I see your point, but I would have to respectfully disagree. A shining example of where "walking" in games is necessary is Shadow of the Colossus. Half (if not the majority) of the game is travelling from one colossus to the next. While these sequences may seem "boring" initially, they allow the player to contemplate the game world as it passes him or her by. The player's mind can wander, playing with ideas such as what exactly are these colossi, what exactly is this place, were there people once living here, what caused them to leave, etc. In the absence of overt sensory stimulation, the player constructs his or her own backstories and the like in his or her mind, thus making the experience much more personal than if he or she were readily given answers to the questions. The player, then, is not just playing with the game world, but the story/narrative itself.

Granted, some may see Shadow of the Colossus as an exception, but I beg to differ. I think it shows us that the journey is sometimes just as important as the destination, and that to wholly eliminate it would devalue the play experience.

good point with this article.

I disagree about SoTC, it definitely is an exception to the rule. Most developers put walking in as a matter of course, not as an intentional, designed entertainment experience. In a game like Crash: Mind Over Mutant, the excessive traveling is not breathtaking, it doesn't give a sense of scale, it's just annoying and feels like they were trying to make the game longer.

TES4: Oblivion did it well. You are exploring when you're finding new places, and when you're going somewhere you've already been it's rote travel and you don't need to think about it.

You could make the case for traveling in a game like WoW, that it "gives a sense of the grandeur of the world" or something, but I found I got distracted by how boring the travelling actually was after the first few hours.

I think the take-home point is that if your game has traveling for no good reason, either find a good reason or get rid of it.

@Simon Fraser: Hmm, I suppose I can agree with your last sentence. What I meant to say, then, is that travel CAN be done correctly, and ideally, it should be. Sadly, in most cases, it is not.

@Ron
You make a good point and this is something that probably often is overlooked by designers. If travel isn't important to the story or (more importantly) the gameplay, it should not exist.

I also like the tack you took with this. Comparing it to cutting violence out of the game to save the narrative is interesting, since violence is often seen as a lower form of entertainment.


@Joseph and Simon
I agree with Simon on this. Travel in SotC was half of the point of the game, so it is acceptable. This is also true in Mirror's Edge, Flower and any Prince of Persia title Travel in those games comprise the gameplay, for the most part. I think these examples are outside of the critique Ron is making.

I believe that the fact that there are so many "exceptions" to your argument means it may not be the problem of travelling, but the way it's used.

It's like the difference between a person who hikes for exercise, and a person who hikes for the experience: even without something "going on" in the immediate moment, the environment and scenery and sounds can help the player understand more about the game world than the story ever could.

Fallout 3 is amazing in this regard: you can tell players that the world was destroyed in nuclear devastation all you want, but it's actually walking through the desolate, lonely wasteland that you feel it in your heart as well as your mind: there was civilization here, and now it's gone.

Sometimes you just have to pull back and let the player walk for a bit to internalize and understand the world they are playing in.

In a number of rpg style games we are seeing the journey *to* someplace as being full of opportunity (I'm thinking Naruto: Rise of a Ninja as an example here), a chance for random encounters, low level smackdowns, to meet up with other players, etc., but the journey *back* can often be skipped with a teleport or some other in-game method once the goal is achieved. Some games (I'm thinking EQ and COH in particular) allow you to cut the "walking" short as you attain higher levels and better modes of transport, so the ability to *not* walk becomes a sort of prize to be attained.

@Andrew
Fallout is a good example, but it also doesn't force you to re-walk areas you have already explored. Once you get to a location, you can fast travel there at any time. Removing what would be a boring trek through the wasteland. It uses travel to establish an important part of the narrative (desolation and loneliness) but doesn't abuse it to the detriment of the player.

I would agree that it is an issue of how it is implemented, rather than the fact that it is implemented at all, but movement in a game world is the kind of thing that developers will add in simply because most games have it. Ron's post serves to point out that there should be a point to the traversing of a game world and that you should put some thought into what impact it will have on your gameplay experience.

Point noted, and I agree: once is fine, but repeats are tedious (but there can always be exceptions based on the rest of the game). Again, I think Fallout 3 handles this perfectly: you have to find places on your own, but after that it's teleport city.

