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Analysis: You Bet Your Life - Luck In Action Games
by Jeffrey Matulef [PC, Console/PC]
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November 26, 2010
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What do Clint Hocking and Shinji Mikami have in common? They both left companies they've long been associated with recently, and have both made shooters, but that's not the answer I was looking for. The common thread I see is that they both make heavily randomized action games encouraging improvisation rather than repetition.
In Clint Hocking's Far Cry 2 the player's weapon can jam, cars break down, and the player character has a case of malaria which can act up at the most inopportune moments. Furthermore, the game has a buggy AI, so enemies have a sixth sense for pinpointing your location. While this hinders the game's stealth elements it allows for a sense of anarchic randomness you rarely get in shooters.
Comparing it to his previous game, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Hocking said at a GDC talk on Improvisational Success Through Design Failure:
"...The consequences for getting kicked out of the execution phase in Chaos Theory has a huge impact -- the game is so reliant on the player executing his careful plan, and the game is so slow-paced, that it makes more sense simply to reload a saved game. But in Far Cry 2, that disruption ends up being part of the game, and there is such a level of chaos to begin with that players did not end up feeling the need to reload every time something went wrong; rather, they would adapt to the new factors."
Conversely, Shinji Mikami's latest couple outings God Hand and Vanquish are far more linear affairs, yet they also contain a crucial random component.
In God Hand power ups are randomized so you can fight the same boss several times. Sometimes the player receives generous doses of health and power items, and other times receiving precious little aid. Occasionally enemies will even arbitrarily spawn into demonic minibosses when killed. Truth be told, I felt like most of the times I beat a boss it was because of fortuitous item drops.
This game of chance is adorned with a clear gambling motif prevalent all throughout the game. Between levels the player can play blackjack, video poker, try their hand at the slots, or bet on poison chihuahua races. Furthermore, players select their power moves by scrolling through a roulette wheel on a timer. Mikami knew what he was doing here and understands why gambling is so compelling.
Vanquish continues this trend, if not to the same degree. The player's health now recharges automatically over time rather than leaving players at the mercy of health drops that may or may not come. It does randomize weapon placement, which is critical during the heat of battle. Whether you get a rocket launcher or sniper rifle can alter a boss fight from a breeze to a near insurmountable chore.
Leveling up weapons is based on finding extra guns of the same type or green upgrade boxes dropped by enemies. Both of these are up to fate, and it can make a world of difference weather you get a more powerful machine gun or not.
I'd argue that Mikami's games succeed because their core combat mechanics are still skill based, so an unlucky player can do just fine based on their own mettle, whereas a fortuitous player will still fall victim to the game's onslaught of enemies if not properly trained. Viewed under this lens, these game are only unfair towards the opposition, never the player.
Far Cry 2, however, uses chance against you. Enemy's guns never jam, yet yours do (even if you're using a gun picked off a dead soldier). While there may be some thematic meaning behind this (the futility of war), looking at Far Cry 2 strictly as an action game, it's a more frustrating experience.
 Curiously, Hocking isn't a fan of making games difficult. "We as designers need to reject the notion that games ought to be punishing or abusing,” he continued. He'd rather have an easier game that uses chance against you, whereas Mikami would make a game very punishing only to throw you a bone every now and again.
While I admire Hocking's penchant towards haphazard mayhem I can't help but feel that he missed the mark a little, making the player feel hapless rather than underpowered. God Hand and Vanquish (especially on its hardest setting) can make you feel weak, but when you get a game over it's clear that it's your own fault.
God Hand does a stellar job keeping you in the game moment to moment as you pray for that urgent health replenishing banana to drop, and Vanquish allows a greater degree of strategy as you use your intimate knowledge of the game's various playing fields, weapons and enemy weak points to your advantage.
Throwing chance into the mix has always been an established part of RPGs, but action games are meant to reward dexterity. If your reflexes are up to par and you still lose due to something that wasn't your fault it defeats the desire to get better.
Though when a game can balance chance without sabotaging the player, the results can be truly exciting. God Hand in particular understands this delicate game of back and forth between skill and luck. It's only by withholding power-ups that when you do finally find one and gain that crucial edge in battle it makes one feel lucky, and sometimes all you need is a little luck.
[Jeffrey Matulef is a freelance writer whose work can be found at G4TV.com, Eurogamer, and Joystiq among other places. He's also a regular on the Big Red Potion podcast. You can contact him at jmatulef at gmail dot com.]
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When a game is random like you describe in Vanquish ("Whether you get a rocket launcher or sniper rifle can alter a boss fight from a breeze to a near insurmountable chore."), that is something that the player just can't do anything about. I never noticed it while playing Vanquish but if that kind of random drop happens, and it is transparent that it is a random occurrence that is screwing me over (or giving me an edge), then I get frustrated (or feel less satisfied).
