{"id":1776,"date":"2013-05-23T14:51:52","date_gmt":"2013-05-23T18:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/?p=1776"},"modified":"2013-05-23T14:51:52","modified_gmt":"2013-05-23T18:51:52","slug":"fake-challenges-call-of-duty-as-an-experimental-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/2013\/05\/23\/fake-challenges-call-of-duty-as-an-experimental-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Fake Challenges; Call of Duty as an Experimental Game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Not a new video, but I keep thinking about this video of a level in <em>Call of Duty: Black Ops<\/em> where the game goes out of its way to make the player think that he\/she is playing a major part in driving the action forward, as well as as being constantly on the verge of failing.<\/p>\n<p>Except you aren&#8217;t. Apart from two scripted moments, you can play through this 15-minute section without doing anything.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RULv6HbgEjY?rel=0\" height=\"253\" width=\"450\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Question #1: \u00a0is this wrong? Is it bad design?<\/p>\n<p>I think there is an impetus to denounce this as overly slick, commercial and dishonest design.<\/p>\n<p>But wait!\u00a0Note how poorly this game example fits with some of the recent discussions (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.raphkoster.com\/2013\/04\/09\/a-letter-to-leigh\/\">1<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gameranx.com\/features\/id\/14224\/article\/#p1\">2<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.raphkoster.com\/2013\/04\/24\/on-choice-architectures\/\">3<\/a>) concerning the importance (or non-importance) of choices. I think we currently associate denials of player agency with experimental, subversive, art or personal games.<\/p>\n<p>But<em style=\"line-height: 1.714285714; font-size: 1rem;\"> Call of Duty<\/em><span style=\"line-height: 1.714285714; font-size: 1rem;\">\u00a0probably rates among the games least likely to be described as &#8220;experimental&#8221;, yet we can also compare this video&#8217;s lack of player choice and consequence to some of the <\/span><span style=\"line-height: 1.714285714; font-size: 1rem;\">discussion of\u00a0<\/span><em style=\"line-height: 1.714285714; font-size: 1rem;\">Proteus<\/em><span style=\"line-height: 1.714285714; font-size: 1rem;\">, whose status as a game is <\/span><a style=\"line-height: 1.714285714; font-size: 1rem;\" href=\"http:\/\/nottheinternet.com\/blog\/isproteusagamereallywhocares\/\">questioned on the Steam Forums<\/a><span style=\"line-height: 1.714285714; font-size: 1rem;\">, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.visitproteus.com\/what-are-game\/\">defended vigorously as such<\/a>\u00a0by designer Ed Key.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Question #2: Are there honest and dishonest ways of breaking player expectations? Good and bad? Interesting and uninteresting? How can we tell the difference?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not a new video, but I keep thinking about this video of a level in Call of Duty: Black Ops where the game goes out of its way to make the player think that he\/she is playing a major part in driving the action forward, as well as as being constantly on the verge of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/2013\/05\/23\/fake-challenges-call-of-duty-as-an-experimental-game\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Fake Challenges; Call of Duty as an Experimental Game&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}