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Analysis: Gaming Secrets And Lies
by Andrew Vanden Bossche
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October 7, 2009
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[Secrets and hidden treats are part of games' appeal and their lore, and can add depth and authenticity to the experience -- columnist Andrew Vanden Bossche explores ideal implementations, and those less so.]
Video game secrets were the schoolyard legends of our gamer youth. They thrived in the early nineties, due in large part to two key factors:
1. Actual secrets hidden within video games.
2. Lying children.
From this was born a beautiful cycle. Young gamers would, through luck or skill (mostly luck), find their way to some amazing unexplored aspect of the game and then gleefully share it with their friends. Those that weren't so lucky made them up, and so found their revenge. The only thing we were sure of was that anything could be true, so we were ready to believe anything.
Never before had lies been so believable. The rumors of the hidden Pokemon Mew lurking underneath a van, the dozens of ways you could supposedly resurrect Final Fantasy VII’s Aeris; all these and more generated days of frustration out of the fuel of raw hope.
A burgeoning internet, gullible userbase, dumb luck, and unscrupulous lying came together to make the mid-nineties the golden age of lying to (and by) children. But now there’s GameFAQs, better search engines, and more widespread internet access. It’s hard to tell if secrets still have a place in an age where you can’t keep them anymore. That is, if keeping them was ever the point in the first place.
Keep Pressing Spacebar, That Wall Looks Funny
Secrets mean different things in different games. Some games keep track of them, others don’t. For an appropriately wide definition, secrets can be any goodie or reward in the game that isn’t immediately obvious and isn’t necessary for the game’s completion. No matter how well hidden an item or tricky to solve a puzzle, it can’t quite be called a secret if you're forced to discover it.
Real secrets are buried deeply, the sort of thing you could play a game through without finding. It’s the difference between satisfying your curiosity about the environment and having a clear goal behind finding which door you need to get past.
That’s the secret to secrets. They stay hidden because you never have to look for them. You can miss them if you aren't careful, and that makes them precious. They’re tangential, an exercise founded foremost in curiosity. Lots of games (those of the Mario variety come to mind) spur this on by keeping a tally of the total collectibles that exist to give interested players an inkling of what they should be looking for.
This nudge can be even more subtle. Symphony of the Night, the classic iteration of Castlevania, has plenty of interesting areas to it that are normally impenetrable and aren’t required for an ordinary clear of the game. These little clues encourage exploration and curiosity. They may not encourage it over linear progression (depending on the game’s focus), but it certainly makes things a bit more interesting for the interested. It rewards people who like to languish in their games.
Something Behind Every Door
No useless rooms is just a dream for many games, but it’s a philosophy that’s great to believe in. This is the idea that every part of the game has a purpose, and that places that may seem empty or useless simply haven’t been searched thoroughly enough, or have some purpose that will be revealed in time. It’s the difference between wondering if there’s a point in what you’re doing, and knowing that your exploration and curiosity is not a waste of time.
Secrets help that process. The tantalizing possibility of what lies behind the obstacle you can’t seem to get past, and how to get past it, is the element of puzzle solving that gamers adore. Secrets are a powerful lure because players are aware they are looking for something without being entirely sure what it is or if it exists. Secrets are in the imagination. That’s how we were able to lie so convincingly to our friends about the code that would make Lara Croft take her clothes off. Anything could be possible if you looked hard enough.
Real secrets can add a lot of depth to a game. Lies about secrets can provide a lot of amusement for one person and a lot of frustration for another. So it shouldn't be too surprising that real secrets that sound like a lie lack both the enjoyment of exploration or the sadistic pleasure of watching a friend do something stupid. Instead, you get the experience of watching yourself do something stupid, the whole time knowing how stupid the thing you're doing is.
An Eternal Recursion of Idiocy
Final Fantasy XII, a game with a fair share of both wildly successful and completely backwards game design, isn't the first to do this to its players, but it is certainly one of the worst. Specifically, it is the weapon called the Zodiac Spear (specifically, the secret of obtaining it) that is an example of game design that is so mind-numbingly cynical that even reading about it causes me to feel mentally cross-eyed.
