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4. The
arrival of fast-gaming and free games relying on micro-transactions. By its very nature, fast-gaming (see my previous
chronicle) demands great simplicity, as much for the intuitiveness of the
controls as for the initial difficulty setting and ease of understanding of the
game.
The
prospective development of games that are free, yet financed by
micro-transactions, makes this need of accessibility all the more essential.
Once a player pays for a game, he is, presumably, ready to devote time and
energy to it.
But it is the opposite in the case of a free game; there is no
real investment from him. As such, if the game disappoints him by being too
complex to handle, he is likely to abandon it immediately.
What are the consequences on the design of games?
Let us now list the
major directions that game design is likely to take.
1. Instinctive
grasp. The simplification of
the control interface is not always an applicable solution to this challenge;
some games simply demand a complex interface to show their full potential.
Thus, there is a need to look elsewhere for solutions.
One possibility lies in not activating all of the commands and features
right at the beginning of the game. Level design will therefore have to take
this into account, and this approach must be supported by a prior analysis of
the difficulties typically encountered by average gamers.
Another interesting take on the issue involves on-screen reminders of
the controls. We have grown accustomed to this highly efficient system in games
from the Zelda series.
Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Another solution was applied by the now-defunct studio Looking Glass Studios. In their title Terra Nova, a precursor to
squad-based shooters, the player's screen had all of the necessary icons for
allowing him to control his team and/or his own equipment.
The great wealth of
controls was thus made easily and immediately available to all players,
independent of prior knowledge of the game's interface.
A final possibility lies in the implementation of a game "assistant",
to be triggered by, and offer advice on, complex events that the player may
encounter.
2. Counter
early frustration by avoiding failure early in the game. While there are many possible sources of
frustration at the beginning of a game, chief among them is probably the
player's potential inability to overcome the early challenges.
The golden
rule is to make sure that the player manages to "win" at the
beginning of the game, and that he avoids getting lost. It is a complex topic,
deserving of its own article; for our purposes here, however, let us cite three
cases illustrating the issues and their solutions.
In adventure games, the problematic element is often the player's
inability to work out where to go next, or how to solve a puzzle. Solutions to
these problems reside primarily in level design.
I have already elaborated on
this aspect of design in detail in a previous publication
on Gamasutra where I describe help features to "troubleshoot" a
struggling player.
Action and
strategy games require other solutions. Here, the challenge of design lies in
progressively introducing the richness of the game (possible actions by the
player, types of opponents, etc.), thereby firmly controlling the learning
curve.
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Save/Load should be anywhere, anytime... always. See the MDA document that explained eight different types of aesthetic appeal for game design where "challenge" was merely one of the eight. Games do not havr to be challenging. Ideally, the choice of whether to be challenged or not should be in the player's hands, not the designer's. If a designer attempts to force me to endure challenge in her game, I will very likely not play except in the specific instance where I am searching for a challenging game experience... at which time it's much more likely that I will play a game that allows me to choose whether to be challenged or not rather than one which forces the challenge on me. Also, a challenge for one player may be simplistic for another. People have different abilities and needs, so the decision should be left with the player.
Adventure games come in two general "flavors." The English market developed their own idea of the adventure game genre where the game is about telling a linear story and the game places puzzle challenges as obstacles between locations or chapters. The Japanese adventure game is a very different product where the focus is (usually) on multiple characters and multiple story paths with multiple interactions and choices that lead to a wide variety of different, multiple endings. Events are often mutually exclusive; once you are on certain story branches, others are precluded during that playthru. Not only does this increase replay value, but it mirrors real life where choices you make can cause different results (but not always). This structure also requires the player to play through all possible events and paths in order to truly understand the overall story that is taking place as well as the various character motivations, events, etc that are experienced. The challenge is cerebral rather than any type of visual puzzle; the player must determine character responses to player actions and activities as well as how all these interactions lead to a wide variety of paths and outcomes.
