Games are lousy vehicles for traditional narratives, but they’re still excellent vehicles for emotional storytelling, provided that the story is shown, rather than told.

Here are a couple of quotes from a summary of Levine’s presentation (via Gamasutra) that illustrate this point:

Levine showed a short demo of the prototype for BioShock — it looked very much like a game that could be released on the 360 right now; a convincing corridor-crawler with creepy monsters to shoot and smashed crates. Levine’s take? “The world is not saying very much to us.”

I read that and then considered the finished product. In Bioshock, every corner of every room tells a story. A tragic, horrific, amazing story. Exploring Rapture, the player is a sort of archaeologist, continually piecing the story of the broken world together through its found remains, aided by careful, emotionally powerful art direction. Portal is another example of a game that does the same thing, to great effect.

More Levine:

“What is mise en scene? Literally, to present or make a scene. Film does this. How did BioShock use this? To tell a story without words.” Rapture was designed to sell the story, and this was accomplished via mise en scene.

Bioshock also told its story via other means, of course, including through found audiotapes which provided plenty of more traditional exposition. But those materials were supplementary. They’re an adjunct to the much more visceral, emotionally compelling story delivered via the presentation of Rapture’s environs.

Shadow of the Colossus and Ico are also perfect illustrations of of how games can effectively show, rather than tell, incredible stories.

The video game industry needs to clearly and overwhelmingly debunk these theories with its own extensive research on the subject. To the extent that the industry can develop a research bank and debunk this junk science and addiction theory, it should do so before it needs it and not at the 11th hour.

And, he argues, it’s a PR battle as much as it is a legal battle, for “the hearts and minds of consumers.”

Before I forget, Colleen Hannon recently wrote an excellent article on the subject of the unsettling relationship between junk science practitioners and media regulation groups over at Gamers With Jobs.

The main character is a guy called Toku, a young boy who’s discovered this wind spirit that’s trapped in a stone. You control both Toku using the device called the nunchuck. He’s actually quite vulnerable, in terms of where he can go–also there are things in the world that are threatening–but you also control the wind spirit that he’s able to release which is called Enril. And the wind spirit is controlled by the Wiimote.

By moving the Wiimote around, in different shapes, you can create gentle breezes of wind or strong gusts, or even by twisting it around, little sort of water sticks. The game overall is designed to be a really sort of graceful, beautiful experience where you’re using these essentially two separate characters in combination, and that brings us all sorts of possibilities in the way the game works, which makes it feel very fresh.

That actually sounds very cool.

From the Nintendo press release, their vision of WiiWare:

Through WiiWare, Nintendo hopes to offer developers a virtual laboratory that serves as a breeding ground for new games, which encourages great ideas that creators always wanted to develop. The combination of low development barriers and unique game experiences found only on Wii should enable developers to try new ideas with lower risk in a quicker, more creative and affordable way. Meanwhile Wii owners can download a multitude of cool new games from different genres, including some that are unprecedented, which can be purchased from home at a dynamic price range.

Though it lacks the democratized aspects that Micorosft claims their XNA Creators Content will have, WiiWare still sounds very cool. I think I’d spend a lot more time with the Wii if it had an ever-growing library of modern casual games, specifically designed to compliment its unique hardware.

N’Gai also pushed Nintendo on the subject of demos for the new services’ games. It doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

…

With Toshiba officially conceding defeat, it’s over.

For Sony, who with the PS3 now have the most desirable video playback device on the market, this is huge. The 360’s lower price, online features, and exclusives won’t be enough anymore.

If Microsoft wants to stay competitive, a substantial 360 price cut better be on the way. Or a new 360 that matches the PS3’s hardware features, to include a Blu-Ray drive, built-in wireless, and a sizable hard drive, for a lower price.

What you’re about to see is the online detritus of several weeks’ worth of reading and writing, deceptively post-dated so topics are at least in chronological order. It won’t be pretty, but at least I’ll have it all here for later reference.

Also, don’t know if you noticed this or not, but we’re going to be switching our reviews scores from the old 1-to-10 scale to a letter grade format. Some of you will undoubtedly feel dismay at this announcement, but it’s for the better good. Here’s what the official press release says:

“In addition to the reorganization, 1UP Network is making changes with its game scoring system on 1UP.com, in EGM and in GFW. Games will be graded on a letter scale, A+ to F, rather than a numerical scale. All previously scored games on 1UP.com will also be converted to the new letter scale. Look out for these changes in March on 1UP.com, in the April issue of EGM and in the April/May issue of GFW.”

It’ll take some getting used to, but we feel it’ll more accurately convey how we feel about a game. I mean, we knew a 5 out of 10 meant ‘average’ to us, but no one else seemed to get the clue. So we’re changing things around so that anyone who’s gone to school will instantly know how we feel when they see our letter grade on a game review. Feel free to discuss this at your leisure.

Not exactly surprising news. One need look no further than Tom Chick’s defense of his 4-out-of-10 score for Hellgate London, or Hsu’s recent revelation of 1up’s pariah status among certain publishers, to see how the “5 equals average” scoring system drew the ire of gamers and industry types alike.

The bottom line is that if you want to weigh in in the era of review aggregators like Metacritic and Gamerankings you’ve got to skew your scores accordingly. Which is what 1up’s new letter grading system accomplishes, as letter grades neatly translate to percentage scores. The old 1up average was 5. Now it’s C. Which is 75%, right where “average” games fall when their scores are aggregated.

The decision makes sense. The fact that 1up needed to make it shows just how ridiculous this whole game review scoring business has become.

Criterion’s Alex Ward responded to the chorus of yawns and whines with an indignant holiday missive on Criterion’s website. “We think we made THE best demo released all year,” he wrote before launching a full-frontal defense of the upcoming title. “This new Burnout is an experience that YOU choose how to play rather than us forcing a game structure on you - when the rest of you get to play the full game I am confident you will agree.”

I wasn’t convinced by Ward’s open letter. Let’s face it: Game industry talk is very, very cheap. But as I now know from a series of marathon sessions with Criterion’s finished product, Ward was right. Criterion knew what they were doing when they built a game that defied established conventions.

(Read the rest of this article over at The Escapist)

…if the community around the game is loyal, and if the developer is loyal to the community, someone will notice. And since just about everyone in the gaming press seems to know each other, if even one writer tries the game and likes it, he or she will tell other writers, and they’ll try it as well.

Seepage, in other words. Discussion of the game spreads outwards.

If the game is really, really good, all these people trying the game and talking about it reach critical mass, and suddenly everyone seems to be covering it at once. That’s how games with zero marketing budgets get attention.

On a personal level, this inkblot approach has always had a deep appeal to me, because it distinguishes games from any other kind of media. Could you ever imagine a book or film getting released, then continually being revised and polished based on end-user input? How about an artist having twenty revisions of a painting based on early viewings?

Great stuff, and another reminder that I need to poke my head into the indie scene more often.