Gears of War and the Story of the Gameplay

A few years ago, way back in the year 2011, Cliff Bleszinski answered a fan question on Twitter. The fan asked, "What is more important, story or gameplay?" In other words, is it more important for a game to look great and tell a deep story, or is it better for a game to focus on playing well and provide great fun to the player? In my opinion, the answer varies depending on who you ask. You have people who can do both very well, you have games which are notable for refining one into artwork, and you have developers who can do one very well and need to focus on the other for a sense of balance. As for Bleszinski, he enigmatically tweeted back, "The Story of the Gameplay." Here we were expecting one or the other, but here is the curveball response.

I have occasionally obsessed over this answer ever since that day. What does that mean, the story of the gameplay? Does he mean one or the other? Does he mean both or something else entirely? On one hand, we can see it as Bleszinski being a wise guy and end it at that. Me, I like to give more credit than that. If not to Bleszinski, than to the concept itself. I happened to have tweeted back, asking Cliff if he was referring to an actual concept. I never heard back. So in the absence of any clarity from the source, let's figure out what it could mean ourselves. For reference, we will use Bleszinski's own Gears of War and its sequels.

For the uninitiated, Gears of War is a series of third-person shooter games. You take on the role of Marcus Fenix and a thrown-together squad of soldiers as they fight a seemingly hopeless war. The enemy? The Locusts, a race of invaders that emerged from underground to claim the planet. The interesting thing about the Locusts is how their ground troops are largely similar to humans to the point where they even use firearms and similar military tactics. Thus the conflict is more similar to fighting a standard war against a cunning and strategizing foe than any old alien invasion. Weapon choice, focusing targets, positioning, finding cover, and aiming true are all vital and you can't win if you lack any of them.

"@Culbec: @therealcliffyb what's more important, story or gameplay?" The Story of the Gameplay.
— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) March 16, 2011

The tweet that sparked this discussion

So now that we have our game, how do we tackle our concept? Let's break it down. "The story of..." refers to an event which is communicated between people, either recalling something that happened or making something up. "... the gameplay" refers to any factor that goes into how the player interacts with the game and their success is determined. Putting it together, we are looking for outstanding events that occurred while playing the game, perhaps even events that define the experience as a whole.

In the first Gears of War, one part of the story requires you to hold your ground at the entrance to a manor. Locust forces can only pour in through one entrance to get at you, but you can look out a window to pick them off before they even get there. That only works for so long until they bring out a larger enemy which cannot be whittled down before it reaches you. Further - I may be remembering this incorrectly - there are multiple of them at once. Therefore this sequence requires you to pick your targets, reserve your powerful ammunition for when you need to take down a big enemy, and position yourself so you can take effective cover and fire back.

I was stuck in this sequence for a very long time, and I was only playing the game on medium - medium! To be fair, the middle difficulty is called "Hardcore" so I at least knew what I was getting into. The strategy I employed was staying on the high ground to either side of the entryway where the Locusts came in. I did this to stay out of the way of rockets launched by the appropriately named Boomer enemies. But in the end, it was always the same deal. The Boomers were able to take too many hits and they just had to blow me up once to make me start the whole thing over. Something had to give every time.

After taking one rocket too many, I started to evaluate my options. I left the safety of my high ground to see what else the terrain had to offer. The manor entryway had tables, banisters, a dual stairway leading up, and raggedy couches. Surely, the couches were not suitable cover against bullets and explosives. But I tried it anyway. Furthermore, I positioned myself not to the side, but in front of the entryway. The Boomers would be able to fire at me as soon as they got in range, but the opposite was also true. This strategy resulted in a complete reversal. Being able to shoot as soon as I saw the whites of the Boomers' eyes meant I could start working the Boomers down before they even got close to the door. The Boomers fired back, but my couch proved to be a surprisingly formidable shield. The first Boomer died before it landed a foot in the entrance hall and the second one could only get a few steps in.

