|
Talking to Dan
Pinchbeck is refreshing. It's rare to find someone
with such fiery passion, such unconditional
love of this medium. This is a man absolutely
devoted to gaming, utterly committed to exploring its
design theory. He also simply adores playing
videogames. "I actually applauded at the end
of Far Cry 2," he recounts. "I
love games, and I love it when they break the
rules!"
Pinchbeck is a senior lecturer in Creative
Technology at the University of Portsmouth. On top
of his teaching, he also studies new ways in which
first-person videogame engines can be used to manipulate
the responses of the player. Brilliantly, he goes
one step further than 'mere' research. With his
small team of developers in tow, he goes on to make the
games.
Last summer, Pinchbeck and his team - under the guise of
The Chinese Room - released a single-player mod for Half-Life
2. Its name was Dear Esther, and its
aim was to create an ambiguous, poignant narrative in a
first-person game without any overt "gameplay".
The result is an astonishingly beautiful, haunting
meander around a remote Hebridean island, and the story
of the dying moments of a man who traveled to it.
I've been wanting to talk to Dan about Dear Esther
for some time now, so it seemed a good place to
start. I mention that it's the only time a
videogame has managed to genuinely upset me, and ask him
why he thinks so few games tap into such emotions.
"This is one of the most interesting questions to
me," he says. "What emotions are games
capable of supporting, and which ones can't they
handle? On the one hand, there's a real truth to
the idea that some emotional reactions are difficult to
get into a game, as they are extremely similar to the
reactions that a player has just before they reach for
the off button: frustration, despair, overwhelming rage,
and so on.
"...I'd
had these preconceptions about FPS gamers that were
really out of line..."
- Dan
Pinchbeck
"But when you look at it, there's actually been a
real extending of emotional range in FPS games in the
last few years. Even in something as ham-fisted as
Unreal Tournament III, you have this end where
your sister dies in your arms and you've been betrayed
and all your friends are dead and your planet has
essentially been wiped clean in a genocidal
invasion. So I'm not sure Dear Esther is
really that radical in terms of the types of
emotions it provokes - though I'll admit I was surprised
by the intensity it seemed to be provoking them in
players. What it doesn't have is gameplay, and
maybe that gives those emotions time to breathe, because
you're not having to think or act quickly, or consider
what to do strategically. Maybe that gives the
sadness or eeriness of the situation time to fill your
thoughts, as there's little else to dwell on."
In spite of its uncompromisingly niche appeal, Dear
Esther has become one of the most highly regarded
single-player experiences on the mod scene.
"It made me realise I'd had these preconceptions
about FPS gamers, even being one myself, that were
really out of line," he admits. "Because
it's so unlike anything else out there, I thought we'd
be getting low downloads and and probably a fair bit of
grief about the lack of traditional gameplay, the speed,
the mood and particularly the lack of an obvious, linear
story. Some people have had a problem with that -
we get the occasional "what the hell is this?"
and "it's really boring" - but what's been
amazing is that before I get the chance to respond,
other people are jumping in and defending it. It
seems to have really touched a nerve with a lot of
gamers, and I didn't see that coming.
Interestingly, I thought it would end up being showcased
at digital art and digital storytelling events, and get
little attention from gamers. Actually, it's the
opposite, which says a great deal about how
sophisticated gamers are perceived as being and how
sophisticated they actually are."
Pinchbeck considers why the response may have been so
fantastic. "I think I have to give a lot of
credit to the team who built it: Jessica Curry's
soundtrack is just amazing, as is Nigel Carrington's
voice-over work. Both are so integral to the
overall feel of the mod. The environment, in terms
of how different it looks, really caught people as
well. My favourite part is the deep cave that's
just covered in symbols and then again on the cliff
faces - both are just so bizarre and almost upsetting,
because I think it's there that you really get the
clearest sense of this really disturbed mind at
work. So credit has to go to Josh Short, who did
the original build, and Adam Griffith, who really
optimised it and added some really great stuff.
The concept and script only go so far; it's a really
integrated experience. I'm working again with Adam
on Korsakovia. He's a really talented
designer who is really intuitive in bringing my often
quite random and convoluted ideas to life."
