Dead Pixels has 41 chronicles

1. Setting the Scene: Atmosphere in Video Games
   

   Player Chronicle -- Posted on Mar 30 2009

   Before reading this week's Dead Pixel column, please read this thread in the GoG Forum: www.GatheringofGamers.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1932.
   
   Thanks and have fun!
   
   Dead Pixels
   3-30-09
   By Ryan M. Eft
   
   Blood stains the walls and luggage litters the hallways of a paradise gone completely to seed. Shadows creep along the walls and voices cackle in the darkness. Suddenly, water! The corridor is cut off by, of all things, an airplane, and the place begins to flood!
   
   As you march down a busy road in the middle of the largest, most technologically-advanced city on the planet, screaming fans line up to cheer your arrival to the stadium. You’re the star player, and it’s really you they’re here to see. Its night and the stars and sky make the perfect backdrop to the night’s game. There’s absolutely no indication that your world is about to turn upside down.
   
   Twenty years ago, had you asked most people what sort of atmosphere they preferred in their games, they’d have looked at you like you were from Mars. Games weren’t about such things; even the few that offered a deeper experience, like the Zelda series, were still primarily about succeeding in the battle of player vs. game. You didn’t look to Super Mario Bros. 3 for a compelling storyline or well-realized settings and characters. You played it to step on walking mushrooms. If the technology had been around back then, would we have seen more cinematic game experiences? Hell, the word “experience” hadn’t even been bandied about in reference to video games, unless it was followed by the word “points”. I have heard it argued that if the technology existed in, say, 1989 to make realistic games, people would have made realistic games. But would they have made games with meaning?
   
   The sounds. Children screaming, knocking on the walls, blood from nowhere. A steady, incessant nagging telling you something is very, very not right here. And that door…that door that won’t open, what is with that door? Your nightly reading isn’t exactly like most people’s. Scenes of terror, from years gone by…
   
   That turns out to be a much harder question to answer than one about realism. At first thought, they may appear to be essentially the same thing, but further pondering makes it clear that atmosphere and reality in video games are two different things; related, maybe, but not symbiotic. In 1989, the mindset of gamers was very, very different. Not only did games primarily offer contests of man vs. machine, but that was primarily what gamers wanted. If the technology had been there to force games to coerce to a different way of doing things, who is to say that gamers might not have rejected it outright? Even once the technology was present, years later, it would be even more years before most of those holding a controller would accept games based on more than a high score.
   
   You’re a free man, but no one guarantees it’s going to last. The land is filled with forests, mountains, lakes and caves, not to mention foreboding, crumbling ruins. There are hundreds of miles of road to traverse, and cutthroats wait at every turn. As you watch the sun rise, you realize: you could do what was requested of you, or you could do…anything…
   
   Flames. They engulf the village, and you realize your way of life is being swept away. Your friend is seeing red; he jumps the nearest soldier, who is framed by the fire to look terrifying. A yell, a clash of steel, and…tragedy. But what if you could see this through another set of eyes?
   
   Let’s shuffle back about 14 years ago instead. Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI are fairly new at this time, and while they make great leaps in the way games can be presented, the general gaming public (outside of Japan, of course) doesn’t really seem to take much notice. Lush environments, rowdy pubs and world-affecting choices make so little impact on the buying public at the time that these days, an original SNES cart of Chrono Trigger is worth a grip, since so relatively few were released in America. And the idea of a game that likes to set a scene has yet to expand beyond the RPG genre.
   So does this answer the earlier question? Some of the technology to make game broader in the way they unfold exists, but generally and on balance the public isn’t biting. It’s still a niche thing.
   
   The couple of cities you visit look pulled straight from a high-fantasy novel. They seem stacked on one another like blocks. But they’re full of life. As you wander, you realize that this game has done away with the typical NPC. Every single person in the world has a story; every single one has loves and hopes and fears. And every one has a variety of way to interact with you. The fairy kingdoms are kicking up a fuss lately, and trouble is brewing, so maybe you’ll need all the help you can get.
   
   Some snobs (and I am guilty of this, at times) tend to separate the types of gamers who like to sink their teeth in from those who want a play-it-and-don’t-think-about-it type of game. But anymore, thanks to the prevalence of developer reliance on setting, there aren’t as many distinctions. Environmental damage, physics engines, enemy and ally AI…most folks don’t realize that all these things fall under the heading of atmosphere. Call of Duty 4 wouldn’t be as harrowing if it used a conventional life bar, and the recent Left 4 Dead is a shoot ‘em up that relies for any and all depth entirely on place and setting..both physical and in the form of AI. Grand Theft Auto is possibly the most popular series of all time, and it has made a name for itself partially by combining realism and atmosphere to create real-life places that are far more interesting than, well, real-life places. On the football field, we want announcers and fans and mascots. Whether people realize it or not, all of this is part of the atmosphere of a game. No matter how much someone may say they just want to play a season, if you took out all the cheerleaders and the weather factors and the other examples of scene, they’d cry foul.
   
   But it wasn’t always that way.
   
   The castle-like tower looms above you, and soon, it will be your home. For good? Probably. The musty halls, sunlight streaming through windows and quiet, tranquil gardens would make the place a fantastic summer retreat, if it weren’t populated by darkness, and if you and a new friend didn’t have to try and escape with your lives.
   
   The place is silent as a grave. No music, precious few sounds. Somewhere dangers unguessed are lurking, and somewhere prizes beyond imagining, but the place is so silent and foreboding that even with guns and some serious athletic prowess, you’re not sure it’s worth it to go further into this dead place.
   
   So the question becomes, what changed things? Somewhere along the way, whether a conscious decision or not, atmosphere became an essential element of game design, and something gamers crave. Did one game (or a handful of games) cause the transition? Or maybe it was a slow shift in the way gamers perceive the game world. Since atmosphere means different things to the different people experiencing it, it’s likely the answer is different for each player. For me, the need for a good sense of place and scale came relatively early, with a moment in Final Fantasy VII that I’ve discussed before (see the column “The Soul of a Gamer”).
   
   I guess what I’m trying to put across is, next time you pop in a new game, take a look around the game world. Realistic is fine, but realism is too often defined by violence and destruction and the bodies flying the right direction. Atmosphere is less immediately tangible, but infinitely more rewarding if you take the time to notice it…and especially if you compare it today to what it was not all that long ago.
   
   Before I sign off for the week, here are more atmospheric game descriptions for you. Can you guess what they’re describing?
   
   You wouldn’t call the place a vibrant world; it’s more like a vibrant unworld. Fish swim in brooks, but otherwise, everything is gone. The mountains ring you in, containing you in nothing. The hollow feeling you’re left with can be fixed with work and lots of exploration, but for now all you know is that the world is…dead.
   
   Pastels reach to the horizon, while everything in the world itself behaves strangely. Words spill into clouds in a sort of frenzied poem, while you try to win back something dearly important that you may have lost forever.

   
   

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