What more can video game developers come up with to improve gameplay? Hardware, graphics and audio technology are constantly being upgraded, feeding the gamer frenzy for the latest and greatest products. Gameplay demands range from open-world features to immersive and morally challenging plots. Online gaming and eSports contribute to the industry’s communal, if competitive, nature, because of which Newzoo predicts the PC game market to grow 4.2% and the console market 4.1% by 2021, as long as gamers continue to respond positively and developers continue to heed their needs.
A recent interesting trend detected in games is the integration of various nightlife aspects, fun, grungy, or downright scary. GTA 5 comes to mind, alongside Red Dead Redemption and Fallout: New Vegas. Each of these titles is a part of a different series, but all of them have a similar taste in scenarios set in atmospheric worlds that experiment with dark, nightly concepts and situations. Their allure, playful and sometimes brutal, deserves close inspection.
Grand Theft Auto
Rockstar’s announcement of the After Hours update to GTA 5 Online, released on 24 July, sent a buzz through the gaming community. Giving players the option to run their own nightclub, featuring popular characters and real DJs, expands the gaming experience. You get to own the night, not just wreak havoc in it. Another heavily discussed feature of the game is the tantalising existence of a casino with an “opening soon” sign on the front. Theories suggest that a DLC could make it a location for missions with a bit of poker or blackjack on the side. Maybe, it will be another business to own. With no actual news on that front, all we can do is speculate. But not about the effects of such features. Clubs and casinos mean fun, especially at night when its people come out to play and dance and brawl.
Put these ideas and thrilling locations in a video game, and the story takes on new layers of entertainment, games within games that, like bouncers, give unwelcome boredom the boot. While the degree of reality to be incorporated in these digital venues will likely be impressive, it is doubtful, for example, that players will find a complete live poker experience of Hold’em or Omaha. The amount of detail and technological components required, including security measures against risks, like poker bots and hackers, who have already plagued the GTA franchise, could become an unnecessary strain. The series’ successful history, however, should put our minds at ease. Whatever is produced, poker or no, it will be thoroughly enjoyable in true GTA style.
Red Dead
It is no coincidence that GTA Online has added rather unique weapons as unlockable prizes, the Stone Hatchet and the golden Double-Action Revolver from the upcoming Red Dead Redemption 2, set for release on 26 October. Its creators, Rockstar, are responsible for these Wild West action-adventures too. From Red Dead Revolver, the first instalment to make waves in 2004, the theme of the untamed American frontier has expanded through Red Dead Redemption (2010) and is promising to blow gamers’ minds with the next chapter. The open-world, brilliantly designed experience includes making important choices, like whether to become an honourable sheriff or a notorious robber, which horse to race, and what technique to use at poker or Liar’s Dice. It is a shame that only PlayStation and Xbox owners get to enjoy it all.
Quality graphics and gameplay are only the surface of what the Red Dead series has excelled at. It has created a massive, enthralling universe in both single and multiplayer mode before even broaching the VR path. Its gritty, grisly, honest representation of 1900s America is a creative dive into history, occasionally verging on apocalyptic with features like the Undead Nightmare DLC. And the fact of the matter is that the video game narratives that seem to attract the most attention are not the squeaky clean ones. Adventures that embrace the dark aspects of their story and take players along for the ride, leaving the reins in their subjective hands, result in the most complex and rewarding responses.
Fallout
The sentiment above could not be truer than for this franchise. New Vegas, the fourth instalment to the Fallout RPG series, in particular, has been characterised as a crushingly bleak but superb addition. It was in 2010 that Obsidian Entertainment presented us with a vividly gory post-apocalyptic setting to explore, riddled with tough decisions, often for survival’s sake. The dark theme of the game itself was engaging and profitable enough that a Collector’s Edition was produced, which included, Eurogamer describes, a graphic novel of the story leading up to Fallout: New Vegas, poker chips with each “Lucky 7” representing a casino from the game and playing cards displaying characters and factions. Even the tattered design of the box echoes the title’s harsh narrative.
What we have seen so far is that the richness of a video game lies in its honesty. Fallout: New Vegas is a frank depiction of a nuclear wasteland and its inhabitants. The morbid environment, tricky quests, unsavoury characters, even the small breaks from it all for a drink or a game of Caravan or blackjack, add to the powerful atmosphere that makes the gameplay so satisfying. The lack of poker has been noted throughout the Fallout series, with particular irony directed at New Vegas, but this may have inspired the types of physical memorabilia created for the adoring fans. So it seems that the combination of a dark scenario with nightlife-associated elements has been an effective one yet again.
Having players run around shooting things is not enough, at least not for the discerning sorts. Their senses and emotions must be stimulated and challenged. They must be taken from the real world and dipped into an entirely new one, whether fictional or historical. Adding splashes of reality, like the lifestyle of cowboys and gangsters, is an extra intrigue. At the end of the day, these titles are parts of critically acclaimed series for a reason. GTA, Red Dead and Fallout have almost perfected the recipe for a good video game, one that draws players in and keeps them there through its narrative as well as its action.