Korsakovia is The Chinese Room's new
project. Again taking the form of a free mod for Half-Life
2, it's centered around a specific research
question: how will players respond to a complete lack of
human or animal agents in an otherwise straightforward
videogame? It follows on from the theory of
ambiguity behind Dear Esther, but attempts to
pour it into the mould of a more traditional game.
"I wanted to try to retain the story and the really
intense emotion of Esther, but try and combine it
with more traditional gameplay: speed things up, add in
agents, proper game mechanics," Dan explains.
"Now that we've established that the Esther model
is one that is interesting and gamers are into it, it's
the natural next step to try and see if we can move that
closer to traditional FPS play."
"...you
end up being hunted by weird streams of black smoke like
the monster in 'Lost'..."
- Dan
Pinchbeck
Korsokovia presents a world in which fact is
indistinguishable from fiction, through the eyes of a
sufferer of Korsakoff's Psychosis. "It's a
condition where you have both short- and long-term
memory loss slicing up periods of lucidity,"
explains Pinchbeck, "and, on top of that, a
completely diminished ability to tell reality from
fantasy." The Chinese Room recently posted a
tantalisng taste of the story on the game's www.moddb.com
profile page: a doctor's journal describing what seems
to be an epidemic of the illness, beginning during the
television broadcast of New Year's Eve celebrations.
"People who hated Dear Esther's open story
are going to hate this too," Dan concedes,
"because it's a similar case of undermining
everything that is set up, throwing out these ideas about
what could be happening, but never closing things
off. There will be less story than Dear
Esther in terms of voiceovers and so on, but more
high-intensity bursts of plot. That's partially
buying space for gameplay, partially because I've got a
better grasp of using the environment as a storytelling
device, and it's also playing around with different
types of stories again."
Dan considers the theory behind his new project.
"I'd been thinking a lot about the way agents are
represented in games, and what behaviour players expect
from them. So it seemed like an obvious and
interesting question to ask what happens when you take
away all of the cues, like anthropomorphic
representation and obvious motivation, from an
agent. All our agents are simply particle effects,
so you end up being hunted down by these weird streams
of black smoke - looking a little bit like the monster
in 'Lost' - that are emitting these really messed-up
noises. So you have a situation where not only do
these things not look or sound like people, animals or
monsters, you also have no idea why they are there or
what they want."
Pinchbeck's current catalogue of projects spans a great
many genres. Conscientious Objector, a Doom
3 mod, replaces your high-powered firearms with a
rubber-bullet gun, and forces you into non-lethal combat
against a force of enemies controlled by an omniscient
voice that aggressively hates you. Antlion
Soccer is just that: a "football" game
involving firing those enormous Half-Life 2
baddies into a net. Then there's Dear Esther,
the "interactive" story. Where does Korsakovia
fit into this complex network of mechanics?
"What we're aiming for has a survival horror feel
to it, rather than being too heavily
combat-orientated," Dan says. "It's much
faster and more frenetic than Esther. It's still
working around the core of exploring an environment, but
there are a greater number of things to interact
with. That's going to mean some object
manipulating, some platforming, some combat... although
this is going to be quite limited. I'm more
interested in the player running away from agents than
engaging them."
"...I
wanted to balance research against creating proper
gaming experiences..."
- Dan
Pinchbeck
It sounds tense, panicky and unnerving, a nightmarish
world presented to the avatar with little explanation of
what's going on around him. The threat is
constant, and there's no room to breathe: "Unlike Esther,
where nothing really happens and the environment is very
sterile," Dan explains, "Korsakovia has
an environment that is threatening, dark and
confusing. So it's not just exploring and working
out what's going on. It's more of a fight for
survival, as well as answers."
It's rare for developers to take on risky projects such
as Korsakovia. Pinchbeck is fortunate in
this respect. Since The Chinese Room has, so far,
only produced free mods, rather than commercial games,
there's no financial risk to undertake. But,
moreover, these games fall under a mandate of academic
research: he's sort of obliged to make
them. I wondered if this had heavily influenced
his design decisions.
"Well, I've just finished a doctorate in
first-person game content," Dan tells me, "and
one of the things I was looking at was why you find the
types of content you do. Partially, you can write
this off to marketing and sales, but I was increasingly
convinced that there are optimum types of story,
character, etcetera, that are best fits for gameplay.