In contrast with Far Cry 2, I know I have malaria, I know my weapons degrade and the game allows me to anticipate it. And even if I don't anticipate it, I still have the option of improvisation. When I am given the ability to deal with and eventually overcome my flaws, it feels great.
I realize I might be in the minority on this topic though. Good article.
I especially agree when you say that randomness defeats the desire of getting better at a game which is what I admire so much in games like Vanquish or Bayonetta. As you state, when you die in those games it is completely your fault, which encourages you to get better and better ultimately getting the best out of their combat systems and strategies.
But I think it's a key feature of so many games (to different extents) for 2 simple reasons.
1) People like to get lucky, i.e. win things. A super-amazing-uber crit is something that gives some players a real buzz. I find them yawntastic myself but in online games there are always some players who will yabber incessantly about the AWESOME crit they just did....
2) Players are not all equally abled. Intelligence, hand-eye coordination, reaction time etc. all vary and for online games so can hardware and connection speed. A game pitched at a particular difficulty level will necessarily be harder for some players than others. Incorporating a 'luck' element means that if you persist long enough, the game's luck mechanics should eventually allow anyone to succeed.
Even though it's definitely not to my tastes, I particularly see the second reason as a valid one for including an element of luck in games.
I actually have a ton of respect for Clint, I think he's a really smart designer. But he's being a bit dishonest about "luck" and how it applied to the design of Far Cry 2 and games in general. It had nothing to do with adding new or strategic elements to the game. It had nothing to do with in aiding or complementing the narrative. In Far Cry 2, "luck" was an illusion created in a (failed) attempt to conceal the obvious... the game-play vs. the AI was intentionally unbalanced and unfair. It was done to create difficulty where none should have existed. Unfortunately this is the mindset about difficulty and challenge that's now standard practice with most AAA developers, regardless of genre the work in. In single player gaming, masochism is the new black. Which I'm sure is why Clint said "we as designers need to reject the notion that games ought to be punishing or abusing." Over the past several years the focus of the vast majority of AAA game-play has not been based on the preferences of the actual audience buying and playing the titles. The focus instead has been on play that's 100% rooted in both masochism and sadism that's tailored for a tiny, toxic minority of the overall audience. Everyone involved needs to wake up before it's too late. Developers need to throw away the frigging marketing forecasts and designers need to revert back to their training in terms of fun vs. difficulty.
How do you account for so many huge AAA games tailoring more and more to the casual player? Accessibility is a huge idea right now, and almost all the best "hardcore" games are finding ways to keep the hardcore parts while also reeling in a newer, less core gamer base.
Starcraft II is an extremely easy game to play, without losing an ounce of the hardcore. Halo has a matchmaker, and is also easily picked up and played by the masses, you see more and more hand-holding for the player and smart, fun tutorial type playstyle that many times is disguised as part of the regular gameplay.
I think developers fully understand fun vs difficulty very well, and are very focused on it, especially with the monstrosity casual gaming has become, waking everyone young and very old to gaming.
My 56 year old mom is now an avid WoW player, something she never could have done with out the accessability changes recently made.
The only memories I have of playing it are of me destroying an enemy outpost to clear the way before the next mission, only to have it respawn when I come back 10 minutes later. I spent more time in-between missions trying to pass through these outposts than doing anything else in the game.
But as an overall experience it was really quite visceral. I know not everyone is in games for that -kind- of immersion, but for me it had some very awesome moments that no other shooter has managed to pull off. You feel very limited and vulnerable and when you just barely scrape your way through a fight it's very rewarding.
In most games the notion of 'barely succeeding' is not really a fully formed concept. You 'barely succeed' because your health is almost gone. You 'barely succeed' because you just happened to not get blown up by a rocket. It's all or nothing, generally speaking.
Far Cry 2 goes a step further and in a way punishes you for doing poorly, but allows you to recover. If you barely succeed, you probably had to duck behind cover and pull out a bullet. Or you had to jump out of your vehicle and fix the engine while dodging bullets. If you barely succeed it's because you had to improvise because your weapon jammed.
It's the act of overcoming those small mini-challenges that makes it rewarding, of making you feel and deal with being on the brink of failure, and I wish more games had that aspect.
It's "recentism" to think they were innovated by Clint Hocking or anyone else who does videogames.
The first wargames did this practically eons ago, in game development terms.
define 'luck' - define 'chance' in a not subjective way. I would prefer math notation.
See? Suddenly, all the discussed game characteristics turn into subjective idiosyncratic anecdotes of one guy.