Is there freedom to be found within constraints?
November 7th, 2009 by panfriedmoogleI want to play Portal again after reading this article.
I thought that this was somewhat relevant to our recent conversations in class. Most games give you the illusion of control and freedom, but Portal is one of the few games that sort of parodies this idea in a way, and instead tells you flat out what to do and what you should be doing.
I think that a game like Portal is art. It may be short, but it makes you think about things that other video games generally don’t. Are open-ended games truly open-ended? No. Is it good or bad to trick players into believing that it is?
GLaDOS is essentially the equivalent to the game designer. It’s like the game designer has a voice now through GLaDOS, who is giving you orders throughout the entire game. The only choice we truly have is to turn the game off, and even then that leaves the game unfinished and hanging. You might decide to play another game, but you’ll just be following contextual clues that the designer has set in place for you anyway.
If there were no constraints, it’s arguable that a game would really have no true ending. Despite the constraints that are set in place, I think that players do still have some degree of freedom. It might not be true, absolute freedom, but if you feel like plundering caves in a game like Oblivion instead of completing the main storyline, there’s nothing there to stop you from doing that.