Negative Possibility Space

[Sared]

I know a few of you might also follow Extra Credits, but I wanted to slap this here with it's own topic to maybe lull around some discussion.

Extra Credits, Season 7, Episode 04 - Negative Possibility Space

Now be nice, I'm going to be honest and a little vulnerable for a minute, but this well illustrates why the storytelling in MxO left a bad taste in my mouth for many years, and has since then become something of a sore spot for me. The continual plot-within-a-plot rabbit holes with unresolved endings made for some fun metaintellectual sport at the time (oh but they could bring back this character/device/mcguffin because they weren't actually dead! etc.), but that continued lack resolution eventually left me worn out. And betrayed.

Once, when the Wachowski's left MxO's continued storytelling in pursuit of other projects, leaving countless stories unfinished. Then again, as the game was shut down, silencing both the unfinished stories of the storytellers, as well as many unfinished stories by the players. (Though I do think I like our end to MxO a lot better than the official one. )

I've recently found relief in the form of games like FC3: Blood Dragon and the last two Saints Row games; games in which I have zero intellectual investment in the storyline and can un-tense that part of my brain enough to enjoy the rest of the game.

Thoughts? What other games/movies/books/music/etc. have created a negative possibility space and have resolved it well/poorly?

[Manic Velocity]

The first few minutes of the video reminded me so much of my recent playtime in GTAV.  If there's one thing Rockstar knows how to do, it's world design.  The map for GTAV is huge.  Every time I play, I keep wondering how a game of this magnitude fits on a single disc.  And of course with a world this big, exploration is going to come into play.  But this is probably the only instance in which a map this large can be a bad thing.  Despite all the interesting stuff there is to find and play with, there's a lot of space in which there is absolutely nothing of interest.

Not to say that it's boring or empty.  The entire map feels very much alive, and there's a lot of freedom in all that space.  But you can easily spend two or three hours just wandering around and not find anything particularly special.  Unless you google the locations of all the secret goodies that someone has datamined from the game code, you likely won't find them on your own.

As for MxO's storytelling, I think the concept of the simulated reality gave the Wachowskis/Chadwick/Chamberlain a lot of breathing room, and it became a major crutch for all of them to lean on.  Since everything was virtual, then pretty much everything was on the table, and it could easily be explained away with "matrix magic".  (Morpheus simulacrum, anyone?)  Many of the plot points seemed to exist for the sake of convenience, not necessarily because they made a lot sense when taken into context.

As for player-agency, I now believe even that was meant to be illusory from the start.  I'm sure there's irony in there somewhere.  But it hit me during one of the early Cypherite live events.  There was some kind of chase around the city lead by Niobe, to guide the Zion players to the garage entrance of Club Hel.  As everyone assembled there, Niobe announced that she would need to send someone in to investigate.  Everyone started volunteering, and Niobe called on a low-level player named "Vashuo" to enter Club Hel and report back.

I remember thinking how lucky that player was, and how great they must have felt to be chosen by a live event character and play a key role in the story.  This is what the game was all about!

Come to find out later... Vashuo was actually a live event character all along.  Another member of the events team playing the role of a regular player.  Having Niobe pick them for the event was a set up from the beginning.  It really killed the magic for me.



I guess the silver lining is that that realization came early in the game's life, rather than near its end.  Good video, and good stuff to think about!