Avatar

A way Destiny excites me

by Kermit @, Raleigh, NC, Thursday, March 14, 2013, 11:28 (4032 days ago) @ Leisandir

But why exclude audio? The user is left in control of virtually every other technical detail.

No, there's all kinds of details users don't control.

As I said, we have the ability to adjust brightness and contrast, which are the visual equivalent to adjusting audio levels.

No, it's not the visual equivalent.

We can change the controller layout (I'd argue that's aesthetic. Pulling a trigger to fire a gun is waaaaay different than pressing A; that's part of why the Metroid Prime series feels different from Halo). Us PC users can change the graphical fidelity. Hell, we can even introduce content the developer never intended; I can play the original Deus Ex with extremely high-definition textures that were made by users years after the game's release. I can play missions in Half Life that have nothing to do with Gordon or the Combine. That's getting left-field, though. I can't figure out why this is a point of contention. It's no different than any other control we've had since forever. Hell, the original Doom let us independently adjust the volume of the music and the action.

This is like arguing over what kind of lighting is proper for viewing art. The curator's got one idea, the rich guy who sets it in his living room has another, and the fellow who's just looking at Google images can see all of them.

All the stuff you mention is fun, but we have a agree that some elements of game X have to remain static if we're still going to call it game X. I don't see why reasonable people or developers can't disagree about what should or shouldn't go into the static column. I don't happen to think it is like lighting, but more like painting over what the artist painted. The logic seems to be that because interactivity is the distinguishing characteristic of games, then interactivity is therefore a characteristic that every element of a game must have, else ceases to be a game. That seems a bizarre principle to me. Taken to its logical extreme, the game ceases to be anything that we react to, and becomes only another creative tool. There's something to be said for that, but if that's what you're after, why not become a developer yourself?


Complete thread:

 RSS Feed of thread