Incoherence

A fact that always persists while playing/enjoying a video game is the texture of the game remains defiantly unreal. For instance in a racing game, in spite of having the best driver in a perfectly modeled racing car, the chances of car getting crashed is very high. This is due to the gulf between controllability & visual feedback. For an ordinary player, it will be utter boring & frustrating. The moral lesson that comes out is even with high whiz-bang math programming & software designs the game are never totally ''realistic''.

Steven Poole says:-'' Videogames' somewhat paradoxical fate is the ever more accurate modeling of things that don't, and couldn't exist; a car that grips the road like Superglue, which bounces un crumpled of road side barriers......a human being who can survive, bones intact, a 300 foot fall into water.'' The fact is the game player enjoys this lapse of fast & loose laws of nature, but critical requirement in the game's system remains consistent, that it is internally coherent.

This lack of coherence is destroying the game-playing experience. Video game Incoherence can be placed under 3 categories- Incoherence of causality, incoherence of function & incoherence of space.

Incoherence of Causality occurs when the same action produces conflicting results under different situations.For example, in V-Rally games, where driving at a full speed into another car causes a slight slowing down, while hitting the edge at times results in somersault.

Incoherence of function is a common error made by many designers. Many games contain objects that are used only once, and in a particular location or a particular time in the game. Poole considers this a lazy approach to game design. The player is prevented from making a sensible action. For instance, the use of ''single use'' objects like magic books that works only in particular location or say cigarettes that can only be used to illuminate a certain room.

Spatial incoherence is another ghastly error. In Tom Raider3, heroine Lara Croft finds herself at the end of the tunnel but couldn't exit into the corridor because the tunnel exist was at the wrong height.

Thus, we don't usually notice this incoherence while playing a game, everyone expects it to be so. Instead we always rave for how realistic the game looks like, or how accurately the physics are simulated. We don't notice any problem until we run smack into a glaring inconsistency.

Bibliography

1) Steven conway : class notes & slides

2)http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~geksiong/papers/cs378/cs378paper.htm

3)Google books (Steven Poole: Trigger happy: Videogames & entertainment revolution, Pg-50-52)