The Need For Connection

Your barrel is so shiny tonight, Gordon!

I want to hug her, but there’s a shotgun in the way.

There she is, finally standing right in front of me. The spring in my life, the apple of my eden, the alpha and omega of my tortured love-lost metaphor. I’ve journeyed so long and so far to reach her, and now that it’s over, now that she’s right in front of me… I just…

I can’t bring myself to touch her. So close, now, and I can’t kiss her. I can’t put my hand on her face. I can’t even say anything to her.

I could kill her, though.

I could blow her head of at close range with the shotgun, or at long range with the sniper rifle. I could explode her into tiny bloody giblets with the rocket launcher, and if she began ducking and weaving too fast for an accurate shot I could switch to the machine gun. It would still be innacurate, but the fire-rate’s fast enough to compensate over medium range. I could nail her to the wall with a crossbow. I could laser-slice her in half. I could laser-slice her into quarters. I could laser-slice her into eighths.

Maybe if she was a door, I could open her. Or a health-pack.

If she hid behind cover, I could throw a grenade to force her out or blast her fragile body to into bloody splinters. I could hit her with explosive grenades, sticky grenades, timed mines, homing mines, bouncers, swirlers, rollers, twirlers. I could launch a rocket, a javelin, a sattelite deployed orbital missile bombardment. I could build sentries to guard against her approach, and spy drones to detect her location. I could call down a helicopter to attack her position. I could call down a nuclear strike to end the match. I could run her over in a jeep. I could run her over in a hovercraft. I could run her over in a spaceship.

I could stand over her and crouch, over and over again.

If I run out of ammo, or if she starts to pose too big a threat, I could bring out the big guns. I could blast her with an energy beam. I could punch a voodoo doll to blind her. I could slow down time to make her easier to hit, or speed up time to disintegrate her into a pile of ancient smoking dust. I could warp the ground before her into mighty hands to tear her in twain. I could bid the spirits of Field and Sky and Flame and Life give me the strength to burn her with a fireball or strangle her with weeds or blow her away with a tornado. I could ressurect my long-dead allies to my side for one last glorious stand against her. I could summon the Cold Dark Old ones that come for us all in our time to rise out from their eternal grave to stalk the surface of this forgotten earth once more and hit her weak point for massive fucking damage.

But sometimes… sometimes I don’t want to. Sometimes I see people who aren’t shooting, or weaving, or going into an attack pattern. People like her, who just stand there, kind of smiling at me.

And sometimes I wish I could interact with them in a way that didn’t make them a corpse.

-This was written by jack, by the way, who wishes he knew how to make a real byline on this website doodad.

Help us help you help us all:
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon
  • Twitter
  • N4G
  • Reddit

About Jack McNamee

In the third year of a game design course in Queensland, Australia. Thinking a whole lot about games. Scrabbling desperately against the oncoming future.
This entry was posted in Analogy Hour, Ramblings and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

25 Responses to The Need For Connection

  1. I am reminded of Breen’s stinging accusation towards Gordon Freeman as he clambers up The Citadel, which perfectly sums up the limited game vocabulary you have been saddled with:

    “Tell me, Dr. Freeman, if you can: you have destroyed so much — what is it exactly that you have created? Can you name even one thing? … I thought not.”

  2. Jack says:

    The best villains draw on the audiences own insecurity, and Dr. Breen has to be one of my favourite video-game villains. Leave it to him to jab the player right in their buried psychosis.

    Then again, it’s not as though Gordon can make a witty comeback.

  3. BeamSplashX says:

    Games with supposed total freedom don’t really have it if the end-all verb of your options is “kill.”

    Brilliant. Though I must say, the majority of the industry is reticent to even give us that many ways to kill something. I’d want to write it off as baby steps, but Deus Ex already exists. Or to take it even further, Nethack already exists.

  4. Sel says:

    I could already foresee the circular argument regard to this in the designing rooms.

    “But people don’t want anything beside shooting down the NPCs!”

    “How do you know?”

    “Because no one have bought a game that is not about shooting down NPCs!”

    “Hard to do if we haven’t made one yet.”

    “Not going to make a game that no one wants!”

    To be fair, dating sims existed for quite a while now. Not really what I personally enjoy but I’m glad for their existence. The excuse of complexity would’ve worked 20 years ago, but just like BeamSplashX have stated if Nethack could do it, I don’t see why the powerhouses can’t beside “don’t want to”.

    Funny how with far less technological breakthroughs and far less budgeting, interactive fictions have done much better at providing diversity than video games. It is possible. It really is.

  5. Jack says:

    It’s not just that we’re taking baby steps towards full human interaction, we’re actually going backwards. We’ve got so good at designing killing that no-one wants to go off the path and have a crack at loving.

    You know what I really want? A button- just a single, context-sensitive button- set aside for human interaction. It would hi-five the guys or hug the ladies. That’s all. Just a way to, you know, connect with them a little, in a way that isn’t over the barrel of a gun. No-one in video games ever touches each other. Even cinematic human-packed Bioware epics have everyone stand at exactly five yards away from each other. No contact. You can never even hold hands. I feel so lonely.

    Things only feel real in a game if you can interact with them. When I can’t even touch anyone, and especially when I’m not even allowed to talk to them, they just feel hollow. Making interactions that deal with people, in all their stunning complexity and intricacy is hard, I know, but it seems like we should have made some progress on it by now. We’ve got dialogue trees, yeah, but that cuts it down to just choosing what pre-made speech to hear at certain intervals.

