cosmid,

Maybe I was talking too different things at the same time, without realizing that. I tend to do that, and it's confusing. Mostly there's the player viewpoint and the designer viewpoint, and I think I was trying to make points about both, since a lot of the discussion here was drifting back and forth. I should have separated my messages.

I guess in any creative work, there is a duality in being both a creator and a fan/patron/lover of the artwork in question. I do believe that there is artistry in games, but it's very different than in other media, though the similarities with fiction and movies can be confusing.

I think I'm frustrated by the problems of integrating gameplay and story, and I think people understate the conflicts. The discussion of sex in games just brought that to the fore in my mind. Sometimes I think I'm coming full circle in my attitude towards game design, to a point where I'm now cynical of story-related elements, since the result is often a bad compromise. Trying to deal with sex really accentuates that, since all the aspects of sex which you can consider narratively and which are essential to creating characters in pure narrative work (novels, movies) are only doable in the story component of a game. Whereas in my deleted post (and another post) I commented on my interpretation of the close integration of killing and violence with the mechanics of gameplay.

I did not intend to downplay the value of imagination in narrative games. But I would like to strive for better integration of story elements with gameplay elements. Violence was easy and obvious, so now the challenge is to figure out how to include less simplistic aspects of human behaviour into gameplay itself. That said, a well scripted narrative is no less enjoyable, but these are different approaches, different technical problems.

I'm getting very stuck on the absence of language in games, which is so essential to relationships between people, and to revealing the relationships between characters. I have a literature background, so this is quite possibly a bias, but since story-telling is an even older practise than writing, and writing is five thousand years old, I think that there is a lot of authority in the rules of story-telling and literary theory, and a lot of power in language.

We had a debate last Summer where I tried to get people to consider if there were any new kinds of games, and we did not have much luck with that. But I could change that by asking if there are any new kinds of gameplay, and I could point at human relationships and ask, "Can't we base gameplay on other aspects of human behaviour?" But I think we figured out that the limitations are on the input/output system.

I think when someone comes up with a usable language interface for interacting with in-game characters (and by necessity characters which can understand this language), we will exceed the current limits. So, sex, friendship, mistrust and all the other grey areas of human relationships will be left out (of game mechanics, not story), and we'll be stuck with what I see as basically the "resource or obstacle" model for characters that I think exists now.

Sorry if I've hi-jacked this thread. I didn't realize what I was really thinking about until now. I guess I think that the original implication in the thread title -- that violence is allowed and sex is not due to moralistic reasons -- is misleading. Yeah, most developers avoid sex per se due to morality concerns which are unfairly looser on violence. But I think the imaginative failure of game developers has been to try to make a story-driven game without violence. I argue that this is very difficult because of the ease with which violence can be integrated into gameplay mechanics, while other human activities are difficult to integrate.

I guess the Sims and other Will Wright games are great exceptions, and that is why they (especially the Sims) have been so successful. But the Sims ignores what most hardcore gamers love, which is a defined goal that they can pursue relentlessly. Is there room for sex or other human characteristics in a goal-driven design? How can you take time to form relationships when your over-riding concern is to get to the next level, defeat the boss monster, get the better weapon/armour/treasure? In real life there are maybe three main analogues to level-domination: combat, sex, and career. Sex as an end in itself would be either gross or funny, never noble or honourable. And anyway, you can do it in real life.

Yeah, that was a point I made in my lost post: games usually involve doing things you can't do in real life. Kids play games where they do what grown-ups do but they cannot, and grown-ups play games where they get to do things that are utterly impossible or so dangerous that nobody does them by choice, and usually both. The (The Sims is again an exception, because you do things that you can do in real life. Actually, you're not doing them, your Sims are, and if you make a mistake, well, try again, no harm done. I don't think the Sims would work if you had to play a direct role in the Sim world yourself. It would be an interesting experiment.)

I'll stop now. I think I need to write a research paper on this subject, and get it out of my system.