Secrets exist to be discovered. Some don't, but they aren't intentional, and they range from the merely embarrassing KotOR II to GTA's multi-million dollar cup of hot coffee. But it isn't often that a secret is paradoxically meant to be revealed but also impossible to find on a player's own.
The Zodiac spear was not intended to be discovered through natural play or even unnatural play.
Let me tell you about the Zodiac Spear. It's the strongest weapon in the game, and the process for obtaining it is almost insane. Scattered throughout the game are treasure chests. Oddly, they are random spawns, and usually contain nothing useful other than a handful of coins. Of course, early in the game, they're actually a tiny bit useful, so you'd think, given that this is a video game and an RPG at that, opening treasure chests would be a good thing.
A Puzzle That Makes Sudoku Look Like Hopscotch
And that's where you're wrong. Because when you open these treasure chests that have absolutely no distinguishing features, you lose the chance of obtaining this ultimate weapon permanently. Let me repeat: Not only is there no indication that this weapon exists at any point in the game, not only is there no way to know what chests not to open, in no way is any of this information in any way conveyed to the player. A player who decides to buy this game will remain blissfully unaware of this until his friend tells him halfway through the game.
Excuse me, I forgot for just a second. That's not how you get the Zodiac Spear.
You get the Zodiac Spear by buying the strategy guide.
I have nothing but faith in the abilities of gamers to discover the undiscovered, and no doubt in time it might have been found naturally. But no one even got that chance, because it was there as soon as people opened the guides. No joy of discovery. Not even a sadistic lie perpetrated by an entire corporation on an international scale. Just an embarrassingly obsolete plot to sell strategy guides.
The only thing more insulting than a cynical decision to sacrifice game design for marketing is an ineffective one. Perhaps informing those in charge of the existence of Google, or the internet, might have given them pause.
What's the Secret of Fun?
Now, I won't say that the Zodiac Spear is a mortal sin (only a venial one), and it hardly makes a difference in the overall scope of a game that had many other successes. But I won't back down from making a big deal over it because this is symptomatic of a certain kind of philosophy of game design that does not favor fun or the player. It is to trade the experiance of playing a video game in exchange for a very poor attempt to gouge players. Remember that games are made to be compelling and fun. As players, we should be suspicious when games are designed against us.
Sure, it might be fun to have the Zodiac spear, but gamers know the real fun is in the getting. Secrets tend to come out in one of two ways. You either figure it out yourself, or you read it on the internet. Which, of these two options, is the most fun for the player? Or, more easily answered, which of these options had anything to do with playing the game?
This is why the Zodiac Spear is the worst secret ever. To not know of it is to never find it. And to know of it is to instantly know how to get it. It’s like a puzzle that has no question, only a solution.
Secrets, as they exist in video games, thrive off of the nebulous state between ignorance and discovery. Only knowing that something is out there is enough. So all you need is the suspicious wall, the jump that seems impossible, the mysterious object without a readily apparent purpose. Players don’t need anything else. They’ll make the bridge between the two on their own.
[Andrew Vanden Bossche is a freelance writer and student. He has a blog called Mammon Machine, which discusses videogames and how he couldn’t eat for a week after playing Saya no Uta, and can be reached at AndrewVandenB@gmail.com]
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Every game back then felt like a giant world created to be explored. Every rock and corner had to be meticulously searched and cataloged for secrets. I remember fondly playing Diddy Kong Racing for the Nintendo 64 and leaving the races to just fly around maps and to find all the collectibles. After completing that game I would go back to previously beaten games like Mario Kart 64 and apply a new comb to all the maps hoping for to find something cool. Though Mario Kart didn't have much to reward you for time, all this wandering around taught me much about game and level design.
My fondest memeory though had to be the mysterious crater in the middle of the ocean in Final Fantasy VII. That strange island could only be seen from your airship, but unfortuantly had all of it's landmass covered in woods surrounded by impenitrable terrian, thus impossible to get to by any normal means. I simpley assumed that it was a place the story would take me to later in the game, but after completing the story I still lacked answers to what the purpose of the island was.
It wasn't till after my accidental breeding of a green chocobo that I started to share and dip into the childhood information black market and ended up trading Magic: The Gathering cards for the coveted Gold Chocobo secrets. (a beast able to traverse both mountains and ocean!) After a week of meticulous selective bird breeding and nut stealing I was able to enter the mysterious cave be be rewarded with the insanely awesome and powerful Knight of the Round materia. A summon so powerful I could kill the final boss with it in one go if I planned correctly.
It is a shame that today's games lack that sort mystical vibe; that the game world was bigger than it was letting on. Last couple of games that I honestly felt like exploring was Halo: Combat Evolved (before skulls and acheivements) and World of Warcraft pre-expansion packs. Both had wonderfully random easter eggs and in the case of WoW completely strange and broken worlds like the floating tree zone behind Dead Mines or the Tree of Life Construction Zone.
I really hope that developers start to place these random treats back into their games to reward players who stick around just a bit longer. It might help to get rid of this increasing 'play it once and trade it' mentality that seems to be the norm these days.
One solution is to implement random elements to the game, indirectly creating hidden niches and tricks. Rogue-likes are a common example of this; One can't be sure if a path leads to a dead end or a room of goodies, but the offchance of something nice makes players want to map out every room.
Then again, one should ask, what is the purpose of secrets? Secrets are certainly not the only solution on how to encourage players to explore or experiment.
So, with my trusty walkthroughs, I play my games. But lets be honest here: for RPGs walkthroughs amount to telling you where the special treasure is - items that while powerful have no impact on the story being told. And when you get down to the numbers part of RPGs a simple truth is revealed: Fighting the final boss with the ultimate sword at level 50 is equal to fighting the final boss with a stick at level 75. As for other games, such as an FPS or platformer, simply knowing that a secret item/room exists in some location does not make it any easier to get to that location. Think of super metroid - there is a secret room that has some phantom creatures jumping from wall to wall - knowing how to get to the secret area does not make it any easier to perform the actions.
So, this begs the question: which is the important part of the "fun" with secrets? Discovering that a secret exists, or actually accomplishing the task associated with the secret. I'd argue that the actual object obtained is not what is important - rather it is the journey we take as a player to reach that goal. As each player's journey is a personal one, whether information comes from in-game characters, friends, or a strategy guide does not matter. Rather, it is the decision to take the optional journey and our success or failure to achieve said journey's goal.
Although the example of the Zodiac Spear is a good example of how not to incorporate a secret in your game. Then again, the goal of not telling you how to obtain it until it was too late (end-game), may have been for you to play the game a second time. That is a valid strategy after all, and one taken by many games.
Silent Hill had an immense amount of detail laying around all over town. It fun even years after the game was released to find secrets and still be amazed by it.
I remember that in 3rd grade some kid at recess told me the stage select code for Sonic 1 and the thought blew my mind. I memorized it and went home to try it. After a few tries I got it to work and suddenly my life was complete.
A few years ago I started playing through Castlevania 2 for NES. I played it as a kid when I could rent it or borrow it for someone but I never finished it cause it was kinda confusing and it scared the shit out of me when it turned night. I got to a certain point and couldn't figure out what to do, I talked to everyone in town but finally buckled and went to GameFaqs. Turns out you're supposed to go to this one screen, stand in a spot and hold Down+A and some secret path is revealed. I'm assuming the explanation to this was somehow lost in translation (the game has a lame translation) but I couldn't imagine anyone figuring that out without reading it in a magazine. After that, the rest of the game was cake.
One secret I really liked was in Chrono Trigger towards the end of the game when you could open the special treasure chests. When you would attempt to open them in the middle ages and but then travel to the future and open them, the armor would get a great deal more powerful. I read that in a GamePro strategy guide.
I always feel rewarded when I execute that Chrono Trigger secret cause it doesn't really take much knowledge beyond you just knowing what the trick is. It's not like you gotta go on a scavenger hunt or defeeat some impossible boss to get a reward.
I like in the Metroid games where when you find something hidden, it makes a big difference to your game. An extra life tank makes a huge difference. But in a Castlevania game the secrets usually don't make that dramatic of a difference.
I never fell for the lies kids told me. Or least I've blocked out those memories, ha. I read a lot of magazines and tended to know what was going on with the games I played.
Secrets like this feel instantly more rewarding than an item. Imagine the developer sitting there making this scene up knowing that the vast majority of players would never see it – it’s this thought that makes it rewarding. In addition, a large number of quests in Fallout often spiralled out of finding a letter or audio tape that hinted at a person or location – you felt as thought significant amounts of time had been invested by the developer to reward players that explored the game.
