Manifestos are fascinating documents. In the arts, they exist as snapshots of transitional cultural moments, offering insight into the ideas and motives of the artists who render them. Marinetti (Futurism), Breton (Surrealism), Zavattini (Neo-Realism), and Bazin (New Wave), were passionate advocates who urgently pointed the way forward, outlining a philosophical framework they believed would revitalize painting, sculpture, and film.

Manifestos typically require targets, so they often employ a persuasive strategy of invalidating the models they reject. The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments, the Dada Manifesto, and The Cluetrain Manifesto differ wildly in their individual goals, but each call to action presumes the prevailing system is unjust, corrupt or irrelevant.

I write this as Clint Hocking wraps up his barnstorming Click Nothing Tour, spreading his message of change to game design students in New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Savannah, and Atlanta. I don't know if Clint considers his message a manifesto, but I believe it essentially functions as one. He generously posts the texts and slides of his talks on his website, so I encourage you to check them out and decide for yourself. Here's the abstract for his most recent CN Tour talk:

The games of today unsurprisingly strive to mimic the linear, authored structures of previous generations of media largely because gamers and game developers have grown up in a world where those media are culturally dominant. That is changing. As our media become more richly interactive and as our experience of the world becomes increasingly fragmented and parallelized, a new media culture is disintegrating the old. Games of the future will reflect this cultural shift by themselves becoming more fragmentary, more parallelized, and less focused on rich simulation and traditional notions of immersion.

Hocking isn't the first or only person to talk about these things. As far as I can tell, Doug Church got the ball rolling with his  "Abdicating Authorship," talk delivered at GDC in 2000. Randy Smith has referred to authored narratives as "dead," and Jonathan Blow and Steve Gaynor, among others, have also written eloquently on the subject of storytelling and authorship in games.

I've listened to Clint Hocking speak at the last two GDCs, and I've interviewed him on my podcast. It's fair to say I've learned more about game design from him than anyone else - not mechanics or level design, but the fundamental symbiosis of game/player. His vision for the future of games excites me, and I'm convinced by his assertion that the true potential of interactivity lies in emergent player-driven narrative.

But I'm not ready to concede that authored linear narratives are the 2nd-class citizens of game design. My recent experience with Uncharted 2 suggests that there's plenty of life left in such games if - and it's a very big if - the storytelling and the game's delivery systems for that storytelling elevate the player's experience beyond the standard stuff we've seen from video games.

In other words, the problem with linear authored games isn't a question of core design, but a question of quality. If you want to make a game that relies on '30s serial action adventure movie tropes, then you must to do that extraordinarily well - with plenty of style, panache, and Hollywood production values to carry you over all the obvious pitfalls. You need genuinely smart (not just smart...for a video game), well-written and performed dialogue, and you need gameplay that feels responsive, fun, and connected to the story.

If all this sounds terribly formulaic, that's because it is. Formula can be the paint-by-numbers template that makes your project look wholly derivative, or it can be the sturdy container that holds something special. You'd be hard-pressed to identify a single genuinely original aspect of Michael Curtiz's Casablanca. Dozens of movies have told similar stories with similar characters. What elevates Casablanca is the way each of its elements: cinematography, music, performances, screenplay - so clearly surpasses the pedestrian work of other similar films.

The Casablanca parallel works on another level. Casablanca is a thematically simple film. It could have been a more ambitious meditation on pacifism or patriotism, but it's neither of those. It's a romance with action and intrigue set in an exotic locale with charismatic characters. Structurally, it's a linear narrative with an extended flashback sequence. I'm well aware of the apples and oranges objections when we compare video games to films; but in this case I think the parallel is apt. Uncharted 2 is a successful game because it doesn't try to box outside its weight. It's a ripping adventure that makes good on its wisely limited ambitions.

It's also a helluva lot of fun, and that's no small thing.

