/lit/ - Literature

>>22765386
Storytelling, immersion, ethical decisions - these are just buzzwords based on what creative directors think are real aesthetic values that qualify you as True Art. They don't relate to the specific weirdnesses and materiality of the videogame form, its inhumanness, and you can't make interesting art if you don't pay attention to your materials. This is a canonical text for me on the subject, but everything thecatamites writes is in a league of its own: http://harmonyzone.org/text/monsterparty.html.. Excerpted:
> Text is both a resource and a drain, and I think part of the history of text in videogames is that of designers coming up with ways to plug this black hole. It was a while yet before technological and economic affordance would allow the generic NPC to become that settled repository for dolorously “naturalistic” polished lore sentences that we know and begrudgingly tolerate from AAA and indie alike today – “Howdy stranger. What can I get’cha? Rare to see new faces in this town. It hasn’t been the same since the war –now that all the youngsters left there’s nobody to maintain our previously buoyant fishing industry. This damn war… Well, sorry for flying off the handle there. If you’ve got any [squirrel hide], I’d be willing to trade for ‘em” and on and on and on forever. This kind of stolid, researched and dutifully ‘characterised’ Quality Prose turns out to be perfect filler for the indeterminate non-spaces of the videogame text system, and we are once again reminded that the Iowa Writer’s Workshop was not the least of the CIA’s crimes against humanity.