This is partly the problem I feel – if you spend hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars on a game you (or the publisher) want to get the maximum amount of players enjoying the maximum amount of content – this is obviously a risk when you present the player with a clear end goal, but at the same time also give them an open world to explore. I personally don’t like FAQs or walkthroughs and quite happily invested 70+ hours into the wastelands (the only game I’ve played as much since FF7); but how many players simply followed the story route and went from point A to point B? For these players a large part of the content is never explored – content that took time and money to develop; for which the developer may have been better off enhancing the linear route through the game.
Considering the cost of development – a developer is going to be hard pushed to justify including any meaningful secrets in games; and I feel that most ‘secrets’ in games are tacked on in today’s games. Nowadays there is increased emphasis on trophies, achievements, unlockables and meta-game that these have somewhat replaced the attempts at trying to get Lara’s kit off (you decide which is more fun). I don’t think secrets like the ones contained in Fallout 3, the ones I like, will disappear altogether but they will be rare in big budget titles going forward.
And yes - it is possible to revive Aeris…but I’m not telling.
But there are other candidates. I submit that the design for allowing players to unlock the Jedi character slot in the original Star Wars Galaxies MMORPG strongly deserves a prominent place in the Bad Secrets gallery of shame.
For those who didn't experience or haven't read about this, there were no player Jedi in SWG when it launched. Figuring out how to unlock the Jedi character slot on a server was the big secret of the early game.
Players immediately began trying to work this out, taking every mission, visiting every location, and so on. After several months a few players succeeded, and after notes were compared to try to detect a pattern, the secret was revealed: out of the some 30 professions (each composed of 18 skills) in SWG, a player had to achieve complete mastery in four professions... which were randomly selected for each player character.
This quickly became a Bad Secret in two ways. First, it meant that an average player of the game who would have liked to have a Jedi character would almost certainly have to "unlearn" the skills of most or all of the professions they enjoyed playing, then spend weeks gaining XP to learn every one of the skills of many professions in which they had no gameplay interest. And they could potentially have to do this for about 30 professions before the magic unlock occurred. Certainly having a Jedi character was not a "right," but this effectively put a desirable gameplay element out of the reach of the typical SWG player.
The second negative effect of the "master four random professions" design was the impact it had on the gameworld overall. While many players chose not to chase the Jedi slot once they learned what was required, the many hardcore MMORPG players began grinding through every profession as rapidly as possible. Because in SWG the professions were closely tied to the fully player-run economy, the sudden influx of players who had zero interest in being Artisans or Image Designers (but who were now spending hours every day grinding out those professions) were in direct competition with the players who maintained those professions because they actually enjoyed them. Even worse, SWG's strong macro facility allowed the hardcore Jedi-hunters to program their characters to grind out XP automatically, leading to massive levels of "botting" that degraded the social nature of the gameworld -- you stopped talking to people when you couldn't be sure whether their characters had a live person behind them or if they were merely another bot among many.
And all of these effects became even more pronounced when SOE changed the game to add "Jedi holocrons" as loot drops which revealed one of the professions a character had to master. Although this cut down somewhat (though not entirely) on random profession mastering, the holocrons encouraged more players to master professions they didn't care about. It wasn't long before the term "hologrind" entered the player lexicon, and not as a term of approval.
The point here is that the form of the big secret in early SWG had significant negative impacts on the entertainment value of that game. Discovering that the path to Jedi-hood was nothing more than massively random grinding was a tremendous let-down compared to the wonderful depth of the rest of SWG's world design.
It's tempting to think that SWG's designers should have known better, and perhaps they should. (Perhaps they did.) But that's a different subject -- all I'm asserting here is that "massively random grinding" should be permanently stricken (along with "read it in a strategy guide") from the list of ways to hide a big secret.
It is a bit disparaging that there generally aren't anymore secrets thanks to widespread use of the internet and game guides but I suppose you can think of it as a much larger school yard where all the kids work together to figure out the secret before anyone else.
Not sure how kosher it is to post links to one's blog, but I also wrote about the concept of videogame secrets a while back. Here's the link if anyone's interested: http://www.significant-bits.com/the-magic-of-secrets