Non-Player Characters – Interactive Digital Narratives

Classifying the Pointing of Broken Age

During my playing of Broken Age, I was interested in the way that the game’s format as a point-and-click game affected the game itself. As a point-and-click adventure game, Broken Age requires the player to use the computer mouse to interact … Continue reading →

During my playing of Broken Age, I was interested in the way that the game’s format as a point-and-click game affected the game itself. As a point-and-click adventure game, Broken Age requires the player to use the computer mouse to interact with the world. I found this method of playing to provide a new element to the game itself, slightly altering the games classification when using Roger Caillois’ four classifications.

Using Roger Caillois’ classifications of games from his work, “The Classification of Games,” I noticed that Broken Age is clearly an agôn game. According to Caillois, agôn games are competitive games in which the player seeks to prove their superiority, be it superiority of speed, endurance, strength, memory, skill, or ingenuity (131). In Broken Age, the player seeks to prove their superior mind by solving the puzzles presented to them while progressing through Shay and Vella’s narratives. Solving the puzzles require the player to obtain objects and talk to various characters, all by clicking on them.

Broken Age does provide clues as to what objects to interact with and what non-player characters to talk to in order to gain the skills or objects needed to solve the current problem or puzzle. Through conversations with the non-player characters, Shay or Vella, and by extension the player, can hear helpful hints as to what type of objects they should be trying to find. While sometimes this is enough to aid the player, the game adds another layer of help.

This image show the gameplay of Broken Age. In this screenshot, Vella is attempting to obtain that golden egg, and must use the ladder she previously obtained that is in her inventory at the bottom of the screen.

As a point-and-click game, the cursor is an extremely important part of Broken Age as it leads to the completion of all the game’s actions. Typically the cursor looks like a normal mouse arrow. However, when the player hovers the cursor over an object that can be interacted with, the cursor changes into a starburst-type shape, cluing the player in to the fact that the object or character can be interacted with.

This image showcases the described cursor change in Broken Age. In the bottom left of the screen, the cursor can be seen in its starburst form, showcasing the ability of the covered dish to be interacted with.

This cursor changes provides the game with another of Caillois’ classifications: alea. According to Caillois, alea games are all about luck and chance, “winning is the result of fate rather than triumphing over an adversary” (133). Thanks to the ability of the cursor to change and clue the player in to what objects are interactive, the player can simply wave the cursor around until they see the cursor change into the necessary starburst. This alters Broken Age from an agôn game that requires skill to pass through the puzzles to an alea game that affords the player the opportunity to wildly wave their cursor around until a solution appears, all as a result of the game’s format.

Works Cited

Caillois, Roger. “The Classification of Games.” The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology. Ed. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2006. 129-47. Print.

Image Sources

https://portforward.com/games/walkthroughs/Broken-Age-Act1/Broken-Age-Act1-73.htm
http://www.gamezebo.com/2014/01/28/broken-age-act-1-walkthrough-cheats-strategy-guide/

Pokémon as a Form of Conservation

The Pokémon franchise is well known for its cast of colorful cartoon animals. Children of all ages easily come to love these creatures and do all that they can to raise them, but does this love of fictional animals translate … Continue reading →

The Pokémon franchise is well known for its cast of colorful cartoon animals. Children of all ages easily come to love these creatures and do all that they can to raise them, but does this love of fictional animals translate into a love of real animals? Four professors at Cambridge seem to believe that it does not, but that it could. In their article, “Why Conservationists Should Heed Pokémon,” Andrew Balmford, Lizzie Clegg, Tim Coulson, and Jennie Taylor detail how they came to this conclusion.

Many Pokémon resemble flora and fauna from our world, so does this foster a protective instinct?

In the article, the researchers discuss an experiment they conducted which determined a child’s ability to recall the names of a random selection of local wildlife and a random selection of Pokémon (Balmford et. al. 2367). Unsurprisingly—depending on your Pokémon fan status—the children were much more able to recall the names of the Pokémon than they were able to recall the names of the local wildlife (Balmford et. al. 2367). The researchers cite this result as proof that kids can get excited about wildlife and conservation when they are interested in the subject (Balmford et. al. 2367).

While I believe the researchers are making an interesting point, I am having some trouble with their tangential association of conservation to Pokémon. In my opinion, the researchers only focused on Pokémon as an example of a way that conservationists could go about improving interest in conservation. However, when I played Pokémon X, I found the game to contain an extremely conservationist message. Throughout the game, the player encounters numerous characters that encourage the player to develop a strong, loving relationship with their Pokémon. In the Pokémon world, the Pokémon are wild animals, so the game is therefore advocating that the player develop a relationship with wild animals outside of the game’s magic circle.

Pokémon X’s conservationist message can also be seen through the game’s villains: Team Flare. Team Flare seeks to make the world a “more beautiful place.” Though they aim to achieve this goal by eliminating Pokémon and conflict by enslaving the population, their message is still rather conservationist. In defeating the villains, the player enables all of the wild Pokémon to continue living a peaceful life, thereby preventing a mass extinction event—another conservationist cause.

Team Flare seeks to make the world a better place, some of their goals include maintaining energy consumption at conservable levels.

These are just some of the many examples of the conservationist messages scattered throughout Pokémon X. I fully believe that these researchers missed the mark in their article. Rather than focusing on the things conservationists do wrong, they should have focused on the things Pokémon X and the Pokémon franchise do to further the conservationist cause.

