Thursday, September 07, 2006
Next Gen = Face hugging!
So I want to be able to play a next gen game where at some point nay, ANY point you have to climb up some gigantic, chubby creature and you do so by grabbing on to meaty chunks of his flabby visage. Now I'm probably the only person in the world who wants to do this but that doesn't mean someone shouldn't do it! I'm thinking shadow of colossus II. If it by some bizzare alignment of the stars this does infact come true then well YOU HEARD IT HEAR FIRST FOLKS!!!!!!111one
Monday, September 04, 2006
Designer VS Gamer: Showdown!
DISCLAIMER: This topic really deals with single player story driven games. Obviously multiplayer games don't tend to suffer from this type of problem but instead face an entirely different set of challenges that I might cover another time...
If you ask any gamer what separates games from any other type of media then you will get a simple response. Interaction.
Games allow players to interact with the experience created for them by the designers and, as games strive for greater immersiveness they also become more and more structured. The simple fact of the matter is that game designers don't like giving gamers control of their game because they don't want them to wreck it. They want the player to play the game as THEY intended. This doesn't make the designers evil people, they just to see their visions realised as close as possible to the way they saw it.
So how can we try and mitigate the eternal struggle between gamer and designer? Well one way around it is to make the game so immersive that the player doesn't want to 'break' the experience. Story driven games usually require that the player play a role. If you make the bond between the player and the character very strong then they won't want to break the 'suspension of disbelief' (shudder), by doing something that the character wouldn't do. A good example of this for me was the adventure game Fahrenheit (known as indigo prophecy in the US). In an adventure game such as Fahrenheit there is always a tendency to make the player run everywhere because walking is slow and takes too long. When i was playing Fahrenheit I didn't run everywhere because it didn't feel right to do so. I didn't want to break the illusion that this was real. This worked because the environments were well designed and walking wasn't so slow that it became a chore. The option to run was there but I chose not to take it. (unless I was running for my life when i would break into a sprint at the earliest available opportunity!).
Designers shouldn't be afraid to give the player choice. If you have built your game right then players will take the right option. Metroid prime by Retro Studios is a great example of this. The environments are built in such a way that you dint ever find yourself trying to find 'fake' ledges (that is, something that you shouldn't be able to jump on but you can), in order to progress through the game. If you cant get to a certain area yet you just trust that the game will give you an ability to get there later on. The game signposts these invisible dead ends very well so you know when you've gone as far as you can.
Another issue that is finding itself hot topic recently with games like dead rising and Ninety Nine Nights just hitting shelves are save systems. Here its a question of the players preference of save anywhere versus the designers favourite of checkpoints or an end of level save (which are basically just really sparse checkpoints). I'm not a fan of save anywhere at all for the simple reason that the player doesn't know whats coming up, designers do. A well implemented checkpoint system should end up being better than a save anywhere system as you can save at points where one obstacle is over and the next is about to begin. Obviously for non linear games where to save is more of an issue and there is a case for saving at any time in this situation. However a save is essentially a form of infinite lives and the tension of lives can add a lot to the game experience. A designer wants to make the player dying be something they want to avoid but they don't want to make it such an inconvenience that its immensely frustrating. As with most things in life its about striking a balance.
Control VS Control is an eternal debate much like any issue where both sides of the argument have merit. How much control you give your players is a fine balancing act but if you set your case well then there is a good chance that they will follow the rules!
Tom
If you ask any gamer what separates games from any other type of media then you will get a simple response. Interaction.
Games allow players to interact with the experience created for them by the designers and, as games strive for greater immersiveness they also become more and more structured. The simple fact of the matter is that game designers don't like giving gamers control of their game because they don't want them to wreck it. They want the player to play the game as THEY intended. This doesn't make the designers evil people, they just to see their visions realised as close as possible to the way they saw it.