All at once, I made use of all of Gears of War's features. Strategy, position, cover, predicting enemy behavior, and aiming for weak spots. This experience really drove in how much thought went into this games design. It also makes for a good story.

Knowing how to remove troublesome turret gunners is also crucial. Hardcore mode's description is "You know how to pull off a headshot"

My second war story skips a generation to Gears of War 3. In particular, the game's competitive multiplayer. Just like the campaign, multiplayer requires teams to work as a unit, collaborate on a plan, position themselves well, take cover, pick their weapons wisely, and aim well. There is a good variety of game modes, and my story takes place in the one called "Capture the Leader." You run around shooting the other team, except this time one player on both teams is designated at a leader. The leader cannot die normally, but will be captured instead. The leader can't do anything, and the captor moves slowly while only using a basic weapon. The goal is to keep the opposing team's leader in the captured state for 30 seconds. Should both leaders be captured, neither timer will go down until only one leader is being held.

That said, boy did I have one good round. It started off poorly with our leader taken and dragged into the enemy's half of the arena. As I do often in these games, I died and respawned on my team's side. I had a bit of good luck as I found a boomshot, an explosive not unlike the Boomer rockets. My second bit of luck was seeing the enemy leader with another enemy. I suppose they figured with all the fighting happening around my team's leader, they could just hang out on our side where none of my team would think to look.

I sprung into action, firing a Boomshot that killed the regular opponent and took down the leader. The opposing team's clock ticked down 5... 4... 3... 2... and stayed at two. I picked up the enemy leader and forced the two timers into an impasse. And since the opposing leader delivered himself to my team's territory, I was safe while my team scrambled to free my leader. I positioned myself well behind cover and on high ground.

Suddenly, an enemy ran by. How did he get there and why didn't he notice me? I then realized that we were so far in the game that the spawn points had switched. In other words, the territories had just switched, pitting me in the enemy territory. Though it seemed that they hadn't caught on yet. On the flip side, my team was now entering the field closer to my team's captive leader. After some time, I heard a chime. The opponent's timer vanished and my team's timer began to tick down. That was good, but I was still in their territory and my team was still picking itself up after saving the leader.

Finally, one of the opponents thinks to look up the ramp in his new spawn and sure enough must have caught a glimpse of me. He doesn't have a direct line of sight, so his only option is to get up close and smack me down. He even tosses up a smoke grenade, which fills my screen with white and gray and no trace of his approach. While I hold the opposing leader, I can't use any of the "good" weapons, making do with just a basic pistol. If I were to survive, I would need to find him as soon as he came through the smoke, fire as soon as possible, and hit every one on his head. Those were a lot of stars to align.

And yet, they did end up aligning. I saw, I aimed, I fired, I hit. The opponent fell down and was no longer a threat. Him out of the way, I was uncontested and finished off the leader for the win. I imagine if I opted in for voice chat, there would have been lots of cheering to go around. If you think that's cool, the next round is equally worth talking about. I entered the battlefield and was immediately taken down by a shotgun point-blank. Short but sweet.

You'll see the player's team's counter is at 30 and about to count down. The enemy has no counter because they do not have the player's leader. If the enemy leader were to get away, the player's team would have to start all the way at 30 again

Now that we have these anecdotes, what does this mean for our elusive "story of the gameplay?" My friends, I believe we are onto something. The game is built and designed in such a way that you can have your moments of glory with some luck and skill during typical play. Any game can accomplish this, but I think Gears of War has this very concept in mind. When I think about "typical" game flow, I think about the game introducing its concepts and mechanics, building a player's skill with coasting low-intensity tasks, and then testing those skills against a challenging boss enemy or stage.