Save/Load anytime-anywhere cannot be applied to all genres/all games. It often makes games too easy or boring, and defeats the purpose of certain genres such as platform games.
The challenge of a game is in the developer's hands, not the players. That's what makes playing games rewarding.
I want to be challenged. If a developer lets me burn through an entire game on ultra-easy mode where I can save right before any challenge so I don't have to waste a second backtracking, I probably will. I'll beat the game, shelve it, and forget about it by next week.
If a game is compelling enough I will develop whatever skill it takes, and replay as many levels as necessary to achieve the goals the developer laid out. Those are the games I look for, and those are the games I remember for years.
For example, MMOs (obviously) seem to do this very well, players start with only their most basic core skills and slowly accumulate more specific and complex abilities.
However, other games like Call of Duty 4 have done the exact opposite. The game gives players only the most basic perks at the start, but in other aspects, the game seems to throw new players to the wolves. Players are forced to use statistically inferior guns WITHOUT the laser sight dots. I found it incredible that new players, in the already hardcore world of PCs FPSes, were expected to compete without a true crosshair.
While acquiring these RPG-like unlocks is extremely addicting, they seem like they may be a mistake in competitive online games. Not only is it unfair, but as this article suggests, it is extremely discouraging to new players.
There was this controversy over the HITMAN sequels for having it, and it definitely removed a lot of the "tension" in the game. The main problem being that there were never any bad consequences to decisions the player would make on how to approach a "hit", because you always had a "quicksave" stashed away about 10 seconds earlier to quickly fix your mistake.
I think a good compromise is the "CHECKPOINT" system. It gives old long time gamers that were once hardcore, such as myself, a good balance between challenge and accessibility. I can live my normal life and work my 40+ hour a week job and choose one to two hour "nuggets" of game time to finish a title.
A good example is DEADSPACE which I am playing right now. I can put it down for 2-3 weeks during crunch periods at work, then pick right back up where I left off and not have to figure out the controls again.
On the save issue, I agree with checkpoints. Saving anywhere completely defeats the challenge and consequences.
I disagree, and strangely I'm a firm believer in having the ability to save more-or-less exactly where I am. The key here is granularity.
There are two types of 'difficulty', in the sense of the level of challenge presented by the game: the essential and the accidental. Save/load systems need to be balance to preserve the essential challenge of the game, whilst minimizing the accidental challenges (read: frustrations) caused by having to repeat a section multiple times.
In the Hitman games, the essential challenge is infiltrating, killing, and exfiltrating whilst making as few mistakes as possible. Adding a quicksave removes that essential challenge, because it lets players ensure they do everything in perfect individual units, rather than as a whole. However, not having any saves at all will add accidental challenge by forcing the player to some mundane tasks which they have no chance of failing - like finding an outfit, changing and entering the building - because they have failed a harder task later on. So the solution is either to have checkpoints, or a limited number of saves.
This is entirely different in a game like Half-Life 2, where the essential challenge is staying alive and killing (mostly) anything that moves. Quick saving in a game like that doesn't make the essential challenge any easier - you still have to deliver the same amount of ordanance to each enemy whilst receiving as little damage as possible.
As someone above mentioned, you only have to imagine being able to save anywhere at all in a platform game, like Mario Galaxy, to see that saving anytime/anywhere can completely remove the essence of a game.
It's not about choosing to be challenged. If you want to be entertained without any challenge at all, you should probably just watch a film. Saying it should be up to the player is also wrong thinking in my opinion - the player's paying money to you to be entertained. That includes you making the tough design descisions and balancing the game, not leaving them to try and figure out how to do it themselves.
For making the player start off powerful, I'd cite Symphony of the Night, or God Of War 2. Assassin's Creed is kind of a bad example because the player only really needed one "power" throughout the entire game: The counter-attack. And that's the first power you get back, right after completing assassination number one. So really, they just made you wimpy for that one level and then they immediately gave you back your game-breaking power and let you abuse it for the entire rest of the game.