Games and Peter Pan Syndrome

Recently I caught up on the recent DICE 2013 talks and I feel that I have taken a lot away from it, the first thing that struck me about the talks was then David Cage spoke about Peter Pan syndrome in gaming. It seems interesting that the games industry has seemingly stagnated at the stage of the fairy tales when it comes down to it. Like mentioned in his talk that:

Most games out there are empty, they serve only to trigger a little bit of adrenaline in the player. Which is enough for some players. 

David Cage- Quantic dream

So in that sense a lot of the games created over the last 40 years are at the level of fairy tales. They are (for the most part) blunt when it comes to the point that they are trying to bring across, the purpose of the game is  to make the player feel like a traditional 'hero' to fulfill a power fantasy most people share.  They then usually surmise their game play as a competition between the player and other players in some sort of adrenaline fueled battle of reaction times and tactics which allow one player to feel superior to another and validate themselves either against the game or the other players. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this model of games, it is tried and tried and tried and tested, but it only caters to the younger players within the world, the players who feel a need to compete and validate themselves. However the mid core market comprises primarily of the 30-50 bracket, people who have begun to outgrow these teenager modes of desire to compete. Not to say that these players no longer see the value in this type of game, but more to say that they will respond to other forms of stimulus, such as those found more traditionally with other mediums of entertainment popular with their age groups.

"think about your friends who don't play. Think about your parents. Do they play console games? Most of the time they don't play video games. They barely know they exist. But you can talk about books, movies, TV, with them, because those mediums are perceived as being for everyone."

David Cage- Quantic dream

This is an interesting point, lets expand on this by comparing the basic game genres to the basic plots of a story, since almost every game ever made has some form of story to it and books, movies, comics, nearly all other forms of creative entertainment require a story.If that is the case I am sure I can define each of the basic plots of a story and find a game, book and film which follows those examples.

Basically stories can be traced back to 7 basic plots:

1 - Overcoming the monster Example: David and Goliath
2 - Rags to riches Example: Cinderella
3 - The Quest Example: Watership down
4 - Voyage and return Example: Alice in wonderland
5 - Comedy Example: Loves labours lost
6 - Tragedy Example: Carmen
7 - Rebirth Example: The snow queen

Each of these Basic plots is identified by 5 identifiable stages, I will try to explain these 5 stages for each of the seven basic plots in following posts.

what have learnt that the main plots of a game usually boil down to quest, overcoming the monster and voyage and return, mostly because those are the plots that best feed the gameplay. We have also learnt that games as concepts have only ever catered to a young audience and have been stuck in a 'fairytale' mindset, in the sense that they have only ever been marketed to the younger audience which has caused the medium to suffer. To expand into a more adult audience we need to start considering the other forms which a story can take as our focal point, or at least attempt to remove the elements from our game that exclude non-gamers.