Gears of War is different. The game has its mechanics - aiming, reloading, taking fire, running, dodging, etc. - but most problems are not solved alone by practice. You need tactical smarts. You need to know when to apply pressure or when to fall back. You need to recognize a good vantage point where you'll be safe and have a good view of the enemy. You need to know when you're outnumbered and a frag grenade will even those numbers. You need to recognize opportunities to get at your enemy's sides or back. You need to assess if the situation is clear enough for the rest of your team to charge in and control more of the battlefield. You need to think like a soldier and not just know how to use their weapons and abilities.

This game invites war stories because of how it isn't won by "playing hard," and that is where the story of the gameplay comes in. This game is designed in such a way that every moment, decision, and small victory is imbued with a sense of importance. My experience playing this game stuck with me because the way each skirmish played out was as a result of my skill and knowledge. It was hardly ever cut-and-dry how I was going to stop the advancing enemy or force my way into a stronghold. Because this game felt so significant, I can remember all of these events in such vivid detail. The story of the gameplay is not something told by the game, but instead something lived out and told later by the player. No game can guarantee that every player will have their own story of the gameplay, but games like Gears of War sure promote it by engaging the player's tactical thinking.

So Cliff, and Epic Games by extension, whether or not "the story of the gameplay" is a real thing, your game is robust and carefully crafted enough for me to make my own definition. Cheers!

Another game I have stories for days is Bravely Default. Trying out new class combinations makes for riveting conversation. Anyone else feeling deja vu?

And you know what, I like this concept. Making a game so noteworthy to play that you could make a story out of it is a noble endeavor and a mark of true effort. This got me thinking in a broader sense. If we can make stories of out typical play in a video game, what else in our lives can we make stories about that we otherwise would think are not that noteworthy? Is your job more interesting than you may give it credit for? Could you form a story around a meeting or a task you took on? Do you play a sport? Did you witness an amazing play or take part in one yourself? Do you exercise? Is the reason you exercise interesting? Did you dig deep in your own mind to find the will and courage to exercise? Perhaps someone would be entertained and even motivated by hearing it.

Or maybe, just maybe - and I won't imply this is the absolute truth for a moment - you know that your life could be more interesting. Any life could be more interesting. I sure know that's true for my life. This added interest could come in the form of the aforementioned sports, exercise, hobbies, groups, community involvement, and so many more. This discussion was inspired by an Abstruse Goose comic in which the author addresses the concept of a noteworthy day. On an August 4th night, he climbed a pyramid structure and broke his foot on the way down. To quote the comic, "Now I bet you're thinking that climbing a pyramid, screaming 'I Tony Montanta', and breaking my foot was a pretty stupid way to spend the night. But I'll also bet that you don't remember what you did on August 4.'

So just like I would ask myself, "Can I remember what it was like to play Gears of War?" I should also be asking myself, "Can I remember what I did on April 24th?" I like the idea of working within my means to make every day significant. Even just a little more so. 

Kid Icarus: Uprising and Sportsmanship

When Kid Icarus: Uprising came out, I played the game's multiplayer religiously. I just loved the concept: Taking the weapons you built in single-player and pitting them against other gamers? Cool! And I'll stand by my opinion that Nintendo could take online multiplayer scene by storm if they expanded on Uprising's mechanics. But that's a discussion for another time.

For the uninitiated, Kid Icarus: Uprising is an action game for the Nintendo 3DS. You play as the angel Pit who battles the forces of evil in a mythology-inspired world. The controls involve moving Pit with the control stick while aiming and controlling the camera with the touch screen. There's a bit of a learning curve, but you'll unlock a very robust game on the other side. Pit's mobility and powers are influenced by the weapon he's using, and at 108 weapons in this game's armory, you will have your pick. Multiplayer is played the same way, but now you're competing with other players for glory.

I almost exclusively played the game's team-based mode, called Light vs. Dark. In Light vs. Dark, you battle in teams to defeat other players and decrease the opposing team's collective health bar. When the other team's bar is depleted, the last player defeated will turn into an angel. The angel is very powerful, but the other team wins if the angel is defeated. Thus it is a good idea to keep the angel protected.

