Six Things I Want to See in Video Games

Patrick Hurst — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:14:58 +0000

Some say that modern video games are all essentially the same as each other, that the medium as a whole has reached a sort of point of stagnation. I don’t think that this is necessarily true, but there are some things that I definitely think video games should do that I haven’t really seen. In no particular order:

Integrate the save/load mechanic into the game world. Slouching Towards Bedlam is the only game i’ve seen that actually manages to do this properly; whenever you save/reload/restart/whatever, a bit of ‘extra’ text that doesn’t appear in most IF games is printed on your screen; this is actually integrated to the plot, and it is mentioned that another person actually gained the ability to ‘save’ and ‘restore’ at will as well.
Don’t have the aliens speak English natively. I don’t mean that the voice actors need to speak some made-up alien language; I mean that they should say whatever they want in their own language, and then a translator device does the actual translation. I’m not aware of any games that do this, which is unfortunate because it could be used in really interesting ways: certain concepts being untranslatable, the translator being low-quality so the words come out with some unusual grammatical structure or word choice, leaving the player to figure out what the hell the speaker meant, etc.
Actually force the player to figure out the alien language for themselves. In most games that have some alien language that nobody can understand, the player learns the language automatically via cutscene events. You don’t get to actually see the alien writing, but it’s assumed that your character learns how to read it fluently. But what if you actually had to figure out the writing system, then create a translation by figuring out which words mean what, it could turn into a really interesting puzzle. Obviously it’d have to be simplified; decoding a language is hard. But, for example, there could be a notes section for the player to note, for example, “Oh, the word tak’na seems to only occur in texts dealing with their leader.”, and then they could put in some device “tak’na -> leader”, and all isntances of “tak’na” would be replaced with “leader”.
Interesting dilemmas. Even in games with choices that affect whether you’re considered ‘good’ or ‘evil’, like Fallout 3 or Mass Effect, it’s typically obvious which choice will result in you gaining more ‘good points’ and which will result in you getting more ‘evil points’. But of course, real life isn’t so black and white; a more interesting decision would be, say, whether to kill someone who’s dying of some horrible, painful disease. It’s not obvious which way to go, and I could see players going either way.
Deal with non-heterosexual people in a mature way. I have yet to see a single mainstream game that handles the issue of same-sex relationships in a meaningful way. Sims 3 allows them, but the marriages and such aren’t really… deep in the way that would actually make the player think. Yes, Mass Effect let female players have a relationship with the female Liara, but it wasn’t handled maturely (nor, for that matter, was the heterosexual version). It reminded me more of an OMG SPACE LESBIANS ARR HOT teenage masturbatory fantasy than any sort of meaningful relationship. I’ve also really yet to see a game that allows gay relationships between two men; again, I think this is because lesbians are perceived as ‘hot’ by the teenage/adult male market, whereas gays are perceived as disgusting.
Non-humanoid aliens. There is essentially no reason for every alien species we meet to have two eyes, a head, a mouth, five fingers, etc. Yet in most video games, and indeed most modern media, they’re depicted as such. Where are the aliens with chest-faces, or the ones without body symmetry, or ones that don’t communicate through sound waves?

Amateur Topologist » list

Six Things I Want to See in Video Games