One more quick point about authored narratives. I hope we never lose sight of the fact that we humans love stories. But more than that, we love to be told stories. I'm thrilled by the power of video games to put the player in the driver's seat, but Uncharted 2 proves it's possible to do that while still appealing to our love of a good story well told. It functions beautifully as both story and storyteller. It's quite possible to see this distinguishing feature of games as no less compelling than their ability to immerse us in an emergent player-driven narrative.

Above photo: Amy Hennig, Creative Director of Uncharted 2.

This post is part of a short series devoted to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. You can find the first two posts here and here.

We often talk about pacing in games, but I'm not sure we're all talking about the same thing. What exactly do we mean when we say a game is well or poorly paced?

Before I began writing about games, my understanding of pace grew out of my experience as a stage director. In the theater, pacing has mostly to do with tempo and rhythm; speeding up and slowing down. Good actors have an acute awareness of pacing and its variability from night to night with different audiences. Comedy, in particular, relies on carefully tuned pacing. Sometimes a gag fails simply because the audience didn't have time to process the setup. Slow it down a bit, and you'll get the laugh. Feel the laugh wave crest, then push the next bit forward. Advance too soon, and you'll kill the laugh; too late and you're milking it. Pace. Rhythm. Timing.

Lots of reviewers have praised Uncharted 2 for its pacing - and I believe it richly deserves such praise - but what does this mean, exactly? I think Uncharted 2's success in this regard can be traced to the same factors I described above, but the interactive nature of games adds a layer of complexity to the formula that's worth exploring.

The most obvious expression of pacing in Uncharted 2 is its elegant shifting from one style of gameplay to another. Just as the player begins to tire of climbing, swinging, and jumping - along comes a combat sequence or a dialogue scene or an environmental puzzle. In its most frenetic moments, the game throws a cocktail of gameplay options at you all at the same time.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Consider Chapter 12: "A Train to Catch." Up to this point the player has grown accustomed to shooting or climbing his way out of trouble, but here you find yourself unarmed and surrounded by bad guys. The preceding chapter concluded with a frantic escape. Now you and Drake must catch your breath, take your time, and find a stealthy route out. You can take cover behind a barrier and wait for a guard to come nearby so you can disable him and grab his gun. Or you can attempt to scurry unseen from cover to cover and avoid combat.

Either way, you've got time to deliberate and act. When you're ready to kick the action into high gear, start shooting and the pace rapidly accelerates. Before you reach your goal, the game will throw running, precision jumping and rope swinging at you, as well as a cutscene between Elena and Nate that cleverly explains (by doing rather than telling) why Elena is the woman Nate will choose at the end.

Here is where the interactive nature of games most clearly distinguishes itself from theater and film. The player retains a certain degree of control over the pace of the game. If I want to press forward and engage the enemy, I can play a fast and furious version of Uncharted 2. But if I need to collect my thoughts - or if I simply want to challenge myself with a tougher option - the game provides me with many opportunities to stop and assess the situation before pressing on. When I make my decision, the game resumes control of the pacing until I complete that section, then hands it back to me.

Such dynamic control of pacing - a give and take between me and the game - has no analogue in theater or film. You might say the audience has some measure of input in live performance, but certainly not to this extent or effect. To a great degree, Naughty Dog's successful management of pacing in this game is a cooperative arrangement in which my preferences and needs as a player mesh with my avatar's within a system that makes all this both fun and meaningful. Lots of games let the player decide what to do, but few games connect their storytelling to this dynamic system so satisfyingly well.

Pacing in Uncharted 2 is about more than gameplay shifts. It's also about tone and environment. Chapter 16: "Where am I?" contains almost no gameplay at all, and the player often has no control over Nate. This chapter introduces Tenzin, a character who speaks no English, and his Nepalese village. These arrive at precisely the right moment.

