Delving deeper to stay in the game

Menacing alien machines descend on Earth, and amid all-out war, a soldier searches a building to find a frightened boy hiding in a vent. "It's OK," says the soldier. "Everyone's dying," the boy replies. The soldier must choose: Help the boy or tell him to flee. Article continues below Though it is full of dramatic tension and realistic animation, this is not a scene from the next Hollywood blockbuster. It actually is from the coming video game, Mass Effect 3. Game makers are crafting more sophisticated story lines and creating characters that evolve based on their experiences within a game. It is an attempt to interest new customers and reverse a decline in video game sales as the maturing business fights for people's attention in the face of new devices such as the iPad. A new crop of games calls for players to make choices that go beyond selecting a weapon. Among other things, players are asked to make moral decisions that force their characters, and the game's narrative, to evolve in different ways. Coming games such as Bioshock Infinite and Star Wars: The Old Republic tap into this vein. These storytelling games could not come at a better time. US sales of gaming consoles and video games hit a peak in 2008, at $21.4 billion (Dh78.6 billion), according to market research firm NPD Group. Since then, annual sales have fallen 13 per cent to $18.6 billion in 2010. So far in 2011, sales are flat compared with last year. With the recent Supreme Court decision protecting violent games as free speech, it is more appropriate than ever for games to have more of a message. Staying occupied Part of the goal of involved storytelling is to keep players occupied longer, playing out stories through to the end. Video game makers are trying to stop players from getting bored and quickly offloading games onto used game shops, which can sap sales. The new games merge first-person shoot-em-ups with movie plot lines to develop what some in the industry are calling a new art form. In the past, games mostly sandwiched so-called theatrical ‘cut scenes' between bouts of trigger-finger action. In Grand Theft Auto IV, for instance, players are given missions on a roughly linear progression as other hoodlums call by mobile phone and recruit them to participate in crimes that will elevate the player in rank. Players can follow along or ignore the story lines in favour of other pursuits, such as discovering hidden details like the giant, chained heart inside the Statue of Liberty lookalike. Gradually, non-action scenes are becoming more central to games and the story is the focus. Grand Theft was a start in that direction, with two different endings depending on player choices. The new Star Wars game will have about 20 different endings and a billion ways to get there. "Photographs tell stories. Movies tell stories. Songs tell stories. Games tell stories," said Ken Levine, creative director for Irrational Games. Moral decisions Levine's studio is poised to release BioShock Infinite next year. The shooting game confronts main character Booker with moral decisions such as saving a man from execution or putting down a horse, all the while roaming around an immersive floating world that resembles early 20th century America. "My mom's not going to connect to the story of Mega Man 2," Levine said, referring to the pixelated Capcom game from the late 1980s. "But hopefully she can connect to a story like this." These storytelling games represent yet another way the video game business is reaching out to people who have not traditionally considered themselves ‘gamers.' Mobile games including Angry Birds and addictive social-network games such as FarmVille have gotten more women to play. Motion controllers from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have turned video gaming into a physical workout that appeals to young and old. Storytelling games could appeal to those attracted to character development more than killing. Lindsay Grace, professor of interactive media studies at Miami University, said the video game industry is trying to accomplish what Hollywood has turned into a science: entering new markets by offering a little something for everyone: a little romance, a little action, a little this and that. "Games have started to understand this in the last four to five years, but they are later to understand that than film," he said. "Before, it was a shooting game, and that's what you do." Pushing boundaries Grace, who has been studying video games for seven years, believes the answer is not in more big-budget shoot-em-ups, but in independent video games pushing the boundaries of entertainment. "From indie games to more mainstream offerings, in the next decade or so we are going to be seeing a greater diversity in subject matter," said Scott Steinberg, the chief executive of video game consulting company TechSavvy Global. "The selection of games will more closely resemble your selection of movies," he said.