Bad guy wins...?

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I've always wondered: what do you guys think about a game from a bad guy's type of view?

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GTA comes to mind

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The concept of having to "lose" to win the game - regardless from the moral side of the playercharacter...

I think that it is a very intruiging concept, although hard to pull off. One way is to let the player play several characters to see the story from all the different sides. I think (but I may be wrong, I haven't played it) Indigo Prophecy went that way. And then there are games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus - from what I've read (again, I haven't played them, sadly), they both have a very peculiar feeling to them and you never feel quite comfortable with what you're doing.

Most people think that the ultimate goal with your game is to entertain your player, maybe make him laugh and overall to let him have fun. This is what (most) games have been doing for the last years and it goes pretty well. However, from all the games on the market, only very, very few of them tell a good, interesting story with well-developed charakters. You can do without them if you want a "fun" game or if you just want to get some feeling across ("OMG IM IN A SPACESTATION AND THERE ARE ALIENS EVERYWHERE") - but in the long term, thats nothing that could make games really evolve.

A game where you have to escape from everything and everyone whos out to get you, only to be cornered at the last moment with a decision between only terrible outcomes - that is something that right now is pretty much unthinkable for most gamedesigners. Personally, I think it would be an intruging concept. A game that after hours trying to keep my character alive, only to have him commit suicide at the very end of it - that can be either extremely frustrating or thoughtprovoking (or, possibly, both). How it will end up depends on the situation, the story and the character itself. In the end, it would be a tragedy, but if you do it right, you may be able to get a nice little message across - or just to evoke emotions in the player.

Of course, you can also ignore all that and still make a game around the bad guys (i.e. Dungeon Keeper, which is a classic game just with the sides reversed, in essence).

Personally, I think that before we can even think to create games like this in the way I described it, we have to improve the stories of our games - by alot. Most of us in this forum - well, most don't. I'm guilty of that as well: My "Experimental-Series" all have no story at all and no characters to identify with. I swear, I will do that better next time.

Let's have a look at the Showcase, shall we?
Right now, I'd say that one, maybe two (not so sure about Angelas World 2) out of twelve serious projects really thought about their story (this is from the first page of the Showcase I-forums, I only counted real games) and that the story is one of the primary aspects of the game. True, sometimes its not necessary, but its still pretty low. Some teams here tell you what there story is and you immediatly see that it was only a weak afterthought, that it doesn't make sense and that it doesn't even take a minute to completely rip it apart. As long as one isn't able to tell more about all major characters and answer most important questions about the world and the story, one isn't quite finished with the story, I'd argue. And as long as we don't care about stories, it doesn't really matter what happens in the end - you can't expect the plaer to "feel" something about "LOL A CITY" with no notable characters or anything that feels alive.

Which brings up another interesting point, really: Are we indy developers even ABLE to tell such a story in a game thats not totally linear? I'd argue that it would take way to long to do otherwise.

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say like an SS member in WW2, killing innocent people

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I'd love a game like that! But it would be too easy... A breed between SplinterCell and BlackHawkDown. Stealth killer against retards throwing rocks...


i'm just messing with you all. I really don't mean that

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Ever played "Star Wars Republic Commando"?
In the end you find out that you were on the bad side...
But the end is anyway kind of sad.

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playing shooters, you are forced to use brutal violence to achieve your goals. aren't you always a bad guy then?

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You talked about a game that in which the player does everything right and still "looses". I've played a game like that, although I don't remember what it was. There was someone attacking you, and you kept on getting pushed back. But in the end, I still won, so it doesn't count... ^^

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Hmm... I remember that Jedi Knight II had a sequence like this, somewhere at around the end of the first third of the game. It had a fight that you couldn't win, but of course nobody told 'ya. I spend all my hard-earned healthcontainers on that one. It was extremely frustrating, especially because I always quit when I saw that I haven't had a chance. In the end, I had to refer to a guide to see that I couldn't win that one. The situation wasn't clear enough, thus it became frustrating (at least for me). The rest of the game was cool, don't get me wrong, but that part? Cool idea, bad execution.

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Error014, i liked what you said about stories. You're totally right. Stories aren't as good as they should be.

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Hah, thanks. I seem to have missed the point of the thread, though. I still believe in what I've said. I've toyed with the idea to open a thread to discuss how to develop characters and how to present and write your story so its intruiging, fun and not too boring (right now, I'm struggling in my game to introduce a million things without it ending up as a book ). Any interest in that?