Put simply, walking in a new environment *is* discovery. I would say Shadow of the Colossus was original and in the run-up to the boss environments get more interesting but your argument is tenable, you could do away woth most of the way to the boss. Wind waker on the sea was a particularly tedious experience for me and Ocarina's huge terrain at first seemed like an existential waste of time, like thinking about playing a game but not actually *playing* the game. Thing is, there was an element of buil-up to these action but IMO not essential to the overall appreciation.

Where I do resent game designers are where you have to backtrack or redo whole sections of games to complete the story, like Silent Hill 4, among others.

But I stick to my opinion that in most cases walking in a new environment is integral to discovery but when it is no longer fresh it quickly develops into tedium, the bane of gaming.

Good article!

Thank you all for responding. A few points:

Kim: Interactive Fiction (a.k.a. text adventures) has been leaning in that direction as well. Though many authors still prefer the tried-and-true method of managing the player via geography, a GO TO command for quickly re-visiting old locations is becoming increasingly common. This is partly because the latest versions of the major authoring tools now feature pathfinding abilities out of the box.

To many others, regarding telling story through exploration a la Fallout: Here I note the similarities to the movie Wall-E: telling a story (or at least a backstory) about a society (rather than individuals, which stories tend to be about) via the in-absentia method (rather than via dialogue), while being a valid storytelling device, isn't a very oft-used one. Reviews of Wall-E cited again and again how odd it was to have a movie almost completely forego dialogue for the first two-thirds of it, relying on scenery, props, and animation. And yet, many video games that try to tell a good story seem to prefer that device.

Travel will never disappear from games of course, though it might abandon some genres, and sometimes using the computer's abilities to simulate a space with physics can make a fun toy, but the primary resources of most stories are characters and dialogue, not the setting.

BTW, I read somewhere in the current GDC coverage that someone (Warren Spector?) called dialogue a "crutch". Does anyone know why it was characterized this way? This makes no sense to me. Interactive dialogue, while technically very difficult, seems essential to springing us out of the power fantasy ghetto.

Travel can establish a sense of place, if the world around you is interesting enough to be worth exploring. Both Oblivion and Fallout 3 created detailed worlds that lured the player in. Some of the best parts of both games were the time spent where nothing really happened. I was just traveling down a road or crossing a field and it seemed like I was "there". Tamriel and the DC Wastelands were places I visited and got to know well as almost a virtual resident. I found both games became richer when I stopped fast traveling and just accepted the pace of the worlds. The sense of place in the mind-worlds of Psychonauts was another example of a game that got it right. Valve pulled it off with both Black Mesa and City 17.

My view: the sense of place (if done well) is a cohesive (and adhesive) element that ties everything together in the larger game. If the NPCs (both good and bad ones) behaves logically as if they belonged in this place, it builds the immersion. If the setting where the game takes place is boring and generic (caves, corridors, and crates), then it needs one action sequence after another to try to keep the player from becoming restless. If the game rewards exploration and travel (you find new things you missed, have random encounters, etc.), then players will find value in the journey. Oblivion and Fallout are both games where I have spent hundreds of hours as one character. It is the sense of place that keeps me coming back. Oblivion was a varied world and often strikingly beautiful. The DC Wasteland outside the Vault and Megaton was lonely and desolate, and Fallout 3 made you have to journey from the edge of civilization to the heart of shattered DC as part of the game. The first time you actually see the what is left of the Mall is a high point in gaming. The Planes of Oblivion offered a vision of Hell; Fallout 3 showed Hell on Earth.

I think I understand the point, but I'd also have to disagree. Or at least, I'd have to say that it winds up being a very individual, subjective judgment. This subjectivity includes cultural variances about communication styles that are "good" or "bad" - in some cultures, for example, the journey or process is what is important, not the goal or destination.

An example that was mentioned was Oblivion, but has everyone forgotten the howls of fury that went up as soon as the game hit the market because so many consumers were furious at Bethesda's hamhanded implementation of fast travel? This illustrates the point that was made about implementation style being more important than whether or not travel exists, even travel that doesn't have much happening.

In the end, good design will allow the player to choose from a couple of different options (as long as they fit within the gameworld, of course) because no developer can possibly consider all the methods that might appeal to each player.

I've been playing Star Ocean: The Last Hope the past week or so. It's just one of many examples of mixed travel. Some of the world travel gets a bit tedious, but only because I am a completionist player and always try to maximize efficiency of usage of resources, doing all quests possible, etc. Other people have other play styles, of course. I find the world travel and exploration to be superior to Mass Effect (as a comparison), and I do wish that there was a greater presentation of space travel between systems (ala the original Starflight from 20+ years ago).

At the same time, I'd have to offer the viewpoint that shooting or other activities in games fall into the same faults as Ron is talking about with respect to travel. Most shooting in games is pointless repetition or simply to show off technical effects. Wow, a tech demo... but that's not a game and it's not fun even if it's impressive (assuming the latter, of course). If we accept that travel may be pointless in various implementations, we'd also have to accept that many implementations of shooting (or jumping, slashing, etc) are pointless. Does it advance the story or character development to force players to mow down hordes of demons (or other types of "foes") that spawn repeatedly? No, at least not in my experience. In accepting Ron's argument, we'd have to face the fact that such encounters might as well be replaced with "... and she (or he) mowed down seemingly endless hordes of zombies (or [insert name of foe]) until the halls were bathed in gore" or some similar summation.

Perhaps we'd be better off simply evaluating each work uniquely rather than attempting to adopt a general approach. I don't think a general approach seems to work due to too many individual preferences in presentation styles.

While many of us seem to offer dissenting opinions to Mr. Newcomb's blog post; I'm not sure we are seeing the whole picture.

when I play games like Beyond Good and Evil, Fallout 3, and half-life2 the travel and progression helps to show me the 'ethos' of the world. It makes the place feel like it has character and in a way it becomes alive. In half-life2 you always get this sort of tension feel, like the clam before a storm. in fallout 3 you get something similar but a more lonesome, deserted feel; like the world is on it's death-bed and is waiting to die. BG&E has sort of a 'dynamic' ethos that changes through the game. especially when you are in the city you really get to see how things are changing.

but then there are the longer more story driven games that start to lose the charm of the environment. in a way you become dull to it. Once you get used to an environment the travel in a place seems as entertaining as a run to the local grocery store. I notice this mostly occurs in RPGs that kinda stick me in a location with a mountain of side quests for me to complete.

I think the problem is when the player becomes sensitized to the environment and the environment fails to stimulate the player. In the games I mentioned above the player is generally pushed through the game and can explore new areas or the game changes the areas the player frequently revisits.

If half life 2 took place on the same 5 levels set in city 17 that never changed and always had characters saying the same 10 lines over and over again it would be a complete disaster.

Simply its all a case of the environment not stimulating the player as they go through it. The player should get a sort of feel from the places they travel though. If the story calls for the player to stay in the same place, it shouldn't be static, but constantly changing so it doesn't get old.

I've lived in the same town all my life (20 years for whatever that's worth); and while they still have the same dairy they always did out on the way to Woodinville, the place has changed so much. so many new apartment buildings are going up, they built a skate-park several years back, all of the schools I went to have been rebuilt (either before or after I entered). They had an old qfc and a new qfc, they put up a town center (AN ENTIRE TOWN CENTER). Pizza places have started and shut down and some still remain...

now before I get too nostalgic about the good old days and the vacant lots; I want to say how that this applies to game environments. places, even familiar places, change. unless you let the player travel though areas (where they wouldn't see change anyway); you need to have the environment change.

so if you are confused at what iIm saying by now, here it is in one sentence.
If the environment doesn't change, or there isn't change in the environment, then places will start to become boring to the players.

What a lot of the counter-examples to Ron's proposition seem to have in common is this: We're talking games where the setting itself is a deep element, it's pretty much a character in and of itself. To cut out the movement, for example, the first time the bombed out Washington Monument became faintly visible on the horizon, seriously curbs the visual impact of the game. Not to mention that, after awhile, I became quite attached to the pock-marked hellhole that was post-apocalyptic DC. I'd wander past an old trench network and think to myself "Hm, I wonder who built this. It's like for a war, but I didn't think the Chinese actually invaded DC.", and then I'd go diving off into the FC3 wiki looking for a possible explanation. For me, the sense of travel, discovery, and yes, identity derived from traveling the landscape was what really made the game.

In your comments, Ron, you talk about how it might be more applicable to some genres than others. I mostly agree. Minimizing movement is very feasible, while in other genres, removing movement defeats the whole purpose of the genre. I think that's an important qualification. Where the genre even allows the idea, perhaps it's something to implement. The problem is, just so many hold that at the very core of their identity. Still, it's a pretty intriguing idea from a design standpoint.

But one thing that's bugging me, and maybe I'm just a 25-year old, former frat guy who's just lost the plot, but why is there so much angst lately about this whole idea of the "power fantasy". I know it was a big feature of Heather Chaplin's recent talk at GDC. She's incredibly intelligent, makes some great points. However, I think she's so ridiculously wrong and prone to over-generalization it's hysterical, but that's a subject for a different blog post. My point is, there is nothing ignoble about making the game that someone wants to play. If I want someone to try to slyly attempt to engineer me towards their own narrow conception of high culture, I'll go read the New Yorker. But I play games, sometimes, specifically to rebel from that sort of thing. A game is about fun. If having a low brow, gore filled, crass "power fantasy" is what gives you a few hours of respite and enjoyment after a grueling day, if it lets you forget your troubles for just awhile, then I think that's about as noble as a game can be.

Since someone needs to agree with the original sentiment (even though as game developers we all inherently want to disagree because we don't like the idea that we've missed something so blatantly and obviously bad in the core design for 80% of games out there), I'd like to point out that most casual games have no movement sections unless they're directly related to the speed and skill with which you can move to the location. For example, Missile Command. You move the reticle across the screen, but it's all about doing it as quickly as possible so you can line up your shot and hit the incoming missile. Movement is your adversary.

Furthermore, I'd like to point out that Portal was all about circumventing normal walking in order to get to your goal in the fastest way possible. Something about Portal clicked with everyone who played it, and I think it had something to do with the inherent satisfaction in NOT having to walk the distance you just travelled via the portal. ;)

I think we can all agree that movement for the sake of movement is no good. You sure as hell better be doing something interesting while you're moving. Particularly if you're one of those bastard designers who puts in moving slower as a game dynamic...

Ahh stealth, I hate you so much... Why must you be slower than walking???

I'm going to agree with both DaveF and the RonN. Lots of people here cite "exceptions" like Fallout 3 and Shadow of the Colossus, but that's missing the point. Travel has a reason in those games. You can't really experience what those games promise without the travel component. Travel is part of the narrative. You aren't just "walking from A to B", you're reflecting on the journey (SotC), battling isolation (FO3), exploring new and previously unreachable locations (Metroid), or simply being a @#$%ing cool Arabian ninja (Prince of Persia).

RonN's case is to do away with things like riding one of the various winged creatures in World of Warcraft from Orgrimmar to Thunder Bluff. Bo-o-oring. It might be visually interesting the first time, and certainly it's an improvement over being forced to sit at the computer while your toon ignores all of the worthless adversaries that aggro onto them, but after that first journey you might as well take it out entirely and just offer a teleport service. Your player is going to go get a soda and while they wait for the opportunity to do something entertaining again.

Legend of Zelda (Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess both) feels the same way after the 3rd or so time that you're crossing Hyrule Fields for no purpose other than to get to some other place. About the only reason that feeling is absent from Link to the Past is because of the relative smallness of the world. Now imagine if BioWare hadn't put a rapid-transit system in the Citadel. Even Prince of Persia had a teleport system so you didn't have to traverse all the way from the City of Light to the Ruined Citadel just to hunt down those last few light seeds, or from wherever your were to the Temple just to pick up your next power.

It's the kind of topic that deserves a greater proportion of design thought as games continue to move in the direction of non-linear, open-world gameplay. Just as it's boring to read (and re-read) "Mr. Darcy turned left onto the main road, followed it for a few blocks, turned right onto a side street, passed a few more houses and arrived at Elizabeth's", it's boring to travel (and re-travel) through locales in games when nothing else supports it. Casual games understand this, and focus on the gameplay. Core-gamer games should, too, and should either give meaning to the travel or should act to remove it.