    Dating Sims might be the best we’ve got, but- well, they seem to turn the whole thing into a one-dimensional “Get into her pants” simulator. Which is definetly a certain type of human interaction, I suppose. Maybe people feel you have to dangle the promise of sex in front of everyone to get them interested in mushy-feely talking. Personally, I’m just creeped out that the best examples of human interaction in games might come from porn. That would be a terrible thought.

    There’s just so many game design ideas to explore that don’t even involve killing at all- and Human Interaction has to be the most important and most overlooked type of interaction ever. How weird is it that the absolute foundation of every other type of media is almost completely overlooked in games?

    Well, anyway. If you guys are interested in this kinda thing, I really can’t recommend Galatea enough:

    http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/Galatea.zblorb.js

    It’s an attempt to fully capture a single conversation. With a single person. In text. If nothing else, it proves how hard this stuff is.

  6. bedroomcoder says:

    What about 7 Sins on the PS2 and PC?

    It was ugly, jerky and badly programmed, but there’s a fair few ways of lovin’ and there’s fighting too if you want it.

    Personally, I’m waiting for an adventure game that uses a conversation model like the intelligent chatbots for their NPCs…

  7. 抽脂 says:

    抽脂可以減掉多餘的脂肪,除了可以讓體重減輕外,更可以藉此雕塑身形。

  8. 植牙 says:

    植牙植牙的維護和真牙相 似,只要維持良好的口腔衛生習慣,定期看牙醫,人工植牙是可長期使用的。而一般假牙必須磨損健康真牙,往往容易造成齒槽骨吸收、牙齦萎縮,因此,從長遠所 獲得的堅固性、便利性及健康利益等多方面來看,人工植牙反而是一種較經濟實惠的選擇。

  9. Santader says:

    Qué tal compañeros, buen argumento, buen contexto Un beso

  10. 黃金電波新型CPT黃金電波,增加了微震功能與表皮冷卻系統,整個療程的舒適度大大的提升,經臨床測試,舒適感比傳統黃金電波提升1倍。

  11. Thank you a lot for giving everyone remarkably terrific chance to read in detail from this web site. It really is very excellent plus packed with amusement for me personally and my office fellow workers to search the blog the equivalent of 3 times in one week to read the fresh secrets you have got. And definitely, I’m just actually contented considering the magnificent points you give. Certain 1 points in this post are completely the most impressive we have all ever had.

  12. 落點分析 says:

    落點本次落點分析將與專業公司合作,透過學生的綜合成績依照會考三等級、十量尺、在校表現和基北區個人序位,建議各位學生在選填志願上時,可以參考哪些適合的學校

  13. 學測落點分析大學指考各系組所採計之科目及權數並不全相同,採計科目不同,如3科與6科,無法以最低錄取加權總分直接做各系組間的比較,採計科目相同但權數不同也不能直接比較

  14. Thanks for your personal marvelous posting! I definitely enjoyed reading it, you will be a great author.I will make sure to bookmark your blog and will come back very soon. I want to encourage yourself to continue your great job, have a nice day!|

  15. fantastic issues altogether, you just won a new reader. What may you recommend in regards to your publish that you just made some days ago? Any positive?|

  16. 植牙價位 says:

    植牙手術除了一般缺齒患者,最需要植牙手術的族群就是老年人了。人年紀漸長、身體退化,不只是皮膚上的老化,連肌肉組織、骨骼甚至是牙齒都會退化。老 年人口腔退化最主要是由於更年期過後,口水變少演變成乾口症,口水少導致口腔抵抗力變低,也因此容易造成蛀牙或是牙周病。因為蛀牙或是牙周病造成的牙齒脫 落與損耗就需要人工植牙手術的幫助了。

  17. After looking at a number of the blog posts on your website, I honestly like your way of writing a blog. I book marked it to my bookmark webpage list and will be checking back soon. Please check out my web site as well and tell me how you feel.|

  18. I fought a groan, rubbing her clit. Melody shivered as there was silence on the other end of the phone for a moment. Then Alicia said, “I…did. So…?”

  19. velcro.co.uk says:

    I want to show some thanks to this writer just for rescuing me from this type of difficulty. Because of browsing throughout the online world and seeing concepts that were not powerful, I believed my entire life was well over. Being alive devoid of the strategies to the difficulties you have resolved all through your entire short article is a crucial case, as well as those which could have adversely affected my entire career if I hadn’t discovered your blog post. Your actual know-how and kindness in taking care of a lot of stuff was important. I am not sure what I would’ve done if I hadn’t come across such a solution like this. I can also at this point look forward to my future. Thank you so much for the specialized and effective help. I won’t think twice to suggest your web site to any person who needs to have tips on this matter.

  20. Tchaikowsky Leopold Stokowski New Philharmonia Orchestra Swan Lake Schwanensee Le Lac Des Cygnes Sle https://thenextweb.dreamer.org.uk/13.html Florian Hidden Black Death Untitled III

  21. 해킹 피해 발생시 해킹 피해 해결을 위한 전문가가 상담을 해드립니다.
    중요한 디지털 자산을 지켜드리고 나아가 미래에 발생할 수 있는 위험
    리스크가 생기지 않게 보안의식을 가질수 있게 안내해드립니다.
    또한 포렌식 디지털 증거 수집 및 복구 등, 바이러스 검수 등 업무도 하고 있습니다.

    참새왕 해킹 의뢰 서비스

  22. Ingeborg Hanna says:

    Hi themachination.net support dep

    New Step by Step Map For this amazing tool:

    https://cawumewunigeyu.blogginaway.com/23738952/5-essential-elements-for-this-offer

    Thank You
    Ingeborg Hanna

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *