Temporary Hiatus

So between finding a new job and having to relocate for said job I'm going to be rather busy for awhile, so posts are going to become rather sparse and sporadic for the next few weeks. Once I get settled at the new location I'll be moving back to updating weekly (or more if time allows).

I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause my three regular readers. Rest assured my long winded nit picking will resume with time!

Pacing and Padding: Decreasing Value to Increase Price

Image © escapistmagazine.com

We've all played games that seem to drag on far longer than it should, or played those tacked on sections that are completely irrelevant to the rest of the game. As expectations rise for grand, expansive games so does the tendency to add more features and content into games beyond the initial vision. Budgets and scopes of games are becoming so grandiose that play times can stretch well over 100 hours before you come close to seeing everything the game has to offer.

But when does additional content shift from being an added bonus to annoying filler?

Narrative in Games Part 2: Mixing Oil and Water

Not every game is consistent between the cutscene and gameplay narratives.

Last week we took a look at narrative in games, splitting it into two concepts: explicit and emergent narrative. Explicit narrative referring to the type of story generally told in books, film, and other traditional media, and emergent narrative referring to the story that emerges due to the choices and actions taken by the player within the game's mechanics. We looked at the strengths and drawbacks of each and touched both on why these are often very isolated from one another and how they can still reinforce each other even when disconnected.

This week we'll take a look at a couple ways that developers are already trying to integrate the two together more directly, as well as a few example games that demonstrate these methods.