendants may bring up "you can have narrative without text", but this is a principle that people seem to know but not truly believe.

People like stories, most do and it's understandable why, but as of now people seem to have a deeply ingrained perception that game stories come in the form of written narrative.  Games should have game stories, stories that are an organic product of the simulations known as games, not narrative stories.  What this means is the story is what you do; if you go to the mountains and slay a dragon then that's your game story; if you grow radishes and have a successful harvest before rabbits find their way in and defile your crops, then that's your game story; if you play tetris, and at the moment of certain failure you swiftly place blocks and bide defeat for a fervent twenty last seconds, then that is your game story.

Writing gives the narrative to describe the conflict; simulation gives the conflict to describe the narrative.

Now you are wondering how this all ties together.  The simple answer is that people don't see this, what I'm describing above they aren't observing, and even if they did, they wouldn't suddenly become illuminated with understanding and stop buying the games that betray this sense (I redirect you to the picture above).  Each year it seems the industry is becoming further ingrained in the idea that games should have a narrative that is delivered to the player; that somehow the ideal would be to have narratives in our games that are crafted by expert writers who migrate from the field of literature, expanding into a modern interpretation of writing through our blossoming games industry.  If only playing the game didn't get in the way of the great story those writers are trying to deliver.

This was posted on reddit and spread like fire not long ago:

I hate to bring this up, but it is relevant.

So I started by referring to the fact that I am in an intense learning phase.  I have always been into art and have become well versed in game art and cg over the years, but I was never much into programming.  That is the half of development that I've been missing to articulate my ideas, and it is what I am pursuing zealously now.  It is one thing to propose ideas on a blog and hope for change, and entirely another when you actually implement your ideas.  This represents a turn in this blog that has been a long time in coming.  I will be posting about more more tactile matters, about real development.