So how can we try and mitigate the eternal struggle between gamer and designer? Well one way around it is to make the game so immersive that the player doesn't want to 'break' the experience. Story driven games usually require that the player play a role. If you make the bond between the player and the character very strong then they won't want to break the 'suspension of disbelief' (shudder), by doing something that the character wouldn't do. A good example of this for me was the adventure game Fahrenheit (known as indigo prophecy in the US). In an adventure game such as Fahrenheit there is always a tendency to make the player run everywhere because walking is slow and takes too long. When i was playing Fahrenheit I didn't run everywhere because it didn't feel right to do so. I didn't want to break the illusion that this was real. This worked because the environments were well designed and walking wasn't so slow that it became a chore. The option to run was there but I chose not to take it. (unless I was running for my life when i would break into a sprint at the earliest available opportunity!).
Designers shouldn't be afraid to give the player choice. If you have built your game right then players will take the right option. Metroid prime by Retro Studios is a great example of this. The environments are built in such a way that you dint ever find yourself trying to find 'fake' ledges (that is, something that you shouldn't be able to jump on but you can), in order to progress through the game. If you cant get to a certain area yet you just trust that the game will give you an ability to get there later on. The game signposts these invisible dead ends very well so you know when you've gone as far as you can.
Another issue that is finding itself hot topic recently with games like dead rising and Ninety Nine Nights just hitting shelves are save systems. Here its a question of the players preference of save anywhere versus the designers favourite of checkpoints or an end of level save (which are basically just really sparse checkpoints). I'm not a fan of save anywhere at all for the simple reason that the player doesn't know whats coming up, designers do. A well implemented checkpoint system should end up being better than a save anywhere system as you can save at points where one obstacle is over and the next is about to begin. Obviously for non linear games where to save is more of an issue and there is a case for saving at any time in this situation. However a save is essentially a form of infinite lives and the tension of lives can add a lot to the game experience. A designer wants to make the player dying be something they want to avoid but they don't want to make it such an inconvenience that its immensely frustrating. As with most things in life its about striking a balance.
Control VS Control is an eternal debate much like any issue where both sides of the argument have merit. How much control you give your players is a fine balancing act but if you set your case well then there is a good chance that they will follow the rules!
Tom
Multi Tiered Progression
While I was reading this post on the guardians excellent video game blog I got thinking about how game progression works.
Whats progression?
Progression is measured by looking at where you started, looking at where you need to get to and then working out where you are in relation to that. In a computer game this is usually measured by your movement through the linear space of the game, I.e. if there are 10 levels and you are on level 5 then you are about half way through the game. Other games do it based on plot exposition and as games become more open ended the primary way of measurement will be how far you are through the story.
One of the most frustrating things i find in games is when i sit down the play for an hour, then I die or something happens and im back where i started. I am left in exactly the same state as I was when i turned the game on, infact i might aswell have just done that! Now this is a surefire way of getting me to turn the thing off in frustration. Essentially you have just lost an hour of your time and you have accomplished Nothing.
A solution to this is tiered progression. This consists of creating several different types of progression in your game so that no matter what you do, you will have accomplished something. There are several types of game that already have systems like this in place. RPG's are a great example. Everytime you kill something you get experience points of some kind that help you towards some kind of secondary goal (in this case it would be advancing your character a level). Experience points also have a secondary benefit when it comes to games with a linear storyline. If you fight a boss character and die, you should still get experience points or some kind of bonus for fighting him. The next time you fight him you will be a little bit more powerful and so the odds will be slightly more in your favour. Obviously this can cause a situation where the designers need to be careful that the player does not have to be a certain level before they take on the boss as this can create frustration.
Of course for some games its not really appropriate to have experience points in the way described here, however every game should reward the player in some way just for playing the game. 2 examples of games that accomplish tierd progression in novel ways are ikaruga, which awards the player a bonus continue for every hour that they play the game and after 5 hours gives the player unlimited continues, allowing the player to finish the game and Project Gotham racing which Awards the player with bonus music tracks and driver helmets every time the player drives a set number of miles.
Structuring your game to make use of tiered rewards is a great way of making sure that players keep coming back for more rather than getting frustrated at making no progress and never getting to the end of your game.
Tom Out
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