The reason games follow a three-act structure, chart redemption arcs, love a Big Bad, a Twist Reveal and a Boss Battle is that those things have proven to work in the past. It has the potential to alienate players, damage franchises and upend expectations to cause hurt feelings and push against calcified notions of what games are for.
Where simple risk and reward is essential to the functioning of any game, narrative risk is anathema because narrative risk is actually dangerous. Narrative risk is the opposite of gameplay risk. It has the potential to alienate players, damage franchises and upend expectations.
And if the risk/reward corollary is so baked into the very essence of gaming - if, in fact, it can be argued that there is no game without risk and reward - then what can a game do to make risk feel. That was when they told Joel what had to happen: That in order to make the cure and save the world, Ellie had to die.īut in being expected, is it really risk? Because if we know it's coming - if we understand that the zombies are brain-hungry all the time and the Nazis are blood-thirsty all the time and all the monsters are out to kill us all the time - then the risk feels less like possibility (the potential to get something or see something or experience something in trade for an elevated chance of imaginary death) and more like inevitability. They risked their lives for each other a hundred times and, against all odds, they made it to the hospital, to the doctor. She came to see him as a father, and he saw her like the daughter he'd lost. Pretty much every minute of it was dangerous. We accept that (virtual) risk is part of the deal. We know that we are stepping into your 1080p, AAA murder simulator. Risk is something that video games understand because it is something that the player understands. Potential risk is how encounters are built (is it worth fighting the over-leveled boss for the potential loot drop?) and mechanical risk defines how they play out (Heal now? Dodge now? Run?). Risk is codified, incentivized, lauded, anchors the equations that drive decision-trees, is calculated as part of the experience. All Tech Considered Reading The Game: This War Of Mine
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