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Feature: 'Beyond Pacing -- Games Aren't Hollywood'
by Staff [PC, Console/PC]
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May 21, 2009
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Good pacing is as essential to gameplay as it is to film adventures -- but modeling game pacing on Hollywood isn't always the ideal approach. In a new in-depth design article, People Can Fly (Painkiller) designer Jacek Wesolowski looks at games from Freelancer through Thief and beyond to examine the all-important art of correct pacing in video games.
Weslowski discusses some of the differences:
A film audience is passive. It just sits and watches. The film may influence them in many ways, but they can only rewind it and watch it again. Their state of mind is affected, but their ability to watch the film isn't.
In contrast, players are bombarded with stimuli which affect their ability to respond to subsequent stimuli. The most obvious case of this is the broadly-defined learning curve. Even if players do notice all your hints and prompts, how do you make sure they have drawn the intended conclusions? When miscommunication happens, a film just goes on at its own pace; a game deviates from intended course due to player interference.
Weslowski highlights why the use of cutscenes is an ineffectual compromise:
The only exception to this is a cutscene, but cutscenes aren't interactive. So we compromise. We make sure there is only one point of entry and one exit available. We take care not to allow players to look in a "wrong" direction when there is something we feel they have to see. We avoid situations that may take some time to figure out. We use quick time events.
Our efforts are futile: the interactivity is lost, but a truly cinematic experience doesn't appear, because we're unable to achieve a movie-like pacing. Our dubious practices are so limiting we keep making the same few games over and over again. The narrow category of Tower Defense clones displays as much diversity as the whole genre of First Person Shooters.
To help make his point, Weslowski maps out the plot line of Star Wars as an example of how intensity works in computer games.
Simply put, we can either escalate sensory stimuli or build up abstract meaning. The former happens when guns, explosions or enemies get bigger, putting the Hero in a greater danger than before. The latter happens when each part of a narrative means something -- but together they mean something else. "I am your father, Luke" is more than just a paternity acknowledgement.
These two kinds of intensity tickle different parts of our brains. Escalation is visceral and relies on our perception, while meaning buildup is cognitive and relies on our understanding. Escalation is temporary, because it's easy to replace a big gun with a small one.
Meaning lasts. Once we learn to like a character, it takes a lot to convince us to hate them. Do you remember how many Berserkers there were in Gears of War? Do you remember what their main weak point was?
You can now read the full feature at Gamasutra, in which Weslowski goes in depth on special considerations for pacing in video games (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from other websites).
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