Stuntman (2002)
Stuntman is a game that probably the most, in hindsight, changed the course of how I think about games.
Stuntman is a game about being a stunt driver for movies. Each level is a clear reference to Indiana Jones, James Bond, and other western action cinema films. The player drives a vehicle, usually a car, around a level to hit their marks while the Movie Magic happens around you. Ramp a car off a rail, drift in a certain area, make sure you’re on time to drive through the explosion. The levels are dotted with cameras, scaffolding, and crew on a location shoot type environment. Once you finish a level, a cutscene is constructed with your gameplay, presenting you the scene from the movie.
Stuntman doesn’t defy expectations in the common use of the term, it does what it says on the tin. However, it was my first game that put me in a very specific role, altering the normal input/output relationship of driving games. The controls are standard arcade driving - gas, brake, steer, handbrake, and so on. But up until then, for me, the output of this control scheme was relatively uniform. Arcade driving games were goofy racing games, GTA, and The Simpsons’ Crazy Taxi reskin. Go fast, wreck stuff, have fun, and they were!
The output of Stuntman was more carefully shaped than other games, despite its control scheme and goofy presentation. It wanted you, in an abstract way, to feel and think like a stunt driver. In a driving segment of a James Bond game, you are Bond driving a car through the streets and the presentation of the movie is matched by the game. In the faux James Bond movie set of Stuntman, you can see the movie’s artifice in the cameras and sets. You’re not driving fast to look cool or have a tense chase with the villains. You have marks to hit and a performance to give for the cameras.
It was the first game I played where I wasn’t playing a Video Game in a maximalist sense, but making decisions from an interesting point of view the game cast me in. There’s a difference between this and ‘roleplaying’ that I think we can all discern, but a smarter person than me can unpack.
To wrap things up, turns out those are the games I like the most! A game doesn’t have to be a big fine-grained simulation, but some well chosen abstractions and presentations can really situate the player in your role. Stuntman is really closer to something like Trials with a car than a simulation driving game. It took me a long time to remember it even existed but it really set the stage for a lot of my design thinking and game preferences afterwards.