Works Cited:

Balmford, Andrew; Clegg, Lizzie; Coulson, Tim; & Taylor, Jennie. “Why Conservationists Should Heed Pokémon.” Science, vol. 295, no. 5564, 2002, pp. 2367–2367.

Image Sources:

https://www.pinterest.com/Lizzykatt77/pokemon/
http://pokedream.com/games/pokemon-xy/14-anistar.php

The Shackles of Pokémon X

The Pokémon game series is one of the most popular and successful handheld game franchises in modern history. The formula of each game is similar—players take control of a young adventurer who seeks to raise a strong team of Pokémon … Continue reading →

The Pokémon game series is one of the most popular and successful handheld game franchises in modern history. The formula of each game is similar—players take control of a young adventurer who seeks to raise a strong team of Pokémon to defeat opponents in battle. It has been many years since my last Pokémon experience, so it was extremely nostalgic for me to play Pokémon X. While playing the game, I was immediately struck by how limited I was as a player, especially for a game that appears to give players so much choice.

Within the narrative framework of the game, the protagonist lives a life of relative freedom. For example, even though the character is only 10 years old, they can explore the country unaccompanied by an adult and can make decisions about which towns to visit, and which Pokémon to battle and which to raise. Unfortunately, this freedom is not mirrored in the player’s opportunities. During my experience playing Pokémon X, I found the game to be extremely oppressive in what actions I could undertake.

This image shows the map of the Kalos region, with each town and route labeled

As seen from the map above, the Kalos region—the name of the country where Pokémon X is set—is quite expansive. However, the player is not able to explore all these paths at any moment. In some instances, non-player characters will block some of the routes and tell the player, “you do not want to go that way,” if the player attempts to pass. In other instances, some type of object will be blocking the path and the player is unable to pass unless they undertake a side quest to give them the ability to move the object.

At this point in the game, a snorlax blocks the character’s way, so they must travel down Route 7 to retrieve a flute to wake the Pokémon up

The other aspect of the game that I found limiting had to do with the actual Pokémon raising. Though there are hundreds of Pokémon that inhabit the Kalos region, the player is only able to hold 6 in their party at a time. As Pokémon get stronger by battling other Pokémon, the game almost advocates for the player to choose a core 6 Pokémon and stick with them to compete against the stronger trainers encountered later in the game. The game even forces the player to catch the games legendary Pokémon, Xerneas, at one point in the game, eliminating the player’s choice altogether.

The left side of this image shows the maximum 6 Pokémon in the players party while the right side shows the Pokémons maximum number of four moves

Also limiting is each Pokémon’s ability to only know 4 moves at a time. Whenever a Pokémon levels up and attempts to learn a new move, the player must choose one of the original moves to forget. Much of the time, once the Pokémon forgets a move, it is gone for good. These limitations imposed on the player combine to create an experience that I found extremely frustrating, especially when I compared my experience as a player to the experience of the protagonist within the game’s narrative.

Image Sources

http://www.serebiiforums.com/showthread.php?594375-The-Kalos-Region-Thread
http://www.gamerguides.com/pokemon-xy/main-walkthough/to-gym-2-part-1/route-7-riviere-walk-1st-visit
http://kotaku.com/tips-for-playing-pokemon-x-y-1444982237

The Anti First-Person Shooter

When playing Portal, the most interesting aspect to me was Portal’s status as a first-person shooter game. As a first-person shooter, Portal, therefore, is a game that belongs in a category with fellow shooters such as Call of Duty, Halo, and any game featuring James Bond. However, my experience playing Portal was vastly different than … Continue reading “The Anti First-Person Shooter”

When playing Portal, the most interesting aspect to me was Portal’s status as a first-person shooter game. As a first-person shooter, Portal, therefore, is a game that belongs in a category with fellow shooters such as Call of Duty, Halo, and any game featuring James Bond. However, my experience playing Portal was vastly different than my experience playing these games.

The majority of first-person shooters are action games. The player controls the main character as they battle his/her way through numerous enemies armed with various guns. Throughout the game, the player tries to shoot the majority of the non-player characters (NPCs) before they shoot the protagonist. The game boils down to a test of the player’s reaction time—can you pull the trigger/press the button before the NPCs?

Portal takes this trope and flips it on its head. For starters, the “weapon” that Chell—the main character—is armed with, the Aperture Portal Gun is not even a true weapon. The portal gun does not fire bullets or ammunition, but instead fires non-damaging portals at walls. In a battle, this gun would be worthless, except as a means of escape.

In Portal, Chell uses her gun to create portals rather than kill enemies.

Firing portals is useful to Chell, however, as in this game she is not truly battling. Yes, Chell does take damage periodically from robots controlled by the antagonist GLaDOS, and she does battle GLaDOS at the end of the game, but this “battling” is more about avoidance and relocation than combat. In another break away from the genre, Portal is less of an action game and more of a puzzle game. Instead of trying to shoot first, Portal encourages the player to think strategically. The game is about finding your way out of a predicament rather than simply battling through it. While many first-person shooters are about destroying, Portal is more about creating. The player must use their weapon to create a solution to their problem, as opposed to most first-person shooters which require their players to destroy their problem.