That may sound obvious, but given that the boundaries
are being pushed by commercial releases like Half-Life
2, BioShock and S.T.A.L.K.E.R., it's
an increasingly interesting question. So I'm
curious: what can you do with these types of games; how
far can you push things?"
He continues. "All of the mods are tied to research questions,
and we were initially funded by the Arts &
Humanities Research Council to build them. So we
were expected to produce results that would contribute
to the development of knowledge in the field," he says. "But the important thing for me was to
balance this against them being proper gaming
experiences, not just experiments. If you want to
get a really ecologically sound sense of how of how
players react to experimental games, you can't
compromise the playing experience."
It's true that Dan seems just as driven by his
inexorable passion for first-person gaming as he is by
his line of work. "Working out what is
possible with this genre is what drives me,
really," he tells me. "It's developing
rapidly at the moment, and there are some really
exciting titles out there that are expanding the normal
narratives that have historically been present in FPS
titles - like BioShock, Far Cry 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
... Then you have the emphasis Valve are placing on the
emotional relationships with agents in the Half-Life series.
We have NPCs dying, avatars sacrificing themselves,
philosophical ideas about utopia and commerce,
collective consciousness and critiques of the politics
of technology being tackled in major titles. And
none of these are compromising gameplay. For an
academic working with this genre, that really throws
down the gauntlet. But we're in a position where
we're not under the pressure of industry, and we have
this great opportunity to take big risks and push out in
totally experimental, non-commercial directions."
"...FPS
games getting more interested in deeper, more complex
experiences..."
- Dan
Pinchbeck
The indies and the
modders are thriving at the moment, unquestionably, and
there's a truly commendable scene of visionary games
designers who, for the first time since the early,
bedroom-coded days of the medium, have a real outlet for
their talent. "This rise of indie gaming and
modding just has to be celebrated, period," says
Dan. "Traditionally, there's been this
complaint that there isn't the equivalent of an
independent cinema movement or avant-garde in games, and
that's an increasingly difficult viewpoint to uphold,
which is fantastic." But, always measured,
he's again quick to defend the big guys.
"Major studios deserve credit for making the tools
available for this to happen, and for supporting the
communities. As for their own releases, well,
we're sliding into a big economic pile-up right now, and
the publishers are under a lot of pressure. There
are very, very good small studios going under.
Publishers are playing it safe and, although it's
disappointing, on a business level you have to
appreciate they're trying to survive, just like everyone
else."
Astoundingly positive and commendably optimistic about
our geeky little world, Dan ponders the current
climate. "Look at the major FPS titles of the
last couple of years. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is
phenomenally inventive, even if they bottled it and
watered it down for a wider audience with Clear Sky.
Mirror's Edge could be much, much better, but at
least it got made, and strove for a different type of
experience and an amazing visual concept. Far
Cry 2: that's a real fusion of traditional FPS play
with a quite different type of story and
environment. Blacksite is a bloody awful
game, but it's a developer and publisher wearing their
politics right on their sleeve, unashamedly. BioShock
as an example of a high-brow shooter?"
The interview draws to a close. I'm fascinated by
Pinchbeck's take on the medium, refreshed by his
overwhelming love he shows towards his projects and the
work of others. He concludes, "I think FPS
games are changing, getting more interested in deeper,
more complex experiences, and that's a really good sign
that developers are either challenging the
preconceptions of what they can and cannot do, or
finding great solutions to the problems of having great
gameplay alongside these types of experiences. So
yeah, you've got your games where great initial concepts
are watered down, or ones that were just mediocre
to begin with. But that's always going to be the
case. And in terms of franchises, well, Chronicles
of Riddick is one of the best shooters of recent
years."
Perhaps we are too quick to criticise certain mainstream
titles. We've certainly come a long way since the
shooters of old; reams of monsters plastered on our
screens with little desire for engaging and emotive
contexts. Perhaps he's right that we need to learn
to accept mediocrity in certain areas, and focus on the
brilliant titles that surround the dull ones.
"For every Timeshift," Dan smiles,
"you get a Portal."
|
