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3:12 --
On the move again
Threat: Low
Tension: Low
Movement Impetus: High
Tempo: Average
- Once the obstacle is removed they are
again on the move in a staccato fashion.
- Some items near the car slow the player
for a moment as he takes a second to decide if he wants to take the items
or not.
- They speed up and again slow as they enter
the building.
- They move pretty quickly through the
building, and the "coast is clear" command increases the
movement impetus out into the field beyond.
3:45 --
Helicopter
Threat: High
Tension: High
Movement Impetus: Very Low
Tempo: Low
- The movement impetus from the previous
section is suddenly halted as they reach the gate, as an enemy helicopter
passes overhead.
- The perceived threat is however severely
raised by this event.
4:06 --
Let's Go
Threat: Low
Tension: Low
Movement Impetus: High
Tempo: Average
- Again they are on the move once the threat
has disappeared.
- This is now a fairly long section of high
movement impetus in comparison to what has been seen previously. It nicely
relieves the tension for a moment. However, it turns out to be the calm
before the storm.
4:24 --
Enemy Patrol
Threat: Very High
Tension: Very High
Movement Impetus: Very Low
Tempo: Low
- This tension is suddenly ramped up
massively as a large patrolling group of enemies with vehicles heads
directly towards them -- emphasized by the dramatic change in music.
- Perceived danger is extremely high as it
appears to be certain death if they are spotted.
- Movement impetus is slowed and eventually
reduced to virtually nil, as the player formulates their strategy to try
and evade the incoming patrol.
- The enemy proximity makes for extremely
tense gameplay as they edge ever closer to your position.
- As they move past the tension starts to
subside as you realize that they haven't spotted you. The movement impetus
to get away from the enemy threat rises dramatically.
6:05 --
Move Slow
Threat: Medium
Tension: Medium
Movement Impetus: Medium
Tempo: Low
- Even though the patrol has passed the
movement impetus is kept low as the AI Buddy instructs the player to move
slowly.
- There is still a large perceived danger of
being spotted.
- Tension starts to fade as you hear the
sounds of the patrol moving away behind you.
6:55 -- The
Lake
Threat: Medium
Tension: Medium
Movement Impetus: Medium
Tempo: Low
- Again movement impetus is raised as they
are now out of visual range. The AI Buddy picks up the tempo as they move
onwards, but this is a very short distance before they reach another
obstacle.
- They sneak around to another point before
stopping. Here the pace is slowed as he offers the player a choice to
either take them out or sneak past them.
- The player takes time to decide. If they
take the shot the pace is again forced as the AI buddy instructs the
player to wait until he gets into position before they take out the next
targets.
- Once it is time for the player to take
their shot there is again a good period of time in which to make their
decision.
8:33 --
Onwards
Threat: Low
Tension: Low
Movement Impetus: High
Tempo: Average
- They are on the move again -- having had
some pretty slow moving sections this fast movement lasts a little while
to give a nice sense of relief.
8:55 --
Stay Back
Threat: Medium
Tension: Medium
Movement Impetus: Medium
Tempo: Average
- Yet again however movement impetus is
halted as they move up right behind an enemy in very close proximity. The
tension is raised dramatically.
- The pace is forced as the AI buddy
declares that he will take out the enemy -- the player will generally wait
and watch.
- After a very short section of forward
movement he again stops the player instructing them to wait as he moves
forwards.
- The tension is increased as he informs the
player of a patrol coming their way. They hear the patrol approaching
slowly before he is taken out by the AI Buddy.
Conclusion
Pace is talked about a
lot in regard to game design, but it is still poorly defined -- searching the
internet for relevant topics brings up virtually nothing.
As we develop as an
industry we need more critical analysis of our work. Whilst we can easily
develop our own terminology and draw our own conclusions, it is worth examining
other fields of cultural analysis and apply them to our field.
Perhaps we could
even adapt musical notation to some form of written system to define the pacing
of a game?
I believe there is
plenty more that can be discovered about pacing in games -- certainly some more
scientific studies of heart rate, etc whilst playing games might unearth some
real revelations about what makes the pace in games so emotionally involving
and also what simply does not work.
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_theory
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One point I took from this article that really makes me think, is using the language of formal music to describe level design - not that musical analogies work in all examples, but that music has a language to describe these things, but gaming does not. With (video)gaming being only a few decades old, this is understandable, and does not need a forced correction, but it will be very interesting to see how the language of game design evolves in the future years. For now, however, I think musical terms make a great analogy.
Many of your Threat analysis moments just take the moment into consideration, but what if the player is playing on very easy just to see the story? Then all threat moments of low+ are actually very low. All the tension moments of low+ are actually very low. Movement impetus is always very high.
Now if the player is playing on very hard then any moment, doesn't matter what is happening threat is very high and tension is very high. The only time in that situation when threat and tension are not very high is right after they see a "checkpoint reached", but 1 minute later they have something to lose and their movement impetus is in danger, and thereby the entire pacing of the game is in danger. If a player dies and in a battle and is set back to a checkpoint the movement impetus actually goes in reverse.
So I think difficulty and resurrection methods also have a very large part to do with pacing. If your game is designed for pacing I think it would be in your best interest to not include any difficulty sliders at all. It would also be good to come up with a resurrection mechanic that won't impede the movement impetus by too much.
Everyone that plays your game isn't going to be the same skill level anyway so I think even with the same difficulty for everyone, not everyone will have the same pace. This is a hard solution to fix for an interactive media type, pacing that is, because of the vastly different skill levels that will be playing your game. So I think the answer is in pacing by mechanics that aren't governed by player skill at all. Keep in mind that perceived threat is part of player skill, if they are good at the game or if it is on easy nothing you can do visually or with sound is going to give them the perception of threat. Also keep in mind pacing mechanics like items laying around could very well be ignored entirely by someone that is good or playing on easy because they don't feel they need them at that point.
Planer line drawings of the flow can help people get a sense of what to expect and strive towards. Dotting the spline with symbols representing experiences described by a simple legend can further aid you in taking your musical score from your noggin to the team.
Maybe it just helps to visualize your levels like an Opera piece. If you can internalize the level in your head and especially in your inner ear, then I believe you start from a much more solid and palatable footing.
Cheers, for writing this. I especially like that you took the extra time to create the breakdown of the CoD level. Watching the video and reading your notes side by side was very helpful in picking out the importance of things that may have seemed purposeless without this exercise.
One point of disagreement though:
"Introduce a threat from behind -- as long as the threat is significant it will cause the player to want to move away from it."
Well, in my experience players always first move _towards_ a threat, even a significant threat, unless it's an obviously unbeatable environmental one on the order of rising lava.
And you haven't mentioned the most significant way to guide a player through a level: leaving a trail of enemies for them to kill (of course, this doesn't necessarily apply, some games with progression through levels don't _have_ enemies I suppose, but it's common enough to be worth mentioning).
I like to think that levels are pieces of music, and the game (the whole single player campaign) is an album or an opera. It's not just the level that should have a carefully crafted pace, but playing through all the levels should create a good sense of rhythm and integrity. It's not just a matter of creating different levels; each subsequent level should have something to do with the previous one, giving something to the player that ticks him to keep playing the game. If the levels are not crafted together, the player loses interest if the levels are repeating themselves, or gets confused, and consequentally bored, if the levels are totally different from one another.