The premise is sound. If movement contributes nothing to the game, then don't include movement. That goes for just about any feature. If it doesn't contribute to the game, then don't include it. Simple enough.

The counter arguments presented are examples of when movement does contribute, contributes well, and is aptly included in the game. I don't think the topic goes any deeper than that. Don't include things in your game that don't apply. Having a lavish, extensive movement system in a chess game or blackjack game makes no sense; so don't make me walk from my house to the casino, then to the bar, then to get chips, then to the table, etc etc. Just sit me at the table with my chips, my drink, my appropriately obnoxious sunglasses, and let me win/lose virtual money, thankyouverymuch.

Interesting statement, but I'd say that the issue is wider than just "movement": it's more about repetition and interaction. If you're forcing the player to repeat actions (hello Halo!) or denying them the ability to interact for long periods, then there's something wrong with the game design.

Put simply, it's the difference between walking to work every day of the week (repetitive, limited interaction) and exploring a city while on holiday (one-off, lots of interaction).

GTA:SA provides good examples for both sides of the coin: a major part of the gameplay comes from driving and experimenting with vehicles - however, it can be necessary to drive from one area of the game to another: this can take a long time and prove incredibly boring.

I have to agree with Mark Harris. There are a lot of times movement serves a vital purpose. It can be used to build and heighten suspense. But there's another one, that I don't think a lot of people may consider.

Too much action is just as dangerous as not enough, especially long form entertainment such as novels and games. The audience is just as likely to put down something boring as they are to put down something (and not pick it back up again) that's too intense and doesn't let up and give them a break. In games, some of the traveling around without blowing things up serves as a lull in action, giving the player a break without having to put down the controller because things are too intense and not because they're done playing for the day.

I think Tommy Hanusa makes an interesting point about environments tying into the core of this issue. Creating emotional ties to the environment strikes me as a critical and often overlooked facet of a player's narrative engagement, although that may well depend on the player. An example that I feel executed this well was Shenmue (though arguably many good adventure games share this quality.) At the time, main character Ryo's hometown of Yokosuka was an incredibly dense, rich area full of things to see, explore, and examine (being able to pick up and examine individual objects being a nice touch.)

Many players would probably admit to having attachments to the many townspeople, all of whom have their own names, backstories, and daily routines. The information felt in many ways so complete that you almost felt like you had lived there yourself. Were it not for the richness of it's environment, I doubt it would have received the warm critical and fan reception that it (generally) did. Otherwise it would have probably been completely unremarkable with its clunky controls and often mundane gameplay.

The adventure genre has typically been one of the few genres that focuses on smaller, carefully crafted spaces that grow on the player whereas the rollercoaster of sensory overload approach seems to have gained more popularity as technology allows more leeway with regards to scale. Both approaches have their places, but many games still don't seem to have found the scale that works best to convey the narrative and connect with the player.

Logan said, "The problem is, just so many [genres] hold [travel] at the very core of their identity. "

Yes, that is the problem, and the crux of my post. BTW, is Heather Chaplin's talk on the web somewhere? Though I'm unfamiliar with it, I would believe she's asking for us to expand our palette, not calling for an outright ban on heroic escapism.

Erik said, "Too much action is just as dangerous as not enough"

I had this argument with Emily Short a few months ago, in which she cited keeping the compass-based movement in interactive fiction as downtime, as those necessary periods of low intensity you are talking about. What I find is that what counts as downtime for some may not for others. Since I haven't been playing text adventures since Zork was released, I do not have the automatic ability to construct a mental map in a text adventure as the veteran players do. So mere navigation, and especially navigating back through already-enjoyed territory, was some of the most cognitively-intensive work in the adventure -- even moreso than the puzzles!

I agree that downtime is needed, but travel doesn't necessarily count as such. (Cutscenes and between-level score screens certainly count, though because they are not gameplay.)

juice uk said, "it's more about [the] repetition"

Yes.