Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Can't Stop the Fire!

Over the last half decade the technology driving gaming has made leaps and bounds. High-Dynamic-Range lighting and dedicated physics models, developed to a nearly molecular level, have become standard features in many AAA titles. This influx of technology has been great for the creators great and small. Indie games produced in the last five years look and feel as good as major releases from 2001. Hell, some of them look even better. And people are constantly finding new and creative ways to apply and improve these models.

But one place games seem to be making, at best, uneven strides, is in the area of fire physics. This is not to say that fire physics are at a complete standstill, or that they’re being ignored. There have been some incredible treatments of fire in games, and the technology is in place to make some truly amazing effects. But creating these effects seems to take a massive effort on the part of the developers, and as a result the way fire functions in a game seems to speak more to their aims than the technological limits.

I’d like to start the discussion off with Far Cry 2. Far Cry has some pretty impressive fire physics, in its own way. They don’t accurately model fire on a one-to-one ratio, and they certainly aren’t the most attractive thing in the game, but they allow fire to spread and dynamically attach itself to objects and vehicles, and allow players to spontaneously generate a visual and physical barrier whenever they’ve got some grass around. What differentiates it from the fire in other games is its incredibly destructive and consumptive nature. The way it spreads is random and senseless, in a world without air; indeed, a world without any changes except those which the player imbues it.

It represents the natural order of the world, the chaos that constantly assaults the player, the inexplicable cruelty which governs every action. There’s little or no reason associated with its path, and you use it solely to create chaos. It’s imprecise, risky, and best applied when you’re trying to make a hasty exit. It’s a perfect parallel to your character, technical limitations and all.

Compare this to the fire of Team Fortress 2, spewed forth by its well-named Pyros. TF2 isn’t anywhere near as serious as Far Cry 2. It doesn’t attempt to bring up issues of western guilt, the harshness and isolation of life in the wilderness, the developing world and in society at large. It tries to show us the best parts of video games.

As such, fire is a no-frills affair. It’s there to do a job – to amuse us, to offer an interesting visual cue which clearly represents an ongoing status effect and a clear and present danger to any enemy players in its grasp. It doesn’t linger on the ground or slowly fade away. It ignites. It either finds its legs or it vanishes into the ether of the internet.

It’s been carefully engineered to a specific end, and it shows. It’s almost perfect, it doesn’t strain video cards, and it, like everything else in Team Fortress 2, is fun without trying too hard. Or seemingly like it tries too hard. Team Fortress 2 is impeccably designed, and is still iterating itself to this day. But you’d never know to look at it, and that’s the point. A lot of that effort has gone in to making sure you can’t see the seams.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Alone in the Dark. Two quick statements: First, Alone in the Dark has amazing fire effects. Really impressive stuff. It spreads wonderfully, moving across objects and treating each substance like a unique physics surface. Second, I hate Alone in the Dark.

I went into that game wanting to like it. I wanted to like it so badly that I spent three god damn days figuring out how to de-bug the first driving sequence on my own. The elaborate mall jump would end with my death when my X-Box failed to load the upcoming terrain and left me to fall endlessly into the earth. But I endured this, and so many other bugs, to see the game’s shitty, unsatisfying ending. And I felt like I should’ve been paid for my time, instead of paying sixty dollars for a game that did almost nothing but insult me.

In the end the only thing that impressed me, indeed the only thing which didn’t disappoint me entirely, was the fire. Alone in the Dark’s mapping of fire – its spread, sustenance and eventual death – was amazing. The way it used fire as a key part of the game added to it, and the way you could create it almost anywhere? Simply marvelous. Molotov cocktails and burning chairs, afterthoughts in most places, are the best parts of the game bar none. Homemade flamethrowers are pure love, as well.

It would be nice to spend a long time espousing the incredible nature of fire in Alone in the Dark, but because of its remarkable effectiveness there simply isn’t that much too say. It behaves like real fire. Well, for the most part, but even the exceptions are incredible. Not the asinine “flaming bullets” which are regrettably necessary towards the end of the game, but the wacky shit that you can pull which seems completely unnecessary. Things like endlessly burning torches and, I shit you not, flaming swords. I’ve only pulled the latter off once but it almost saved the game for me. Until I hit the finale, and the game went well beyond saving.

What fire represents is a lot more intriguing. Fire, in Alone in the Dark, represents their misguided technical aspirations. They wanted so badly to make a technical masterpiece that they failed. They created an amazing system that showcased the hopes they’d had for all their other set-pieces. The amazing fire system casts light (huzzah puns) the overall shittiness of the first person shooting mechanic, the clumsiness of the driving mechanic, the ham handed flashlight system, and the claustrophobic and arbitrary inventory.

It’s so polished that next to it the piss poor writing and asinine story are just hideous. If they’d put even a fraction of their incineration based attentions into developing a cogent game world, a protagonist we gave half a shit about or a love interest I didn't want to choke they could've made a game that didn’t make me want to snap my fucking controller in half. They could’ve given it a satisfying ending, maybe even play-tested it even briefly and come up with fixes to even a handful of the bugs that made their game nigh unplayable. That play-testing could’ve also helped them design better levels and come up with some puzzles that relied on some sort of logic sorely lacking from their game.

In the end, Alone in the Dark's fire represents the conflicting forces at work in its production – a creative team seeking perfection and a developer seeking a summer-blockbuster release, and it does so better than any number of designer interviews ever could’ve. The game itself doesn’t make much of a statement. It can’t. But the fire shows us the message it could’ve made if it wasn’t for the nature of the business. It turns a shitty, shitty game into a post-modern tragedy.

I didn’t say it made it any better, though.

But not every game makes a statement through its use of fire physics. Sometimes games just have fire so it can be there. And in a way, this is its own statement. Dead Space and Halo 3 both animate this point wonderfully. Unlike, say, TF2’s simple, elegant fire, pared down to a bare minimum and art directed to perfection, these are particle effects placed in the game to reference damage over time effects with a mix of flash and confusion.

They linger over the ground ineffectually, showing us nothing, telling us nothing. They don’t create any sort of barrier, they don’t have a lasting impact on the game world, or even the character models you use them on. They’re bereft of personality, signifiers without meaningful signs. And in that they tell us so much about the games they inhabit.

These are games market tested into a gray paste, set in impenetrable worlds with flaccid stories; they lack true fire, true zest. They’re serviceable, barely, enjoyable, if you don’t look too closely, and they both sold incredibly well despite being...well, genre exercises. They’re games the embody the most insipid things about the standardization of their genres, the things games need to break free from if they want to advance and grow as a medium.

Did the developers really intend for fire to say any of these things about their games. Alone in the Dark’s developers almost certainly didn’t. Far Cry 2 and Team Fortress 2’s developers almost certainly did. And the “design by committee” style of Halo 3 and Dead Space’s finished products make it almost impossible to really gauge the creative intentions of the people shaping the game.

In the end I don’t think it matters whether or not they meant me to take these points away from their games. I don’t think it matters if you agree with me here. I think what’s important is that we look at these aspects of games which model both the technical and the artistic work which has gone into them and we start to discuss them avidly, as people who care about what these things mean in the context of the games we play. Because while it’s great to simply sit back and be amused by these wonderful things technology has created, they have so much more potential. And when that potential is realized by both the designers and the people playing the games the result is something amazing.

The result is art.