Dialogue, animation and camera work

Recently I've being playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution between my modding sessions, and found reason for all the effort I've been putting into dialogue integration within The Shattered War. Rather than attempting to explain what I mean, it's far easier to show it with a video:

Now, I'm using Deus Ex Human Revolution as an example here simply because that one conversation demonstrated both good and bad ways to use animation and camera angles. I could have quite easily used another game to demonstrate these flaws - the Dragon Age franchise is certainly guilty of over-animation on more than a few occasions, as is virtually any game featuring "close up dialogue".

A lot of non-verbal communication cues are given through body language and facial expression, two aspects that are difficult to convey on a virtual actor. This is a big reason why video games resort to more "animated" characters with more hand, head and body movement than a normal person or an actor on-screen. The problem is that when these go too far (as demonstrated in the video), it ends up hindering the dialogue rather than helping it. Just as overacting on the television or movie screen harms the quality of their media, so too does virtual overacting.

The take home message here is to make sure that when designing dialogue (or cutscenes), someone has to watch the work to make sure it looks believable. It's a time consuming process, especially as the amount of dialogue increases, but if the virtual actors are going to be convincing, it is necessary. If a player is paying attention to the movement of the character rather than the lines they are delivering, it's too much.

Are we that juvenile?

It seems we've reached another low in gaming history.  Duke Nukem Forever, that game for which we've been waiting forever, released a new trailer... where Duke throws faeces. That's right, as part of the promotion material for the game, the developers thought it would be fun and encourage people to buy the game by demonstrating that you could throw faeces and that Duke would comment about it.

Really? Are games that lacking in creativity that they need to resort to that kind of advertising in order to gain attention? Sure, the "Your Mom Hates Dead Space 2" campaign was bad enough, but now we're forced to endure garbage like this? Surely games as a medium have more credibility than that? Let's just consider the history of Duke Nukem for a moment to realise how stupid this truly is.

You just flushed your credibility down the toilet.

Duke Nukem 3D was released in 1996, and was rated 18+ in most countries. Even if we consider that the youngest players might have been around 10 years old when it came out, those same people would be 25 years old now. Do the developers honestly think that this kind of toilet humour is going to win over a faithful audience of 25 years or older? If we're going by people who were legally allowed to buy the game when it came out, they are now 33 (or 30 in Australia) years old. To me, this video is a prime example of the kind of hideous mis-steps that developers, publishers and marketing teams are making when creating games. I, for one, will not even remotely consider a pre-order of Duke Nukem Forever now because of this video. In fact, I imagine that I'll probably wait until it drops significantly in price before I bother buying it, even if the reviews are overwhelmingly positive. How can I expect to be treated to a fun and witty gaming experience if this is what was chosen as "good advertising material"?

Of course, I can't let this pass without lambasting IGN for their comment when posting this video... "The insane shooter game Duke Nukem Forever may have a Mature rating, but this trailer shows the fun things you can do with poop." There you go, IGN approves of this marketing and declares this gameplay to be "fun". Neither "absolutely disgraceful" nor "utterly shameful" come close to accurately describing the situation.

Perhaps they are trying to capitalise on a different market? Maybe we need more promotional material like the brand-new super-exciting, put-you-on-the-edge-of-your-seat, "No-way!-It's-going-to-be-the-best-game-ever!" trailer for Modern Warfare 3. I loved MW1, thought MW2 was a serious step backwards, and based on the trailer, I'd say that MW3 looks set to continue that downhill trend.  Given the incredible hype, I almost wondered if I'd watched a different trailer. All I saw was something that looked like it was trying to imitate the "non-stop action" and "cinematic excitement" of something like Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The methodology appeared to be to cram as many famous landmarks as possible in the video and blow them up or have exploding vehicles near them and watch the fans go crazy.

MW3: Has a higher protagonist death toll than ever before!

Yes, I'll admit that I'm exaggerating (though only slightly) to demonstrate a point, but I feel it's something that simply doesn't seem to be gaining much credence in the biggest AAA franchises. As someone who loves video games I'm ashamed by the large number of developers selling big name titles that resort to this ridiculous over the top attitude, cheap-tactic marketing campaigns, or purile attempts at humour in order to get attention. What worries me more is that in many cases it seems to be working. The frenzy over the MW3 trailer was phenomenal, and the Duke Nukem juggernaut appears unstoppable riding on over a decade of "Are we there yet?" waiting.

Where are the intelligent advertising campaigns? Where are the games that are actually trying to be bigger and better rather than simply trying to break a new "explosions per minute of gameplay" record? Where are the games that are actually trying to be funny instead of making bad attempts at toilet humour? They're out there, certainly, but they're overshadowed at times by uninspiring material like these two examples.

More importantly, why is the gaming population pandering to such behaviour? Why are we not telling publishers "we deserve better" when terrible marketing campaigns (or games) are shoved in our faces? Or am I as a gamer that far removed from the pulse of the general public that I no longer accurately represent that biggest market segment that publishers are trying to get to buy their product?

There have been some truly great gaming titles that not only provide some fantastic gaming experiences, but also give us something to think about long after we've put the controller down. We've played games that have given us amusing quotes or lines just as powerful as any book, movie or tv show. Gamers have grown up. Games have grown up. Can't advertisers and developers get on-board and deliver the type of experience that our favourite entertainment medium deserves?

The 180 Degree Rule

Sometimes when reading or watching something, you can identify that something isn't "right", but you're not exactly sure what that thing is. I recently did a small amount of reading about cinematic techniques which demonstrated something I was doing completely "wrong".

In one particular sequence for The Shattered War, I was breaking a film-making guideline known as the "180 degree rule". This states that two characters in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other, unless there's a specific camera movement "crossing the line" and presenting the subjects from the other side.  If this is done, it can be disorienting and jarring.

This is one of those funny rules that is totally obvious, yet I couldn't work out why a particular scene just did not work. Maybe I'm just not observant enough when it comes to cinematography, but as soon as I read about the 180 rule, I immediately knew what was wrong. As a result of this realisation, I made a new generic stage to use for conversations, where the cameras are positioned on "the other side" of the line. By default, Dragon Age always has the player on the camera's right, but now I have a stage with the player on the camera's left...

Now for something completely different...

As a result the transition from my cutscene to dialogue isn't jarring any more. This might be a minor thing, but it made the whole sequence a lot more pleasant to watch. Film techniques and film editing are the means for making good movies, and as such, they are also essential for making good in-game cinematic sequences. Now I know I must do research into film-making and directing techniques to make my cutscenes more engaging - yet another vital skill that must be added to a modder's repertoire. Any recommendations for source reading/watching material would be gladly welcomed!