All The World Is A Stage - Theatre and Games

So I was talking to an online friend about games and how they compare to the average theatrical production recently (and by recently, I mean about twenty minutes ago). He asked me what the difference was. I countered with the idea that not all games have that barrier that dramatisations have - there is a clean break between you and what happens onstage, despite audience interaction (and yes, I've played Return of the Phantom).

I went on to say that the average RPG is like a theatre production - while the player has a small amount of input, the game determines pretty much everything that happens. You just have to fulfil a number of conditions; buy the game/ticket, sit down, press buttons/watch quietly...

On the other hand the average FPS seems to have more invested from the player's perspective. Look at something like Borderlands. You have objectives to complete and there are milestones, but you choose your own pathway there. There aren't requirements that you take a certain route (generally). I'd say the same for something like Lock's Quest (while not strictly a FPS, it's not really a RPG, either. I'd say it was more like a simulator). You have objectives, but how you complete them is up to you.

There's a little-known episode of Doctor Who that I believe was called Attack of the Grask, or something similar. During it's airing in Britain, viewers were offered a chance to really be the Tenth Doctor's companion and help him discover information about the Grask. I can't remember it really well - I watched it on Youtube - but what stuck in my mind was the potential for this form of entertainment. It was almost game-like, yet it wasn't.

I also postulated that perhaps the FPS isn't really a genre, but an extension of the RPG... or at least some of the games on offer are. If the player is not themselves and cannot customise their avatar in their own way, then by default it is, in fact, a role-playing game in which they take over the persona of someone else. The same holds true for acting. If it is not you as yourself treading the boards/strutting for the camera, you are role-playing. It's not rocket science.

In unrelated news, I'm finishing Tree of Tranquility soon, so will be back with a review in the next week or so. Also, SoulSilver, the rerelease of Pokemon Silver is out this week, so I plan on heading out to my EB Games where I preordered it and playing it ASAP. Also, I really want to try out that PokeWalker.