Another interesting aspect about this is the moral dilemma you as a developer are in. Is it actually okay to have the player do something bad? Right now, its pretty much "yes" if we talk about shooting and stealing. You still have to draw a line somewhere, though. If the player stops playing because he can't accept what he does morally, then you lost. You have to find the balance between whats "bad and cool" or "bad and acceptable" as long as there is a fun gameplayexperience and maybe a storybehind it and whats "just bad". Of course, this is different for everyone, but the more extreme you do it, the smaller the targetaudience becomes. Sadly, this is also true for the reverse: If you make it too familyfriendly, self-declared, 13-year old "mature gamers" won't play the game. And thats quite a chunk of the market! That being said... please don't develop games for them.

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Or leave the decision to the player (Fable)

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or have most of the NPCs think you are against them when you are actually for them...

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All stories are told. We can only alter them and put them into a new location.

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As you've said yourself already: Thats not an excuse for not trying to make up a good story, though! Even if every story might have been told somewhere by someone, there are still concepts that are overused way too much and some that will still feel "fresh". It's easier to make a (game)story about a submarine feel fresh than it is with an abandoned spacestation. One of them was seen a million times. The other oen... not so much. The less often your general scenario and setting is used, the easier it is to create a story that will truly surprise the player. Which is always a good thing. Be honest, aren't you tired of abandoned spacestation?

Okay, I'm done. You may now go on and rip my post apart. Can't wait!

(So... is there interest in a discussion about how to write stories and how to develop characters?)


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*This is not a subliminal message to get you to blow something up

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fighting violence with violence does not make you look different from you enemies. if violence isn't bad, what else is? i agree there are certain shades of displaying it on the screen.

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Which is always a good thing. Be honest, aren't you tired of abandoned spacestation?

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Hmm... I remember that Jedi Knight II had a sequence like this, somewhere at around the end of the first third of the game. It had a fight that you couldn't win, but of course nobody told 'ya. I spend all my hard-earned healthcontainers on that one. It was extremely frustrating, especially because I always quit when I saw that I haven't had a chance. In the end, I had to refer to a guide to see that I couldn't win that one. The situation wasn't clear enough, thus it became frustrating (at least for me). The rest of the game was cool, don't get me wrong, but that part? Cool idea, bad execution.

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the average shooter: kill all to achieve your goals.
hitman series: you're a contract killer and earn money with the job. you even got to think a lot.

the average shooter gets usk 16. hitman has been on the german index for the concept, though you kill ~50 more people per level in an average shooter. thinking about this, i feel there is something wrong. who is good and who is evil?

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a space station is always a space station and a mage is a mage, true. but i've never seen a mage in a space station (star wars doesn't count as mages), so there are still stories to be told: the combination of elements counts.

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Star Wars Jedi knights and Sith knights do look and act a bit like mages. They have this 'wise-wizard' thing to them and off course their 'force' magic.

However, I agree a real space mage fantasy game hasn't been done yet, would be interesting perhaps.

Cheers

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You have to find the balance between whats "bad and cool" or "bad and acceptable"

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Fighting violence with violence does not make you the same as your enemy (or whatever you want to call the adversary). Violence can be used for noble purposes, and sometimes it must be used, and out in the real world sometimes someone just needs a good beating to get the point across. Words aren't the answer, so a kick to the head is the answer.

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You can't tell the player that it's okey to 'loose', because you can't win anyways. There's no real solution to your tactic in playing this game. I bet by far most people do not stop playing before they actually have been 'beaten'.

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Yes? You really think so? Let's say you're down to 10 HP up from 200HP (you know, games nowadays...!) and you haven't damaged him at all.. you would continue? Especially with quickload! Maybe I'm the minority here, but I'd get pretty frustrated and either start again or stop playing and never play again (sorry, game, you lost). It somehow has to be obvious that it's "okay to lose", yet you can't kill the suspension entirely. Maybe one could say that "if you were to win now, we'd be finished, but we wouldn't have lost completely if yu don't." Sure, the sentence needs a little work but I think that might be a good thing. If even I get frustrated, then whats with "non-gamers"? Maybe they quit and won't buy any other game for three years (after all, they just wanted to try that out and it was apparently not fun - not all of them will realize that it is only the (small?) fault of one game!)

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Nowadays, these kind of gameplay problems get solved by letting the player deal an x amount of damage to the opponent and thén there will be a cutscene with whatever alternate ending such a scene would have.

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And that one's much better. Show me that I make progress, at least! But in that sequence, he'd block all my shots. Show me that I'm doing at least something correct, even though its not enough. I might even continue long enough, then

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the average shooter: kill all to achieve your goals.
hitman series: you're a contract killer and earn money with the job. you even got to think a lot.

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How can a game developer be so annoying? It would disturb my idea of fun quite a bit.

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An example would be a military commander who has control over life and death. Killing may seem to be the better way. but in the end, you've killed someone who didn't deserve death, you're bad. it would make people think. Or, maybe, it would make people switch of entirely. but the first option would be intended...

