
What’s the Matter with Covert Action? - doppp
http://www.filfre.net/2017/03/whats-the-matter-with-covert-action/
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startupdiscuss
The article is long and entertainingly written. It has lots of references to
80s computer games that people might enjoy (like Pirates!). But the key
insight, I believe, is:

 _If Covert Action had believable, mimetic, tantalizing — or at least
interesting — plots to foil, I submit that it could have been a tremendously
compelling game, without changing anything else about it. Instead, though,
it’s got this painfully artificial box of whirling gears._

I suppose in the 80s, given the limitations of the box, there was a much
larger emphasis on "narratology" in games, but this criticism might hold for
most failed games.

Edit: Never seen this site before. Who is this guy? Now I am going down a
rabbit hole...

~~~
arafa
I always find it interesting that procedurally generated games like Spelunky
and The Binding of Isaac only embrace procedural generation to a certain
extent. They stitch the levels together in a procedural way and in some cases
the items and things are random. But, crucially, the hundreds of rooms (or
tiles) aren't random, but instead lovingly handcrafted. It's funny when I see
a unique room repeat after a hundred hours (like the Isaac room that has a
bunch of keys in a key shape). Maybe that's one way to solve these mimetic
issues and is similar to the suggestion by Kate Compton given in the article.

~~~
thedz
A similar thing is true of the latest well-reviewed open world game, Horizon
Zero Dawn. The game's devs said that a majority of the world is "procedurally
generated", but that their process still allowed artists go to in and fine
tune spaces.

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Endy
Having just watched CirclMastr's Let's Play of Covert Action on YouTube, and
playing it myself (and I think I came across this article too), I have to say
that Covert Action really feels like what it ended up as: an unpolished rush-
job that someone put a lot of thought into that maybe didn't come out
onscreen. There's a lot of good there and further development of the ideas
would have turned it into a real classic. There's a reason it's one of the
long-lasting underdogs; it's not just Sid Meier's name.

I'm glad it exists, and for anyone who wants to teach kids about very basic
crypto (i.e. letter replacement, removing spaces, etc.), I suggest the
"training" for the Crypto skill; it's also good to go and brush up on your own
skills. Similarly, the wiretapping is a genuinely interesting logic puzzle
which can be used to teach the concept of physically representing 1/0 and
logic gates (and how the result may not always be what you expect).

As far as "The Covert Action Rule", I guess the question is how you approach
the game. If you look at it in terms of "older" games (i.e. Zork et al),
having a notepad beside the computer to take notes seemed the most logical
thing in the world to me. In many cases while playing games with complex
storylines and puzzle-solving, it still does. I never found the tactical
sections making me "lose track" of why I was in a building - either I was
there to grab an Agent or I was there to get information to go and do so that
I hadn't gotten by wiretapping or crypto.

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RickHull
> _I can easily generate 10,000 bowls of plain oatmeal, with each oat being in
> a different position and different orientation, and mathematically speaking
> they will all be completely unique. But the user will likely just see a lot
> of oatmeal. Perceptual uniqueness is the real metric, and it’s darn tough.
> It is the difference between an actor being a face in a crowd scene and a
> character that is memorable._

This was a big problem for a recent, massively hyped game that flopped (Steam
refunds, etc), _No Man 's Sky_

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JabavuAdams
Great references on procedural story generation. I used to cringe a little bit
every time my students would tout the procedural generation in their project
that would result in limitless replayability.

Someone has to enjoy the first play, before they'll replay. You don't know how
to make _one_ good game yet, never mind a factory that makes good games.

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EthanHeilman
Interesting to compare Civilization, Alpha Centauri and Beyond Earth. I felt
Alpha Centauri was far more compelling because of its additional narrative
elements. Beyond Earth attempted to borrow these same narrative elements from
Alpha Centauri but failed to make it compelling. In Alpha Centauri the
narrative was often anchored to the ideology and personality of your leader,
whereas Beyond Earth took a far less rigid approach to leaders and factions.

~~~
cperciva
My reaction to Alpha Centauri was exactly the opposite: After having played
Civilization, I found the narrative in AC to be an annoying disruption of the
game I wanted to play.

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EthanHeilman
Did you just want to play Civ2.5 or did you find the theme compelling?

I enjoyed both games, but Alpha Centauri always felt more real because of the
narrative. It was probably the most immersive game I've ever played and it
isn't just me I've had friends that had dreams in the Alpha Centauri universe
years after playing it. I can't say that about any other game (and I know
people that played civ2 weekly for a nearly a decade).

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mrob
The classic X-COM games rely heavily on procedural content. There's only a
small set of simple alien missions, but I think there are three factors that
let it succeed:

1\. Harsh consequences. You can't ignore the aliens. Any random alien mission
might be the one that makes some country withdraw funding. It might be setting
up a tactical battle that's too difficult for you to fight. The alien
detection and interception mini-game always has strategic consequences.

2\. Hidden information. You start with very limited view of what the aliens
are doing. Even when you've researched the best radar you can't cover the
enter globe. This makes it easy to imagine they're doing something more
complicated than they really are. It's like the argument that text adventure
games are more immersive than graphical ones because the images are only
limited by your imagination.

3\. Gradually unlocked story. The games have a research tree, and as you
retrieve alien bodies and technology from random battles you unlock more
things to research. Many of these research items serve only to explain the
story. They do nothing to help you win but the first time you play they're
some of the most interesting things to research. It gives you a real feeling
of progress beyond just getting better weapons.

Many games feature the first two factors, eg. roguelikes, but I think the
addition of the gradually unlocked story is what makes the game truly great.
It combines the mimesis and diegesis that Jimmy Maher talks about in a way
that makes both of them better.

Also, the games are available on GOG, but I strongly recommend using the Free
Software engine reimplementation OpenXCOM if you're going to play them,
because it fixes a lot of bugs and interface inconveniences.

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mcguire
" _Because processing is, to use Crawford’s words again, “the very essence of
what a computer does,” the capability that in turn enables the interactivity
that makes computer games unique as a medium, games that heavily emphasize
processing are_ purer _than those that rely more heavily on fixed data._ "

I'd buy that. Purer, but not better. Procedural generation, in theory, has a
lot of advantages, but in practice, in many areas, it hasn't matched the old
school approach.

