Who is Tim Carter? I have no idea, but it’s quite possible it might be this guy. Why do we care? Because he said nasty things about my talk, even though from reading his criticisms, it’s pretty obvious he didn’t see it, or understand it.

To be fair, I expected some sour grapes about what I said, since it’s easy to interpret what I said as “Do the status quo”. What I was actually trying to say was, “Please innovate, but if you’re going to innovate, have the courtesy of understanding the status quo. That way, the innovations will be better than what we have now. Which means, they’ll be, in fact, innovative.” Anyway, let’s hear what Tim has to say.

Combat is “included” in most games not because it is what players “want”. It is “included” because it exists in reality. It is the ultimate manifestation of conflict in any plot-based situation – such as a story. Since storytellers must necessarily be concerned with issues of conflict, they need to be aware of combat.

No, this is why Combat is included in movies, books and other medium. It is why combat is included in SOME games, such as Civilization. However, for games like RPGs, FPSes, MMOs and RTSes, combat is the bedrock activity. It is normalcy. It’s going on all the time. These games turn to other devices (often, ironically, a non-combat cutscene) when the story needs to be furthered and meaning or tension needs to be ratcheted up.

In “Hamlet”, for example, combat occurs at the climax not so much because Shakespeare thought the audience “wanted it”, but more because it was a natural manifestation of Hamlet’s dithering in the face of murderous conspiracies going on in the background. There was a *reason* for combat in the turning and machinations of the world of Hamlet – as there is in all of human experience.

This is particularly ironic to me, given that Shakespearean dramas are heavily double-coded. The politics and intrigue were designed to appeal to the nobles in the box seats. The combat was designed to appeal to the drooling masses.

Combat in “The Matrix” (the film) is a metaphor of the struggle of the independent creative voice against the crushing, dehumanizing agents of modern, industrialized society.

All possibly true, if from an annoying English Lit perspective. However, it’s doubtful the Wachowski brothers said “Hey, we need a metaphor here. What do you think? Combat? Or perhaps shell collecting?”

Much more likely they started with “Hey, let’s make an action-oriented sci-fi picture with hong kong fighting visuals! We can make it about that pseudo-intellectual ‘reality’ discussion we had the last time we got baked!”

If you want to ascribe meaning to combat, that’s fine. If you want to ensure that people are fighting something or, god forbid, combat is an abstraction meant to represent your mother or a cigar — whatever. But the point of my talk is the equivalent of the Wachowski thought process I surmised – most MMOs need an activity in the game that is tactical, repeatable, visceral, scalable, and is capable of providing coop play. Beyond that, feel free to innovate that via mechanics, replacing the mechanic altogether, or ascribing whatever meaning you hope your player base will take away between bong hits.

At any rate, I think his analysis of the combat in the Matrix is wrong. Combat in the Matrix is also decidedly futile. New inductees to the Matrix are instructed to avoid it at all costs. Morpheus gets whipped. Neo gets lucky in the train station. The key meme of the original Matrix is frequently Escape, not Stand and Fight. Straying from this premise is, in my opinion, one of the reasons why the Matrix sequels suffered and the Matrix games often felt off-target.

(Thanks to Scott for the pointer)