When is a game not a game?

In the past few days I have been playing a few of what you might call "indie" games. Lot of Dwarf Fortress (which deserves its own post frankly) and also Polaris, a Half-Life 2 mod that is partly a game but mostly a story - anyway I won't spoil it just check it out.

What the designer of Polaris is working to achieve is very interesting, and if you read up on it you'll see references to other 'games' that are more works of interactive fiction than straight-up gaming experiences. And that is what interests me most - that point at which what we generally classify as a "game" (because we play it on a computer or gaming system and it uses many of the mechanics of a game) but that really isn't a game at all.

In Polaris there are 3 different endings possible based on what you do, but none of them are really wins necessarily. How you react to the stargazing date that forms the plot of the scene determines the outcome, but what you walk away with after playing it is more a sense that you experienced a compelling story than that you 'beat a game'.

How often have I heard someone say "Oh yeah, I beat that" when discussing a game? But this brand of game we're talking about here isn't about beating it - it's about experiencing it, and in that sense they are much closer to a short story or novel, or television show or film than to a game.

A looong time ago I played this game that I wish for the life of me I could remember the name of. It basically had you in the shoes of a soldier in a future sci-fi world where you were supposedly part of a interplanetary or interdimensional research and resource mining team that was operating in a hostile environment. Most of the game you were walking around inside this underground bunker and never saw the outside. When the soldiers went outside they wore virtual reality helmets that depicted what they were seeing as atari-like graphics - so they never really saw the outside. The environment was supposed to be toxic and would result in painful death if the suit was breached so they were equipped with euthenasia systems in case of a breach. Meaning none of the soldiers who saw the outside lived to tell about it. The gameplay basically consisted of walking around and watching scenes play out as you talk to other characters, and you start to get the idea that something fishy is going on. The only actual game to speak of was a final scene in which you are sent out to fight off an assault by the strange bug-creatures that are the 'hostiles'. I believe there was no way to win that battle though, because you are quickly overwhelmed and mortally wounded. Your character hears the euthenasia system activating and in his last moments removes his helmet to see his enemy for the first time. Instead of a bug-like alien creature it is a tall beautiful woman with angel-like wings and a flaming sword. At the time I thought that it was the dumbest game ever. In retrospect I'm kind of amazed that so much of the story stuck with me. Now I'm wondering: was it inter-dimensional or interplanetary? Was the idea that the military were invading heaven? Or just another planet with winged women? Weird.

But those sorts of games have got me thinking about the next evolution in fiction. Consider the leap between stage plays and film. One can write a story for each medium, but when you write for film you have to consider the camera and more importantly the use of editing to manipulate time. A play can have successive scenes that take place at different points in time, but that's rare and unwieldy. A film does that all the time. What would Shakespeare have made of Pulp Fiction?

I think that the next leap in storytelling is going to be to Pulp Fiction what Pulp Fiction was to Shakespeare. Polaris hints at it - to fully experience it you play it three times and get three different stories, based on what you choose to do. Writers of the next generation of stories will be writing with interactivity and the choices of the audience in mind.

Bioware's writing system is along these lines: they want choices for their players and their writers create dialogue with choices in mind. Although in the end the stories of games still play out no matter which choices you make, the interactivity draws the player in in a way that isn't possible with passive entertainment.

There have already been some incredible stories told through games. I'll never forget my experience of playing Planescape: Torment. But currently those experiences are catalogued under the heading "games" and so don't really enter the mainstream.

Imagine however, a time when there is a Law and Order of interactive fiction. One that everyone knows and plays weekly, and talks about around the water cooler. An experience that isn't passive, where you participate in the solving of a crime and the telling of a dramatic story each week as a shared experience. Imagine when each summer studios release their slate of scenarios for the public with the star power of Hollywood and the appeal of blockbusters but they aren't movies - they're 'games'. And people like them not because they are gamers, but because they allow them to experience a story more fully than simply watching it unfold on a screen.

There are a lot of possibilities once you go down that route. And I find it very interesting that the games that really point the way on this are not the big hits of today - not Mario or Call of Duty but strange little games like Polaris and forgotten pieces from 15 years ago.