~~~
themodelplumber
I found the same thing when creating art using fractals. Purer, not better.
Just when I found a configuration that seemed perfect, all of the details were
inspected and found lacking. As a spectator, you had to enjoy it as a product
of math first, and then you could enjoy it as art. After a while I just picked
up a pen and paper and made sketches of what I saw in my mind.

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mdb333
Having been an avid player at the time I can see how a specific well written
narrative as opposed to procedural generated stories would have benefited the
overall player experience, but in all honesty I don't think it would have made
that much of a difference in the games success. You either enjoyed playing or
you didn't; the story was always somewhat secondary to just solving the
missions and ideally getting the mastermind. Cryptanalysis and circuit logic
weren't everyone's cup of tea especially when you consider games like King's
Quest 5 & Ultima 6 came out the same year and the years that followed were a
blitz of games with much improved graphics and gameplay like Wolf 3d, Wing
Commander 2, Dune, etc...

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waqf
The author seems to think that ludology vs narratology is the same as
procedural vs static content, which I don't think is true at all. You can
easily make an open-world game with static content, you just need a lot more
static content.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
I took from it more that it's much more difficult to create a compelling
narrative with procedural generation.

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gipp
I guess this guy is much more historically focused, but it seems odd to
present the thesis he does and not even mention _No Man 's Sky_ as an obvious
example of the kind of failure he's talking about.

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Animats
Oh, in games. I thought this was going to be about the role of the CIA.

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tehwalrus
Sid's theory about games seems to suggest that Invisible, Inc. should be
boring. I have to say I've found it anything but.

Has anyone played both Covert Action and Invisible, Inc for comparison?

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thehardsphere
Yes.

I don't think the "Covert Action Rule" (which I assume is what you're
referring to with "Sid's theory) really applies to Invisible, Inc. The
strategic layer in that game is really just basically "pick your next map"
with a bunch of other options that are all related to your next break-in.

Covert Action isn't like that. Every minigame/layer switch that you make is
fairly jarring. It can be hard to remember things between layers unless you've
got a notepad handy, and it breaks immersion enough to be frustrating unless
you really, really like the game (which I do).

For instance, during a break-in, you can hack computers to get information you
want if the people whose building you are breaking into have it. But you have
to type a name query in a text box. It leads to moments where you ask yourself
"What was that guy's name? Was I looking for the Stasi hideout in Budapest or
Bucharest?" And there's no easy way to get the answers unless you have good
memory or you write stuff down.

Same problem with the crypto minigame, but worse because it's explicitly
timed, though also easier because you can decrypt without knowing what you're
reading in lower difficulty.

Any time you enter the driving minigame is also jarring because it basically
has no connection to the stategic layer at all. You kind of succeed at it, or
you don't.

So I don’t really think the two games are actually that directly comperable
(but I like both of them, fwiw)

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nsxwolf
"One decision that hasn’t aged terribly well is the way the game lets Max
score with progressively hotter secretaries as he cracks more cases."

Watched a James Bond movie lately?

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8_hours_ago
> Suffice to say that generating believable fictions ... is a tough nut to
> crack.

Dwarf Fortress has smashed this nut to smithereens. Too bad it requires
significant computing resources and a huge amount of programming work to
implement.

~~~
mercer
So you're saying that generating believable fictions is a tough nut to crack?

~~~
8_hours_ago
Yes, I believe that generating believable fiction programatically is still
difficult today. Lots has changed since Covert Action was developed (game size
is no longer constrained by 3.5" floppies and computer performance is hugely
improved), but generating believable story lines without lots of templates is
still difficult.