In terms of pacing, this chapter functions like an oasis, offering the player a chance to relax and explore without looking over his shoulder for an ambush. You can kick a soccer ball with a couple of children; you can listen to other children giggling at you behind a wall. You can watch a man chop wood. Nothing here advances the game or its plot, but I believe this section is pivotal to the player's experience because it feels so right; so necessary. Soon this contemplative moment will fade and these peaceful villagers' lives will be threatened, and your time here will make all that matter even more.

Pacing in games is an intricate balancing act, and Uncharted 2 manages it better than any narrative game I can think of. In my concluding post I'll discuss the game's marriage of cinematic and gameplay elements, both of which also contribute to the game's pacing. As always, your comments and observations are most welcome.

Infinity Ward posted a promotional video for Modern Warfare 2 on YouTube last night. The ad features an in-game version of Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels delivering a faux public service announcement for a faux organization called Fight Against Grenade Spam (FAGS, get it?) urging players to "be cool, and avoid random grenades. They’re for pussies."

It didn't take long for justifiably outraged folks to register their displeasure.

Publicity campaigns like this - and EA's "Sin to Win" contest and SEGA's "Can You Be Bayonetta?" contest co-sponsored by Maxim - suggest the game industry is aggressively targeting a core audience they believe will embrace edgy ads because they're purposely offensive, not in spite of the fact.

Spend a few minutes plowing through the comments on that YouTube video (1700+ as of this writing), and you'll see what I mean. The response can best be described as gleeful. Those who figured out the FAGS acronym seem especially delighted by their cleverness.

Nobody at Activision fumbled the ball here. Nobody's going to be fired for bad judgment. Infinity Ward (owned by Activision) is plugging into a real and widespread cultural pushback occurring among young American men. It's cool at the moment to be an insensitive jerk. Empathy and understanding are out. Tough guys with smirks on their faces are in. Infinity Ward knows this because it's their business to know. 

Like every major developer, Infinity Ward has reams of data on who buys and plays their games. Now, it seems, they've decided to eliminate the PR middle man and target their core audience directly with ads tailored specifically to them. Community manager Robert Bowling puts it this way:

Not only do we know the game but we know the gamer. We know what to expect from them and what they expect from us. So it helps us guide design decisions and decisions overall, including with PR. ... I think it is essential for developers to have that power. ... We are responsible for what we say and what we do, and we can be held accountable for our successes and failures.[1]

The marketing strategy for MW2 reflects the realities of the marketplace and a set of assumptions about the culture of gamers who play the Call of Duty series. I may not like what those assumptions imply, and I may object to a hegemonic characterization of "gamer" - but do I think that ugly little video reached its target? Bullseye.

If we want to teach boys why compassion and civility are essential to their development as men, we must do it one lesson at a time. We can disapprove of EA and Activision's despicable choices, but we shouldn't presume our outrage will impact the underlying reality. It's not about the games or the ad campaigns; it's about how we raise and teach our kids. We have created this callous consumer, and we should expect marketers to target him accordingly. Are companies who sell games and music and body spray complicit in all this? Of course. Are they to blame? No.           

The day your son gets a load of "Sin to Win" and decides he'd rather spend his money on another game is the day we begin to turn this around. And the marketing will follow suit. Those PR types know how to hit a moving target.

Addendum: Infinity Ward has pulled the video from YouTube (via community manager Robert Bowling's Twitter post).

I've been home taking care of a sick toddler for last couple of days, so I'm afraid I haven't been able to finish my mini-series of Uncharted 2 posts. Grandma arrives on a childcare relief mission this weekend, so I hope to find some good writing time then.

In the meantime, Zoe is perfecting her snot bubbles, and we're logging some serious play time with Animal Crossing and SimAnimals Africa. For what it's worth, she believes one of these games is significantly better than the other, and I agree. Two years old, and already a critic.

Sorry for the delay. More soon.

When the menu screen appears in Uncharted 2, composer Greg Edmonson greets you with "Nate's Theme," the signature song for this game and the original Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. At first hearing, they sound identical, but they're not. Listen carefully to the first few bars of each: