In a post sketching out an Indiana Jones game I’d like to play, I mentioned that I’d like to see it incorporate “conversations that count.” This isn’t an innovative idea, I know, except maybe for the implication that it fits into the kind of game we’d want from Indiana Jones or Lara Croft or Nathan Drake. To me, conversations with meaningful — even if modest — ramifications in gameplay go a long way to adding contextual nuance and player ownership over the game’s narrative.

Some games call for rich conversation webs with major, persistent ramifications. The Mass Effects and Walking Deads of the world seem to make great use of dialogue choices and effects. I don’t think what I’m seeking in my action/adventure games is revolutionary but its underutilized so let’s talk about it some more.

Weirdly, to my mind, conversations are considered the stuff of RPGs. If Mass Effect 3 didn’t have robust dialogue, it’d be a shooter with character-customization mechanics. When you add NPC interaction and consequences to dialogue choices, that’s often considered an inherited feature from, or defining feature of, RPGs.

Why aren’t inter-character interactions a feature of more narrative games? Why aren’t they just a feature of play?

(more…)

Indy and the Idol from Raiders of the Lost Ark

I’ve enjoyed a slew of Indiana Jones video games, like The Fate of Atlantis and The Emperor’s Tomb, but I haven’t played the Indiana Jones video game I really want right now. It doesn’t exist. Yet with Uncharted and Tomb Raider paying homage in some ways and setting precedents in others, I think the time is right for a new Indiana Jones video-game adventure.

Here’s what I want an Indiana Jones game to be: an adventure game played in the third-person style of Lara Croft and Nathan Drake with rich exploration of engrossing environments, puzzle-based combat, dialogue scenes that count, and rollicking set pieces. The idea is not to recreate the forward momentum of an Indiana Jones movie, because the movies do that already, but to create a uniquely interactive experience that draws on cinematic techniques and ludic mechanisms in equal measure.

(more…)

More than anything, the new Tomb Raider game makes me enthusiastic for another game in the series that takes the best from this new vision and jettisons the game’s meanest elements. The result might be a step back toward the franchise’s earlier swagger combined with the scale, detail, and humanity of this year’s installment. Call it gritty without being gruesome.

I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers for the 2013 Tomb Raider here, but be aware that I’ll be making some direct references to that game as I proceed.

Here, then, is what would go into my Tomb Raider sequel.

(more…)

Just a quick update for those of you who have noticed that Gameplaywright’s blog has left fallow for months: Things are afoot here at GPW but we’ve shifted from a short-term view to a long-term view for a while. We’re brewing up new books, for that long run, and the time for such thoughts and plans have come out of the time we might otherwise have to blog. We miss you all.

You have numerous outlets for games news, actual play, theory, and discussion, don’t you? Given the time we’re spending on projects for publication—both electronically and in print—we hope so, because it’ll be a while until we can blog here in any great capacity. It’s not that we’re not still thinking about games, stories, and the work. It’s that we’re pouring all of that into our work directly, lately. Stay tuned for announcements of new Gameplaywright Press books, down the line. I’m excited by the prospects but these things move slowly, these days.

In the meantime, I want to hear from you—you!—about where you are getting your news of games and stories. At what crossroads have you been standing, reading the postings put up by fellow travelers? In what ale houses are you trading tales of your games and the stories you’ve wrought? Who are you reading? What should we—all of us—be reading on these subjects?

Also, what have you been playing and what stories emerge from that play? Do tell.

I don’t quite have it yet, but there’s something here. Spoilers for Indiana Jones movies follow.

(more…)