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What you have to keep in mind is that for most people, he is "just" a soldier with no backstory, no name, no family, no anything. He doesn't have a past nor will he have a future as soon as you switch off the computer. Why should one care? That is - probably - why gamedevelopers can expect us to shoot anything after all . To make the player really think, you'd probably have to develop that character that has been killed. You have to think of a backstory for him. Where does he come from? What are his goals in life? Where does he live? How does he live? Is he happy? etc, etc. You can also tell the player only after he has made the decision (maybe that would be even more effective as far as emotional "impact" is concerned!). But many games don't even bother to do it with their main characters! What do we know about Sam Fisher? Lara croft? Although it sure isn't necessary for every game, thats something games really should change so people can take it seriously. My beloved PhoenixWright games (or Hotel Dusk, for that matter) have pretty well-developed characters. Tim Schafers games usually have (maybe always? I haven't played them all, I know, I'm a bad person ).
Everyone, play Phoenix Wright and Hotel Dusk. RIGHT NOW.

Did you ever thought about any character from a book or from a movie outside of the book/movie? I'm pretty sure you have. How often did that happen for a character from a videogame? Thought so.

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I would love such a thread, error014!!

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Well, I don't know about the interest for the rest, but maybe I'll open such a thread. Or go ahead and do it, I'm fine with that as well

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"Ever thought about any character from a book or from a movie outside of the book/movie? I'm pretty sure you have. How often did that happen for a character from a videogame? Thought so.

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To make the player really think, you'd probably have to develop that character that has been killed. You have to think of a backstory for him. Where does he come from? What are his goals in life? Where does he live? How does he live? Is he happy? etc, etc.

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That's exactly what I meant, yes. But I believe that you don't need to tell the player whether or not the character's married. Instead, make him scream, make him beg for mercy, and all of that will take care of itself. You'll know he doesn't ant to die.

I recall a scene from "Schindler's List". They drag a guy outside because he has not finished as many hinges as he could have. they pull the gun, try to shoot him: and it doesn't work. the get a new gun, doesn't work either. then they just let him live.
I don't think they showed you anything about the guy beforehand. they didn't tell you if he had a son or a daughter, they don't tell you if he had a happy childhood. But when he is pushed to the ground, he cries, he begs for mercy. You don't need to know any more than that.
I certainly would feel bad killing that guy. Even if he's not alive as soon as I exit the game. Having this scene in a game would make the people really start having to show responsibility. they would have to start caring about their actions.

In Oblivion (yeah, I like taking that one as an example ), the "Shivering Isles", there was a scene in which I had to proove my loyalty. There were 3 guys, and they were caught. I was watching them. i had two buttons that I could press. one of them would make a guy insane, the other would kill him. I had to choose 3 times. I heard the 3 guys talking while they were walking into the trap. They were just after some treasure, and they were like any other treasure hunters in the game. They only talked for about 60 secs or so, and I already "knew" them.
I did it. I killed one, and drove two insane (I don't think I meant to kill him, but I was curious, and I pressed the wrong button). The insanity wasn't much better than death though.
Later on I met them again. They were in a cage. the people gave me their things, one of them was a sword which had a diray with it. I got to know more about their story after I was "done" with them. It was a very well done part, even if their emotions could have been shown better. I think this is exactly what you were talking about.
I still have a bad conscience now. It makes you imagine what you'd do in real life. I think computer games should do that. I hate the developers of "Shivering Isles" for making me act like this though.
I was the bad guy. Even if all I wanted was to save the world, i was bad.

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But isn't that an absolutely intruiging concept? Sure it's annoying and - yes, it's not fun. So what? Some of my favorite movies are "not fun". I have recommended books that are far from "being fun". Why is that not okay with games? There are some notable exceptions, but generally...

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The other thing is, that most people considder themselve to be "good".
So the main character is mostly a "good" guy.

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The other thing is, that most people considder themselve to be "good".
So the main character is mostly a "good" guy.

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Go play black&white and tell me in wich side you are...

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Well, to be honest, Black & White and even Black & White 2 are flawed games when it comes to good an evil. Choosing for good is way harder than choosing for evil and also the 'good' strategy takes a lot more time. Besides, when I'm 100% good my creature is doing 100% evil stuff mostly. Why doesn't the creature's alignment influence my own? I mean, it's me who says it's okey to feed on enemy villagers after all.

I think it's very possible to let the bad guy win, however you hardly ever see it in movies and if you do, there's always sómething that went good or had a good end somehow. When the bad guy wins, it's usually either a part 1 of a trilogy or everybody dies but the initial mission was accomplished anyways, giving it a happy end still. Did the bad guy win? Yes and no.

For an example of the latter I'd suggest everybody to go and watch this new 'Sunshine' movie,

Cheers