I had lots of people jumping to the defense of the cut scene in the last conversation. Of course, they were mostly jumping to defend a use of cut scenes that I wasn’t complaining about, but I find it fascinating to watch people’s responses (mine included) to the use of cut scenes.
Cut scene seems to be an emotionally charged term that polarizes the conversation. And it’s really too broad a term to have much meaning these days. Is a pre-rendered movie used as an introduction a cut scene? Is a pre-rendered movie used as a denouement a cut scene? Is an in-engine camera swoop through a level a cut scene? Although technically those answers are probably No we tend to lump any moment where the player doesn’t have some measure of control under the heading cut scene.
So what do we do when a topic becomes so divisive that we find ourselves arguing different arguments whenever it comes up? We re-frame the conversation by introducing a brand new term that doesn’t have the emotional bagged!
I’m going to start using the term Developer Moments (the acronym DM is not accidental). But I’m actually going to take the idea a bit further than just cut scenes and propose the following:
Developer Moment: Any time the player’s available verbs are restricted beyond what can be attributed to a clear narrative device.
The inability to throw knives at a fleeing Templar in an Assassin’s Creed 2 tomb is a Developer Moment. Ezio was not shown to have lost his knives. His attempts aren’t hampered by the environment, and all his throws just simply go wild–the player is simply not given the option of equipping the knives.
In contrast, when Samus loses her equipment after the tutorial level in Metroid Prime, this is not what I’m calling a Developer Moment.
Batman’s long, slow walk down the corridor with the Joker at the beginning of Arkham Asylum is a Developer Moment as the player is not allowed to make Batman run, jump, blind, punch, or even crouch (if I recall correctly).
Being locked in room with Barney at the beginning of Half Life 2 is not a developer moment as the player is free to use Gordan’s entire available skill set during the scene.
Likewise, some of the extended conversations in Fable 2 aren’t Developer Moments as you’re allowed to wander away from the speaker who will sometimes call you back and will always stop talking, only to resume the conversation from the top of the last bit of dialog when you return.
The Tombraider habit of showing you the path to take through the next room with a camera sweep is a Developer Moment.
As you can see, many Developer Moments serve a very beneficial purpose. Some, on the other hand, simply seem unnecessarily restrictive. Tomorrow we’ll talk about classifying Developer Moments by what they’re trying to achieve, but today I’d like to know whether you think this is a useful approach to talking about the shared control of a video games’ narrative path.
I’m eager to see where this goes, and what sort of classifications for DMs pop up.
It seems to me that the Developer Moments that are construed as bad fall very much in the concept of “railroading” as it’s described in Pen and Paper gaming. The good ones then fall into scene framing and color.
That’s my gut reaction to the examples here. I think it’s an interesting way of looking at it; the developer can seize control whenever they want to, by the nature of video games, it’s a question of how and why that matters.
Yeah, Bo’s comment really clicked with me and I can’t believe I hadn’t put that together so succinctly myself. After all, I was just harrumping over GMs who don’t incorporate player input into plot.
Hmm, what about the “locked in a cage” event near the end of Half-Life 2? Man, that seemed like a contrived way to setup a non-interactive cutscene simply to remove players uber gun. Ahh well, I guess fun gun-toating action can’t go on forever, they have to put a unmovable brick wall in there somewhere, else it’d “break” the game world (the Gravity Guns power being lowered when they get further away from the source of the power – the Citadel – in Episode 1 makes a tad more sense, and suitably doesn’t remove it entirely). The main problem with the sequence is that you notice the player has no choice but to make the wrong choice (It was sure lucky they didn’t just get killed in that metal thing!).
Usually a good way to think about it is having actions that only seem bizarre on the first playthrough. There are tons of nitpicking and lots of events that, given knowledge of what will happen, makes no sense to see happen, but they might well be just enough a leap of logic or thinking the first time. Fridge Logic perhaps dictates how fun these events are then!
I’m actually hoping someone suggests a classification that would categorize that as a DM in the next conversation. Why don’t you give it a shot?