The first few games of Light vs. Dark I played, my team won. When you win, you see your team's angel help the other team's angel up off the ground in a show of good faith, backed by an uplifting fanfare. When I first lost a game, I was a bit riled up and was not looking forward to what sort of humiliating results screen waited for me. Instead, I saw the exact same image of one angel helping another, smiling at each other, while the same music played. And I thought to myself, "What? No rubbing it in? No condescending musical stings? No huge 'YOU LOSE' covering the screen?"

A sample round of Light vs. Dark. Notice how even though the player loses, the results screen is still triumphant

Slowly, my confusion melted into elation. I no longer felt put on the spot. During the game, I felt frustrated because my weapon and skills were being outmatched. But hearing that music and seeing the two angels being friendly, I only felt the same sense of satisfaction that I would have if it were my team that had won. The game gives rewards to the teams based on who won, and of course my team's consolation prize was small compared to the winning team's purse. I suppose you can interpret that as the game focusing on who won and who lost, but it is only fair that the team which played the better game receives the significant reward.

Thus, we're back to the results screen, the one real opportunity that Uprising had to objectively make the teams feel one way or the other about the outcome of the match. To be honest, it's brilliant. Absolutely uplifting. The game could have really gorged the winning team's ego while stomping on the other teams', but it doesn't. I just couldn't bring myself to stay upset when I saw the angels smiling and that upbeat fanfare. I truly got a sense that the only thing the game wanted me to feel was that the match we just played was a good game. Nothing more, nothing less.

My friends, I want to see more of this: Games themselves promoting good sportsmanship through their presentation. That's not to say there are no examples of it out there, but the more the better.

I know promoting sportsmanship is a tricky business. How do we build a culture of mutual respect without going too far overboard and sheltering the participants? There's no one answer to this, but Kid Icarus: Uprising's approach is a pretty good take. And furthermore, it does this in a way that only a video game can. The bright and positive fanfare gives the losing team something encouraging to see and hear immediate after the game ends. This is the game immediately doing what it can to promote an optimistic outlook for that team. It's a counter-point to whatever frustration the losing players may be feeling following the match that just ended. However, the post-game rewards give a clear indication that not everyone is a winner. The winning team earns a free weapon in addition to a sizeable amount of ingame currency. This is done after the encouraging fanfare to frame the rewards as an incentive. It's as if to say, "Hey, you didn't win this time. But the next time you win, that's what you look forward to earning." There's a balance of themes there that may not be perfect all the time, but it's the best effort I have seen thus far.

When you lose in Team Fortress 2, you're forced to hobble around completely defenseless until you're killed or the next round starts

To contrast, let's bring up another multiplayer game that puts emphasis on the results of a match: Team Fortress 2. Team Fortress 2 is a first person shooter with a dark sense of humor that revels in shamelessness. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact I have laughed with the game's dysfunctional and tongue-in cheek malice many times. And as such, the way this game ends its rounds is equally hilariously mean-spirited.

In Team Fortress 2, once a team wins, the other team can no longer fight back. An announcer shouts "You fail!" and a crowd boos while downtrodden music plays. The losers are stripped of their weapons and their running speed is decreased. In addition, the winning team's weapons are super-charged with critical hits. Essentially, the losing team is reduced to fodder for the winning team to hunt down until the next round starts. To top it off, this whole mechanic is called "Humiliation." And by all means, is there any better word to describe this situation?

So does that mean Team Fortress 2 is an awful game? Of course not. Anyone who plays the game will quickly be made to understand its hard-boiled nature and expect everything to feed into it. Humiliation is intended to be humorous to all parties involved. Objectively speaking, humiliation is a laugh riot. The team without weapons is bowled over by the team with the supercharged weapons? Who would have thought? This may be one of the only times when people are victimized and I'd say the only logical reaction is to laugh.

