OLC Wants To Know: How Gamey Do You Take Your Interactive Entertainment?

Do you like score multipliers, Double-jumping, and extra lives? Or are you more into narrative experiences, realistic physics, and character development?

Yes yes, I know, we all like both. But I brought up the issue recently in my review of TrackMania DS on Gametopius.com:

In the time since the release of BioShock in the Summer of 2007, there have been many claims that the focus of the medium had begun to shift away from play and towards narrative depth. At the very least, the some of the highest rated games over the last two years have been universally praised for their cinematic pacing, the texture of their stories, and the realization of their characters. What place does a game like TrackMania DS have in this world?

From responses I received about that article, and in talking with gamers in the days before tackling the review, I found out that there are people who come down strongly in one category or the other. Traditionalists fear for their point-based “gamey” games in an era of GTA4 realism. A different contingent of “progressive” gamers have clamored for more realism in the medium (whether that means verisimilitude or something else is a question outside of my pay grade.)

Personally, I’ve been telling myself for months (sometimes publicly in editorials and reviews) that we need developers to embrace the medium’s strengths (interactivity, social simulation, accepted length of work) while dodging the old-timey tropes of points and lives and maybe even achievements. I’ve argued that I don’t want to know I’m playing a “game.” I’ll give a little head bob – not even a full nod – and say something like “Of course, I still want those other games to exist. But I want this type too!” But really I’m just paying necessary respect to the current monarch. What I really wanted when I wrote those pieces, was a coup.

But damn, if I have learned anything ever at all it’s this: “The king stay the king.”

I fired up my 360 the other night during a conference call and started playing the trial of OutRun Arcade. I’d spent the night  before playing it for about an hour. The demo. Which lasts about a minute and a half if you’re great at it. I wanted this game, and I decided that boring phone calls made the best time for new game purchases. The long and short of it? I love OutRun Arcade. And it’s gamey as hell. There are points. There’s memorization. There’s twitch controls. It reminded me, and was the first game to do so in a long time, why I liked the games I liked as a kid. I loved MegaMan 2 because it was a game with established rules and systems that were consistent and worked. The reason Streets of Rage 2 is in my top 5 to this day is because it’s such a game. I’m at the edge of my seat when I’m a few thousand points away form a much needed extra life on my way down the elevator to fight Abadede, one of the game’s hardest encounters.

I like games. I’ve been known to read entire rule books to table top games I’ll never play, or play in one-shots of settings I hate just to see how the rules work.  I love chess, and yes, there are arguments about created narrative there, but the thing I love is the way the pieces play against each other, the risk and reward, trying to read my opponent’s intent while hiding mine. I love the game.

So, now I’m stuck. I love BioShock and Left4Dead, for as opposite reasons as can exist in two good games of the same genre. Earlier this year I was praising the structure of Killzone 2‘s multiplayer and bashing its single player components entirely. I like the way World of Warcraft works, despite having no interest in the fiction. So I turn to you, not to answer my dilemma, but to hear some extra voices in my head. If you HAD to pick one directions for the medium to go in which would it be? Do you want Heavy Rain style interactive art/entertainment, or a return to gameyness with TrackMania DS and its ilk? No wishy washyness here, pick a side and argue it to me. It’s just more fun that way.