This rather shocking question was asked by my sister, after I suggested that maybe if we got some better Xbox games, she would make more use of the console. She is not, for the record, a gamer (her experience is limited to Shrek and The Incredibles - when I say limited, I mean limited). I began to describe the premise of Psychonauts, and was expounding on the humorous plot line when she remarked 'but how can a game have a plot?'

I was rather taken aback. Obviously.

But then I actually got to wondering about why she had asked that question. The first reaction was simply that she was being disparaging towards games in general. Halo doesn't seem to tickle her fancy as it does mine. Although, she quite enjoyed The Matrix when we watched it over the weekdnd. Plus, she does enjoy some games (The Sims, to be precise - which I won't mention further...). My second thought, after considering a little more carefully, was that she was reacting to the way she percieved most of the games I play. She'll occasionally watch snatches of whatever I'm playing, if I'm on the Xbox and she's in the lounge, or I'm on the PC and she wants me off it. Since I'm a shooter fan, most of what she gets to watch is me blasting aliens' faces off. And blasting some more aliens' faces off. Maybe blowing up a bridge or two, and blasting Germans' faces off.

So to her, games are simply an experience of gameplay. This is also true of experiences of games she's played herself - The Sims isn't narrative-based, and Shrek and The Incredibles... um... yeah. I'd hazard to say that when you're playing a game based on a movie, you're hardly experiencing the plot of the movie. And especially since some games based on a movie franchise don't actually reuse the plot of the movie (Incredibles 2, for example), substituting instead something resembling a not-yet-used sock in complexity and depth.

But what about Halo? Surely she's overheard Cortana frantically instructing me to complete some meta-objective, or seen a cutscene with some deep and moving character development (yeah, I'm pushing it...)? Even so, this apparently doesn't count as plot.

Huh? Well, what is plot? If you think about the plot of, say, a movie, which is a medium I find reasonably close to games (at least in terms of the action genres of each). The 'plot' of a movie consists of not just the overarching brush-stroke of the story, but the interactions between characters, the specific dialogues and situations. Plot, in this sense, is totally lacking from most games. The plot, if there is one, tehds to be relegated to cutscenes or briefings between missions, or in short scripted sequences. The majority of the time you spend actually playing the game is devoid of plot. Characters are totally lacking in personality and development outside the quick cutscenes, aside from a few lines of dialogue triggered by specific events.

So you're looking at a situation where plot and gameplay are two different things, accomplished separately - at a given point in time, you're either playing the game, or listening to the plot. They're like oil and water, occupying the same container, but never mixing. You can shake the container and break the story-oil into smaller chunks, spread more finely through the gameplay sections - and some games do do this, very successfully. But chances are, they're still two different things.

Maybe what needs to happen for games to truly have 'plot' is that story and gameplay need to become the same thing, rather than just being shaken up until they're mixed more finely. Fable is an example of a game that seemed like it could have done this, but shied away from it at the last minute, by allowing you to buy morality, and having such limited ending choices that the nuances of your gameplay choices hardly mattered - in the final muster, you were pigeonholed into a category, not treated as an individual. Half-Life 2 is breaking ground on mixing the story incredibly finely into the gameplay - to the extent that they're nearly indistunguishable. But if you put oil and water in a blender, you can still see the bubbles in a microscope; you're only creating the illusion of a homogenous liquid. HL2's story is still separate to its gameplay.

Maybe my point is pointless. Heck, who cares if my sister is flippant enough not to see the story in games right now? I'm not just playing devil's advocate here, I really don't expect you to take my sister seriously. Really. Really! There's no obligation for games to have story, and what's the problem if they don't? I can jump into Battlefield or Rising Eagle and have a great time, without any justification for why I happen to be in this particular place at this particular time - and I don't care that I'm not at all attached to my faceless avatar, or the equally anonymous representatives of others around me. But maybe for gaming to move forward from the niche it's in right now as cheap entertainment, and to gain its maturity alongside film and literature, we need to start blending these disparate elements we've got into something more cohesive, more (dare I say it) artistic (pretentious overload!). Artistic not meaning 'a Braid ripoff', but something that is unified and purposeful (pretentiometer malfunction), and... yeah, I'm empty. Congratulations for reading this far. Meh.

(That last paragraph is your proof that the law of conservation of [literary] momentum is a lie.)

I've recently watched the tournament TV coverage of the Halo 3, BF2 and BF2142 tournaments. The quality of the coverage seemed to decrease as the number of players increased - Halo was the best, then BF2, then 2142. This may simply reflect how good the games are (haha), but I think that's not the case. I would argue the reverse - in terms of having an online battle, I'd much rather be a part of a 20-on-20 BF2142 game than 4-on-4 Halo. So why is that not conveyed in TTV?

I think the problem stems from, like I said before, the scale of the games. In each game, there was one observer on each team - but in BF2 (even though it was only 5-on-5) and BF2142, two observers was simply not enough to cover the action going on. Another factor, necessarily linked with the number of players, is the size of the map. In Halo, it's quite easy to traverse a map, and have two people watch the key areas for action - likely, there will be one key area at a given time, where the most action is happening. However, in BF2142, there was action at five missile silos, nd later, on one of the Titans - and only two observers to cover all this!

I would argue another significant problem is that the coverage was live. I guess live coverage has its merits, but frankly, I'd rather let the guyscut the footage together for an hour or two, and see results after the fact. Because then you get *better* coverage.

What I mean is best shown by the BF2142 example. If I had been asked to organise coverage, I would have had a shedload more observers. One on each side would provide an overview of the battlefield and watch the Titans. Then at least two more on each side would stick down low with the action, move with squads, cover the hotspots, etc. If possible, I'd also have one extra person per side solely recording the stategic maps. This doesn't really have to be a person :P.

After the battle, and this is probably the key thing - you've got to split the thing up into what you want to cover. This may involve talking to the teams afterwards, or it may be obvious - but you identify the hotspots of the battle at a given time. For the duration of the battle, the viewer wants to be watching whatever the most important piece of action is. Plus, they want to know where the heck it is, and why it's important. To do this, I believe the critical element is the strategic map. You can combine the two teams' maps over the duration of the battle so tht you can really see the ebb and flow, and you can use it to carry viewers through the battle - showing them where the action they're seeing is in the grand scheme of things, showing them the state of the battlefield, etc.

Once you've identified all these points you have to cover, you then cut in footage from as many observers as you had near the location. It might be necessary to direct the observers while the battle is going on - using the two teams' strategic maps to find where the important stuff is going down (or even listening in on team chatter to see where they're headed, and to be there ahead of time). The thing is to get as much coverage as possible of these important events.

Once you have that footage, you basically work like a television crew - you figure out what action you want your final cut to cover at that given point in the battle, you figure out who had the best view, and you use their footage. You pad changes by using the strategic map, and you add commentary so the viewer is engaged in the action and understands what's going on.

The whole emphasis of this is making the experience more like a movie, like machinima - and less like the experience a single user would have if he just joined the game as an observer. The coverage must be total and the editing must, frankly, treat the viewer like an idiot.

That's my rant over with for now. I realise that this isn't really rational; it's like my all-time wish-list for game coverage. It's what I'd do if I had a ridiculous amount of resources and time. But I don't, and neither do the TTV people - so props to you for what you *do* do. I have to say for the record that I do love watching tournament coverage :)