2010 Predictions: EA Inferno Flameout & Renaissance in Story

Happy Hollidays all!

2010-2012 is going to be huge for story!

Earlier this year, many fanboys/neogaffers/studio execs freaked out when they saw the great Gandhi referenced in the Gold 45 Revolver /Ideas Have Consequences / Moral Premise /Exalted Narrative patent application and its claims:

[quote]As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious. There is no such thing as religion over-riding morality. Man, for instance, cannot be untruthful, cruel or incontinent and claim to have God on his side. –Gandhi[/quote]

For quite some time now, legions of rising fanboys, myself included, have been asking the industry to give us meaningful, soulful games; instead of fanboyized Dantes (doa) Infernos which place Beatrice in hell while mocking Dante's religion, love, poetry, and spirit; recasting the ultimate poet-warrior as a mere fabio-muscle-man with a giant, fanboyifying cross stitched across his chest on command of the Harvard fanmbas, while poking fun at Dante's religion and degrading the spirit of immortal love for a woman's innocence--debauching epic, immortal art for mere fleeting, flailing publicity; promoting the harassment of booth babes, and playing up the giant boobies and vaginas overshadowing, debauching, and obscuring Dante's greater, exalted intent.

Our requests for profound, epic story; and our helpful documents; have repeatedly been met by snarky indifference and baneful ad hominem attacks carrying all the reactive, primal, viscious violence of a date with a hooker in GTA or Fallout 3 (from anonymous fanboys employed at major corporations hiding behind masks as they are paid to do), as many fanboys have been trained and conditioned to enforce the storyless, soulless realm of videogames.

But such is the nature of renaissances and revolutions; as people invested in the old way of doing things fear change; especially when that change is married to exaltation and a renaissance. Innovations are often met with the "not invented here so it cannot be!" mindset, as people tend to believe that if it was really that cool, it would have been done by now, for they would have invented it. Thus, they begin to scale your "giant walls of text" with the premise that they are expert-kings, and thus that all your innovations must have been done before. Looking through these tinted glasses, they time and again attack your logic and reason, and when this fails, they quickly descend into non-sequitors , red-herrings, and ad-hominem attacks--attacking the man and messenger, as opposed to his classical, epic, inevitable ideas (for the past is prologue). After they have discredited the man, they are quick to take his ideals and make them their own, but in their hands, the Gold 45 Revolver(TM) fails to glow gold. And they use this failure as further evidence to support their false premise--that the ideas underlying it were silly, as opposed to teh reality taht they are epic, profound, and timeless.

But facts, like classical ideals, are stubborn things, and the renaissance will be.

In 2010 and 2011, after the fanmbas have been brought down by their arrogant reskinning of 1999 technologies and calling it "story" and "art," we will begin witnessing some subtle changes in games, which will have far-ranging, exalted consequences.

1) Games will incorporate dialogue containing classical ideals and ideas, which will then resound throughout the action, and eventual consequences and action in the game world, as players render ideals real via [i]action[/i].

2) Games will provide players the opportunity to fight for ideals and ideas, just as the Founding Fathers fought for the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

3) Games will provide players with the opportunity to form fellowships with NPCs and other players who agree with their ideals, and it will then provide players the opportunity to fight for said ideals and render them real in the game world.

4) Games will provide players exalted opportunities to partake in epic poetry, exalting character, story, love, and romance, while allowing them the grand satisfaction fo seeing their character's ideals rendered real via their action; as they win peace, love, justice, and freedom.

5) Games will afford epic opportunities to shoot not just random monsters; but monsters defined by their dark spirits and dark ideas.

6) Games will afford players teh opportunity to partake in vampire/zombie games wherein the vampire/zombie state is caused, and cured, by words reflecting different ideas--ideas which can then be fought for in the game, and rendered real, as ideas have consequences.

7) Massive corporations will realize that hijnx, hype, and snarky debauchery are not enough to drive game sales.

8) The cretaion of games will be driven more like the creation of modern films--with visionary directors responsible for the experience, rather than ten or more writers penning random, boring, irrelevant dialogue which is not wed to any unifying, greater theme such as the epic battle for truth, justice, love, and freedom.

9) Game design will be simplified via the incorporation of the moral premise and ideals into the game's mechanics and AI; so that open-ended worlds might give the player more freedom, while also demanding of them moral behavior, as is the manner in which the best governments have functioned throughout the millenia.

10) Games will become more spiritually realistic, joining classical, epic story and higehr narratives, as players are allowed to fight for profound, meaningful, classical precepts; sung by Homer and Moses on down.

11) Finally, all those legions upon legions of people yearning for story, art, and epic narrative in their videogames will no longer be ignored.