Greetings my fellow Earthling!
Today's post is an examination of an article written by Diane Carr titled "Genre and Affect in Silent Hill and Planescape Torment"(http://www.gamestudies.org/0301/carr/). To begin with, I would like to specify that I have never actually played Silent Hill (Konami 1999) but I have immensely enjoyed Planescape Torment (Interplay 1999) in times past and continue to do so today.
First, I was really intrigued that Diane Carr would compare and contrast two games whose seemingly only similarity is the year in which they were released. Silent Hill is a horror while Planescape Torment is a Role-Playing Game (RPG) based upon the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons pen, paper, and dice game. Silent Hill is a 3D survival horror game in which the player strives to find where is the protagonist's daughter and solve the mystery of a small town of horror.
The following video shows a brief bit of gameplay in Silent Hill:
Planescape Torment on the other hand is a 2D isometric, fantasy role-playing game wherein the protagonist is a scarred amnesiac traveling across a foreign world accomplishing goals and objectives, gaining followers, and striving to figure out who he is.
A brief video of Planescape Torment is attached:
The difference between the two are contingent upon the goal of the creators of the game. In Silent Hill, the goal is a horror genre game in which the occult and paranormal interrupt and interfere with a normal fellow living in our day and age. On the other hand, Planescape Torment is a fantasy world where the occult and paranormal ARE the normal and the main character is as foreign to us as our world would be to him.
The fascinating thing about these two games is, to accomplish the goals of horror or fantasy RPG fiction, two different methods of presentation and gameplay are involved. As you can see from the video clips, Silent Hill works with creepy music and sound coupled with an at times hurried, frantic pace and gory scenes to build tension. Death equals failure.
Planescape Torment uses extremely descriptive dialogue and details which paint a world of pure imagination. The pace is not frenetic but instead is more meandering from location to location. Because the world is foreign, every effort is employed to immerse the player into the avatar.
Essentially, Diane Carr's overarching objective is to clearly specify differences between the two games and why the differences exist at all. But the lines between genres and game play styles are becoming more and more blurred. For example, Dead Space (Electronic Arts 2008) is a 3d survival horror, third-person shooter lovingly crafted and built with a plethora of RPG elements. These atmospheric conditions are utilized to engulf the player in the sheer horror of the situation and environment.
It really worked well too! I played for about 5 minutes, all alone with my surround sound turned up, at night...yup, just about peed me pantaloons....
OK so I had a great post that I JUST wrote for your article comparative but my @*&%ing computer just had a blip and erased the whole blood thing. So as a replacment you know het an abridged version. You did a great job on making your points and clearly distinguishing what the two subject matters you were. I can't type anymore cause I'm very upset at my laptop. :-)
ReplyDeleteBLOODY, NOW, GET...word corrections cause I'm lazily typing due to my anger towards this stinkin' computer...
ReplyDeleteSo I havent played either of these games, but I have seen the movie Silent Hill! It was total fail I wouldnt recommend it. I am assuming that Silent Hill wouldnt be a very good game either based off of what I saw in the movie. Maybe that is a key factor in what determines whether we play a game or not? I saw the movie Doom before I ever played the game and then I decided to play it after I saw the movie! But that is what game studies are for yes? look at a game, look at your audience... and then look and see if it will benefit the industry.
ReplyDeleteOkay back to the point. You did a good job at clearly showing the differences in the game and I think i have a good grasp on whats up even though i never played the games. And maybe a key factor in why we play games all lies within the style of game play and the genre it is. Who knows.. i hope to figure this one out before the end of the quarter :)
Oh! and yes! Call of Duty 4 is amazing! Im not the best but i would say i am pretty good.
ReplyDeleteAdrian doesnt know what he is talking about! lol.
Well kinda, he is into the programing thing so he see's games differently than i do.. meh
Have you heard that there is a Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 coming out? God i am so excited! lol
Now I understand why Craig said we should use U-Tube videos on our blogs! My favorite part on your blog was when you were pointing out to the readers of how different these games really are, from the points of them to the music that is played in the background. I never really got what the role playing games were all about or how they really worked, and now I get them! Great job.
ReplyDeleteI've never played either of those games but now I'd like to try Silent Hill. I really loved the video it gave be a better contrast of the view you were portraying in each game. I'm going to try upload some videos and pictures it really adds to the blog, great job!
ReplyDeletelol Nathan, before i go off. I like the emotion you put into your blog. The way you described Planescape and how you looked at something beyond graphics really did interest me.
ReplyDeletenow, lol. I like the Call of Duty series, i had so much fun over those games. I like the story and how it uses events going on in the war now. The only thing i dont like is the systems in the game, and thats something you'll have to beg me for in another comment... lol
I would like to add to my comment. In relation to the article Getting Into The Game by Frans Mayra. I do support interdisciplinary studies in gaming. It benefits that players as well as society today to understand how games are being or can be interpreted by each player. Performing these studies allow us to find out why there is an attachment to this game, how your brain may function or interpret ideas or methods in the game and relate them to daily interactions. Interdisciplinary studies could be used on both of the games that you've discussed in your blog and the results would greatly differ because of the complexities in each game. I had never even thought about this concept before or understood it until Mayras discussed the research project Peto or Childrens As Actors of Games Cultures. It was really broken down and showed me how this truly relates to literature and life.
ReplyDeleteI like that you question the choice of studying these games together when they seemingly are not connected. You make a link to the difference being one of genre, and genre specific to the choices of the designers...but I'd like to see you really address Diane Carr's points more, ie "Carr argues X, but in my play experience I found...."
ReplyDeleteI like that you were able to find a game that you had played, and hopefully that made the article more engaging to read.
Your use of video is incredibly effective, and is the reason why text books on this subject get lost in translation. You often have to SEE the game in order to make sense of the argument.
Thanks all for your comments!
ReplyDeleteAs I stated, I haven't played Silent Hill and so I cannot draw too much of a conclusion from it much like many of you.
To be completely honest, I agree with Carr's assessment of these two games which is, that because the two are of dissimilar genres and the purposes behind each are slightly different, there are deliberate differences in how they were created, the music, the perspective, and the basic gameplay. Each method is effective in it's own way.
Take for example two more modern games which have already been mentioned before: Call of Duty 4 and Dead Space. Both use slightly different methods to bring the story alive for the player but are both extremely effective.
CoD4 is certainly a twitch game, forcing the player to move fast and think quickly on their digital feet. The music is up-beat to the tenth degree and the perspective is purely first person (ever tried to look at your character's feet in a first person game? can't do it in many of them....)
Dead Space is slightly slower but no less effective due to limitations on camera and the haunting sounds+music. The perspective is permanently placed over the right shoulder of the main character. This forced perspective means that when something is chasing you, you can't stop and look behind you so all you can do is run. This means you never really know how close or how far away a monster is. This unknown/known threat combined with creepy music/sounds and horrific bloody scenes creates an effectively frightening game...
Still not ashamed to admit that I can't get very far in the game...it seriously freaks me out. And really it's because of the d@mn3d perspective! I can't see very well!!! all I can do is hear and run like a frightened rabbit!
geez that last comment was almost as long as my original post.....
ReplyDelete