I'd also like to put in a good word for Uprising's single-player campaign. It is quite the adventure with some fun characters, snappy dialogue and no fourth wall.

If in the end neither game is seriously trying to personally make the loser feel bad, what is the difference that makes this article about Kid Icarus: Uprising and not Team Fortress 2? The keyword here is "authenticity." You can take Uprising at face value and trust it to be authentic with how it presents itself. There are no hidden or double meanings. There's something comforting about a game that works intuitively with how the human mind processes information and meaning. Team Fortress 2, on the other hand, requires a split-second of deciphering. Horrible things happen to your character not because the game is actually mean to you, but as a bid to be so over-the-top that you laugh alongside the game at the absurdity that it presents. So where Team Fortress 2 uses an overabundance of poor sportsmanship as a means of comedy, Kid Icarus: Uprising presents you with good sportsmanship and means it.

As things stand now, there is a lot more inauthentic humor than there is authentic empathy. That's because being inauthentic is easy, people like to laugh, and some cynicism can be healthy. What I want to see is more of the Uprising example. I want to see more authenticity not just in video games, but in the world as a whole. I want to see more people attempt authenticity. I want to see more people speak up for authenticity. I want to see more people react to and promote authenticity. We may believe that authentic culture "goes without saying" and that's why we see less outstanding examples of it in the media. As for me, the fact that I was so surprised to see it goes to show how much more I'd like to see out there.

And now I want to hear from you. What experiences have you had with games promoting good sportsmanship and authenticity? For all I know, there could be a game out there which depicts competition even better than Uprising does. Maybe you saw a movie or read a book where characters set a good example. Heck, maybe some of you have a story about a positive experience in Little League. If you do, I want to see it in the comments.

Borderlands and Media Intimacy

Game trailer for mature audiences

I have a friend who is an absolute Borderlands nut. He has internalized all of the lore, all of the characters and settings, and I'm pretty sure he knows every line of dialogue in the second installment. So naturally, during the run of the first Borderlands, he one day gifts me the game over Steam with demands that we play together. It's a big-name game and it has my good friend so riled up to play it, so I gave it a shot.

For the uninitiated, the Borderlands series is of the first-person shooter genre. You assume the role of an adventurer exploring the world of Pandora. The goal of the first game is to find a mythical stash simply called "The Vault," so adventurers of your kind are known as "vault hunters." You have four vault hunters to choose from, each with distinct weapon affinities and abilities that make their play styles very unique. It's a completely different game to start a new file as another vault hunter. As for the world of Pandora itself... well, the only way I can put it is "violently quirky." Imagine wild west with alien creatures, some future technology, and some of the most endearingly shameless dark humor I've seen in a game. Add in roleplaying elements and an impossible amount of weapon varieties, and you have a game formula that can last the avid gamer a very long time.

So I play Borderlands in a group of three. I had fun, but I really wasn't feeling the game. I was the only person playing for the first time, so the other two just tore through knowing exactly where to go and what to do. I meandered behind them by comparison and maybe got a few shots off. I was basically dragged through the game without any chance to catch my breath and try to get a feel for the game. I should have said something, but I was expecting to pick it up along the way. Coming off from these play sessions, I found Borderlands to be merely a solid shooter with a nice animated design and a sense of humor. For some reason, having this lukewarm response to the game didn't sit well with me, so I played some more. My friends were busy at the time, so I started a new character solo.

The original four vault hunters - Roland, Brick, Lilith, and my man Mordecai.

My friends, the difference was night and day. Playing the game at my own pace allowed for me to truly have a personal playing experience. I could slow down and take in the scenery without anybody having to wait on me. I could actually explore around the landscape and go off the beaten path to see what was over there away from the objective. Without my friends acting as a combined shield and battering ram, all the enemies shot at me and I had to fend for myself. I got to use different weapon types and see which ones suited my playing style and my skills. Heck, I even became aware of an entire aspect of the game.

