I’m still stuck reading about fifty pages every week on hypertext, when I feel like we should get a hypertext version of it. Just saying. I mean, there was one reading that was almost like hypertext, or would have been had we been given more of the book. Not that I want more! No, I’m satisfied by my knowledge of hypertext now.
I’m serious, please stop.
What I was going to say was that in the last few readings I’ve come to see these views of hypertext as closer to computer games than novels. Well, the reading that directly references computer games as a form of hypertext (think Titanic) anyway. And not just any computer games: simulation games. Yeah, sure, Red Dead Redemption gives you the option of becoming a goodie or a baddie (guess which is more fun), but it’s games like The Sims or (to a lesser extent) World of Warcraft that really present the player with near infinite choices and outcomes.
I’m really showing my gaming abilities right now.
The interactivity of games these days makes them changeable. Even back in the Space Invader or Pacman ages, there were theoretically a few ways of playing the arcade games, though arguably there was one superior, more efficient way to play. Today, even in game narratives that require the player to complete specific goals in a specific order (which is what happens in most games), there are generally a few ways in which the missions can be completed. For example, first-person shooters like Crysis give the player the option of killing everyone with super strength and super speed or invisibly slipping past the enemies in stealth mode. Infamous, like Red Dead Redemption, allows the player to choose to give their super powered protagonist an evil swing, if the good side of the tracks is a little too dreary.
That said, in all these games there are two streams of missions: The main objectives and the side missions. The main objectives, regardless of how you play the game, will barely alter. If you are an evil bastard in Red Dead, you will still have to try and locate and rescue your kidnapped wife and son. You will still encounter the same bad guys and allies. You will still do the same things. The side missions are different. They aren’t central to the game, they aren’t a requirement. In fact, if you wait too long or stray too far, often they will simply cease to be an option for you as they no longer fit within the chronology of the narrative. In Crysis, the side jobs you could complete on the lovely Filipino tropical island all become voided when the invaded paradise is frozen over by an ancient, sentient life form with a liking for the cold (seriously, this is an amazing game).
That is where simulation games come in, and I’m going to shove Role Playing Games in with these as well.
The Sims, World of Warcraft, Eve, freaking Neopets (that keeps coming up in conversation lately for some reason) or SimCity. All these games have one thing in common that makes them different to the others here: they have no ending.
By removing that single narrative element, it opens up a whole range of opportunities for the player and the developer, in that there is no one event that everything has to lead to. There is nothing that the game has to ensure. In the Sims, there’s no automatic do-over. Your Sim dies, they die. They don’t just rise up from the ashes like a phoenix – or ‘respawn’, I believe it’s called – if you want them back, you have to work for it, unless you want to not save the game.
The role-playing games are different. In simulation games you are rarely playing one character completely and exclusively (that one Sim that’s just died, yeah, well he happened to live in a house of seven others that you can control), but in WOW and EVE it’s all about your avatar. They have to survive in order for you to play, so they respawn. However, you don’t have to be… well, anything. The quests will grant you new abilities that might help you out in the long run, but for the most part they aren’t necessary. You can go hunt giant monsters in valleys if you feel like it, even if that’s not what your avatar’s occupation normally entails. Levelling up is great and all, but if that’s all we work for, what’s the point?
I’ve never played World of Warcraft. I’m just making up stuff based on what people have told me. I have played EVE though, which is a similar concept but in space. EVE, in my opinion anyway, is prettier. It’s much more atmospheric and full of wonder, but that’s beside the point. EVE is pretty much the same concept: choose an avatar (or more, but they won’t interact with each other), choose a nation (they’re all at war, think Alliance vs. Horde in WOW), choose a career path, choose an academy to study at. After that, you’re whisked away to your new virtual home and you start building up your character towards great power and ability.
The dodgy thing about World of Warcraft, EVE, the Sims and Neopets is that there is only so far you can go. There is a certain equilibrium that the game engine will maintain, even if it might change whenever there is an expansion or an upgrade. What that means is that, in Sims for example, your Sim can’t just decide to take over the town and kill everyone. Every time someone dies, the game will create a new non-playable character to take their spot, often of the same gender, in a similar career, of the same age. There will always be enough people in any town to do anything you can always do, if you know what I mean. The game will not allow options to disappear unless it gives you the choice to take them away. Likewise, EVE and WOW have massive game events, I.E. someone taking over the planet/galaxy/country, explosions, ‘rifts’, all that stuff, but the player doesn’t get to make them happen, and they will never be granted the power to do anything like that.
Some Simulation games, like Sim City, are different. Since they aren’t character based and have somewhat definitive aims (create a city/theme park/cruise liner/etc.), they let you fail. You can create a beautiful metropolis in Sim City, then obliterate it with fire and asteroids and alien invasions and earthquakes and robots. In reality though, that’s the ultimate aim: create a city so great and successful that it is a tragedy when it is completely destroyed by a giant lizard.
You could argue that by having such an abrupt ending it makes it not so much hypertext, but I’d say you were wrong. These lizards and UFOs aren’t pre-destined game events, in fact, the gamer summons them to unleash hell upon their citizens. If it is destructive enough to really bring about the game’s end, then oh, well, it was ultimately the choice of the player. However, if the player has built a giant, booming urban paradise, then presumably they’ve also earned quite a lot of money, and if they so feel they can simply start to rebuild in the ashes of their old jurisdiction. Or, they could just not destroy it in the first place.
This is been going on a bit long, so let’s start to bring it back. If you want a story, a game with a real, twist-y turn-y story, don’t play these games. Unfortunately, in ‘stories’ like The Sims and Sim City, there are little to no random game events. You choose how your characters/citizens live and die, there is nothing that really comes out of left field, simply because it might piss off the players of the game. Twists and turns are mostly present in games with a predefined story, like Red Dead or Infamous or Crysis (hell, the latter COMPLETELY changes half-way through). But if you want real hypertext, where the story is entirely interactive, Sims and Sim City and WOW and EVE and freaking Neopets (yes the ‘freaking’ is part of the title now) are where you should go. You are the story teller, since you’re telling the story what to do. In fact… you know what, keep the idea of virtual story telling in mind. I might have some fun later.
