Reality is a Game

A few weeks ago I took a stab at playing Rockstar’s L.A. Noire and stopped playing it after an hour or so. It’s timely for me that Overthinking it’s review of L.A. Noire just came out and I agree with almost all they say about the game.

Even their comparison to the old Blade Runner game is apt:

There are a lot of detective games with arcade elements, but the game it most directly recalls for me, because of its aesthetic, painstaking attention to detail, focus on story, and the way it handles linear gameplay, is the 1997 Blade Runner detective game for PC by Westwood Studios (spoilers for the first mission of a game from 14 years ago).

To me the game came across has a great attempt at doing something new in getting the player immersed through better acting and simulated emotions in the avatars. But it was just that: an attempt and the rest of the game wasn’t good enough to keep me engaged.

The narrative in the game got me interested and I did want to find out what was going on but the game mechanics discouraged me from continuing. Researching a case was tedious and felt forced (watch the video below to see what I’m getting at).

One more thing I found strange about the game is that the city of L.A. felt empty! Driving around in a car (which felt like I was trying to drive an elephant) and seeing the beautifully rendered world not being used by digital people kinda made me sad.

Of course if you don’t want to read an incredibly long review you can watch Zero Punctuation’s:

The Escapist : Zero Punctuation : L.A. Noire

The federal government of the USA has given 10.5 million dollars to Raytheon to develop serious games. Raytheon is a defence contractor that is best known for the tomahawk cruise missile and not known for their video games.

Raytheon is to make games that focus on changing (or at least making people better aware of) biases in thinking processes.

I find it curious that Raytheon is getting in on this action and I wonder what this means for the world of serious games if big money is coming from the military industrial complex.

IARPA said that some research has shown that serious games, what it calls videogames developed for educational, therapeutic, or other non-entertainment purposes, can develop positive learning for real- world skills or behavior changes.
“A broad consensus exists that human decision making relies on a repertoire of simple, fast, heuristic decision rules that are used in specific situations. These decision rules can sometimes bias general problem-solving (usually unconsciously) in ways that produce erroneous results. Cognitive bias problems are seen in many professions where analysis is an important component (such as intelligence, law enforcement, medicine, aviation, journalism, and scientific research). When an intelligence problem invokes these cognitive biases, analysts may draw inferences or adopt beliefs that are logically unsound or not supported by evidence. Cognitive biases in analysis tend to increase with the level of uncertainty, lead to systematic errors, filter perceptions, shape assumptions and constrain alternatives. Cognitive biases are unlikely to be eliminated, but research suggests that they may be mitigated by awareness, collaboration, and critical or procedural thinking processes,” IARPA stated.

Reality is a Game

Game thinking from Adam Clare

Over Thinking L.A. Noire

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10.5 Million for serious games goes to… Raytheon

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Over Thinking L.A. Noire

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10.5 Million for serious games goes to… Raytheon

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