You see, weapons in the original Borderlands came plain or in one of four "elements." Your weapons could simply cause damage, or also light an enemy on fire, destroy shields faster, destroy armored enemies quickly, or simply have their bullets explode. In a group, I was completely unaware of this because everything died so fast. But alone, I was forced to experiment with elemental weapons. Through my own trial and error, I saw which situations called for which types of weapons and I was able to build my own assembly of weapons that I switched through and used.

Furthermore, I got to learn about my character. I simply picked him because I liked his design, but I came to realize he was perfect for my play style. I tend to favor the handgun weapon types in shooters, and it turns out my character, Mordecai, had skills and abilities dedicated solely to this one weapon type. By building Mordecai into his "Gunslinger" abilities, I became my own wrecking ball of quick reflexes and precise shots. I was finally having the immense fun that was expected of me when playing this game. Nothing against my friends and their most well-meaning approach, but I only could have reached this level of intimate familiarity with the game playing it by myself.

A typical weapon in Borderlands. These things are as plentiful as rain and their attributes are almost always completely randomly generated. You will have lots and lots of guns pass through your hands.

And that brings me to the topic of this article, a concept that I have preliminarily dubbed "media intimacy." I would have called this "game intimacy," but I have realized over time that this concept applies to more than just games. In fact, oral tradition may have the honor of being the first media to engage people in media intimacy. The idiom "curling up with a good book" is a great example of media intimacy as well.

So, what is media intimacy exactly? As I define it, media intimacy is the connection between a person as an individual and any sort of media. If you've ever "gotten into" a movie, TV show, book, or even a live performance, you've experienced media intimacy. You're more than just a consumer. You feel like you're part of whatever it is that you're watching, listening to, or playing. A "fan" of something is a person who is intimate with the media that they are a fan of. Even if all of someone's experiences with the media have only been as with a group, it takes just one individual thought or interpretation to spark an interest. And when this person engages in just thinking about the media on their own terms with nobody else to influence it, media intimacy begins.

Thus, when I played Borderlands by myself and engaged with it on my own terms, I became intimate with the game. The gameplay was more significant to me. The characters were more significant to me. The story, the setting, the individual events and lines of dialogue, all significant. I could more appreciate the game as a sum of its parts and not just as another example of its genre.

The most recent game that showed me a good time via media intimacy is Bravely Default. Such a deceptively complex game, but the most rewarding when you put in what little effort is needed to learn its ropes.

When I came back to playing Borderlands in multiplayer with my friends as my custom-built Mordecai, I was far more proactive. I got right into the fray and knew what weapon to use against which targets. I knew what events were happening, so it didn't bother me when we glazed over the cinematic sequences. I knew what went into a good weapon, so I didn't just pick up and drop anything just because it had an impressive design. We finally were all playing the same game. I was truly a vault hunter and I couldn't be happier.

And by all means, if we can be intimate with our media, why can't we be intimate in other areas of our life? How about business intimacy, or professional intimacy? Art intimacy or, hear me out, social intimacy? The common thread here is you engaging with your chosen topic on your own terms. You need to want it for reasons all your own. That's not to say you can't be influenced by the ideas of others, but the way you process those ideas need to be yours and yours alone. Thinking or acting some way just because someone else said so isn't intimacy. Or at least that's how I see it. After all, if you're taking any of my words to heart, you're engaging in media intimacy right now by taking in my words and processing that information.

Case in point, I am currently taking classes to learn programming. And as it stands, I'm hard-pressed to really get into programming when I just think about it in terms of assignments, grades, and lectures. But when I'm by myself and think of programming languages as fun tools with which to build fun programs, I find it much easier to learn and love programming.

Now I'd like to hear from you. Now that you have some idea of what I'm talking about, what are your experiences with media intimacy? What are you a fan of? Has a game, book, movie, TV show, etc. really made an impact on you? I want to hear about it.