GTTV - Ken Levine, Todd Howard, David Jaffe Panel

I love what Todd Howard said about linear and open-ended games. "Give the players enough tools to make to their own fun, they can make their own pace." Don't need to have such a tight structure, etc.

Quote from Puddy

Not super-interesting, but with the names involved you know you gotta watch it anyways.

Well said, looking forward to part 2!

i love how jaffe manages to get angry all by himself without any kind of stimulus

howard must feel like he's standing between giants

joke about his height? coz Howard > both of them by miles.

Quote from Vilham

joke about his height? coz Howard > both of them by miles.

hahah, i meant in fame/game design glory

Where would you be on this height scale?

Game story telling on the whole is pretty weak lets face it.

Quote from Taylor

Where would you be on this height scale?

somewhere in the negatives

Jaffe is very argumentative, that is for sure. But after recently finishing the Masters of Doom book (which is fucking awesome btw, a must buy if you are just a tad interested in fps games, or games in general), then I cant help but think that a marriage between carmack and daffe would produce one hell of an awesome game.

Jaffe seemed to be dismissing the value of story for gameplay entirely, when it can be a powerful and effective tool for enhancing and augmenting the player experience. One example that sticks out to me right way is from Amnesia:

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How the game changes in tone and thus how it effects your fear and play style as you learn about your character's past and prior actions, and what's going on in the castle. Finding out you're a torturer, and actually hearing yourself torture people was pretty traumatizing

#1 Ken Levine fanboy

That god of war guy on the end was annoying though.

Doesnt he say that if there is going to be story in the game then the story needs to be married to the game play and the game play married to the story (or something along those lines). So its okay to have a story, but it should not be a layer ontop of the game play. Like story in Counter-Strike is totally not necessary. Most people were even playing with green and red hitboxes showing on the players and white/grey walls to see better. They didnt give a shit whether this was an old aztec ruin and they had to defuse a bomb. All they knew was that those red guys are putting something that beeps on the ground over there and i need to get to it.

But with Amnesia: DC, then the story is such an integral part of the playing experience because that experience is so much more about immersion than it is about mastering some aim or tactic skill, and then it is totally okay, but only because story is there because of game play, not as a layer on top as a poor mans attempt to enrich it.

What I think Jaffe fails to see here is that there is a huge difference between a single player experience and a multi player one. His new game is a mutli-player based game, and should be very game play oriented. It doesn't really need a story because the players will create their own story and immerse themselves in the challenge of defeating each other. But the single player of half-life was revolutionary because it had story and immersed the player like no other game before it had done.

I hadn't seen this, but I guess you can consider this the prelude: