Sega is developing 2 arcade racers. Sega Race TV which looks very-very american (in a funny way) and reminds me of the Thunder and Rush series while the other is R-tuned which reminds me of the need for speed series (hopefully it plays better). Interesting departure from the more serious racing games of their past (initial D, sega Rally and daytona all avoided any turbo button function and relied on handling and race track design - thus serious)... curious to see how these play and how succesful they will be in both japan and america.
Sega Race TV
R-tuned Ultimate Street Racing Official Site
Runs on the lindbergh and was on test this weekend in Shibuya.
I've noticed that there are people in our industry that think games will become a 'legitimate' artform (whatever that means) when we achieve or include 'deep story telling' (once again... whatever that means... i'm guessing they mean some type narrative that evokes 'deep' emotions). This, to me, is one of the many symptoms of our industry's inferiority complex - a game is not as good as a movie because it doesn't have a deep narrative. It's possible that narrative is old fashion vehicle for involving the audience while interactive media is the new way. What's the real purpose of a narrative anyway? My take would be to involve and keep the attention of the target audience (reader, listener or observer), well this happens by default in any interactive medium, and especially in games - the player is involved and a good game keep's them involved.
The traditional form of narrative is almost essential to all non-interactive, passive, media (almost, i mean several music videos and/or commercials are quite enjoyable with out a traditional narrative - see an example below) but it's not at all essential to involve a player in a game. In fact games can be said to create a narrative, much like a basket ball game has a story that unfolds naturally, MMORPG (for example) players constantly have tales to tell that were not hardcoded by a 'deep involving' story line but happened because of the mechanics in place. (There is a good gamedeveloper/gamasutra article from years back that discusses this idea of games create stories, gotta track it down...)
Music Video with no Deep Storytelling (but still highly involving)
Tetris (one of my favorite examples) may have a story (i guess) but it's far from important to the player's enjoyment of the game. RPG's seem to need narrative to push forward but those narratives are sometimes very low quality compared to a decent (if there is such a thing) romance novel, let alone a masterpiece of literature and yet some of these games are just as enjoyable...
Another reason for narrative some would argue would be to evoke emotion, i also think it's another sign of our industry's 'issues' that we can't even see that games evoke emotions, and in several cases they evoke emotions you just can't get from other mediums. (Either we just can't see this or, more likely, people who are championing this idea just dont really play games.) Prime example below.
Emotions from a game? The holy grail has already been found!
Trying to get a user to cry is also touted around as some type of goal, well if you ever played any rogue-like with permadeath, i'm sure you've felt a deep sadness that rivals anything a novel can give you. When your level 99 character bites the dust in a serious of unfortunate events that you could've avoided if you had only not been so greedy, a sadness may just come over you or at least a sense of loss... this emotion was not triggered by any narrative but pure mechanics of the game...
Does story have a place in games? Of course it does, people identify with common narrative and since games are made for people it's a good idea to link mechanics with some type of world backstory and carry the level progression through a narrative, but i don't believe it's essential to a masterpiece game. A game's masterpiece-ness (lol) is in the interaction, they may have a great story or they may have a horrible story (Resident Evil 4's story comes to mind), but if the game mechanics and tuning are perfect the experience will be as well - despite the story... I mean, it seems to me that the player doesn't really need an excuse to go hunting zombies (or whatever they are...) so the weak story is quite forgiveable...
In my opinion games are the higher art form, since they can encompass both the interactive as well as the non-interactive, passive, arts (literature, movies, etc...) but the inverse is not true; passive non-interactive arts can not include interactive features and still be considered a movie, novel, etc...
Hudson unveils Aqua Forest one of their several iPone softs coming soon. Looks interesting and may force me to pick up an iPhone along with Sega's Monkey Ball... click here for website.
