The rhythm game genre has been dominated by games that use a visual component to explicitly keep the player on track and on beat. Because of this, most rhythm games closely resemble puzzle games, where winning or losing is based on how well the player can keep the rhythm. The problem lies with turning rhythm into a visual display, with arrows and colored buttons taking the place of beats. When one takes rhythm and puts it into the visual space, the importance of it as an aural experience is diminished. This can be seen in games such as Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution, where success is not based on how well a beat is kept, but rather, based on how many “notes” were hit correctly. This may not seem like a problem, since having a good sense of rhythm helps immensely when playing such games, but if one were to remove all of the aural elements of Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution, the games are still perfectly playable, and it is quite possible to succeed by simply memorizing the patterns of buttons that appear. By creating a visual component to a rhythm game and using it as a mechanic that determines the success or failure of the player in the game, the developers of these popular rhythm games take the aural element’s importance away, which is quite strange when one realizes that the genre is called the rhythm game genre.
In essence, the problem with most rhythm games being made today is their emphasis on performance as a means to success. This may be a staple of almost every other genre, but in rhythm games, it holds less sway than it should. The best rhythm games involve being able to feel a rhythm and exploring said rhythm through a method that does not involve musical instruments. Rhythm games have the potential to allow users to explore ideas of rhythm and music without having to learn about music or how to create it.
The game Reset by Robin Burkinshaw attempts to do this by structuring the visual space around the aural space. The game involves the player piloting a spaceship while various asteroids and enemy ships try to destroy the player. These obstacles appear in time on the same rhythm as the music, and the visuals increase in intensity as the music grows progressively intense. However, Reset does not provide any motivation for the player to do well while avoiding these obstacles. The music remains the same for each play through and the only "score" available is presented at the end, and seems almost arbitrary. A large part of any game is to provide justification for playing it, and Reset fails at this.
However, the SSX series of games uses the aural space in a much better and more dynamic way. In the SSX games, players control a snowboarder in an environment that is, in terms of physics, greatly exaggerated. What always struck me about these games was how well they motivated the player to maintain a sense of motion or "flow". From the courses that played like roller coasters to the trick system and its rewards, the SSX series was always concerned about how well the player maintained his state of motion and how well he or she was able to navigate the course without interrupting this motion. A large part of this feeling came from the aural space.
At the beginning of a race, the player starts with no boost. The music reflects this state, existing in the most minimal form possible with only a beat and a couple harmonic lines. In order to move to the first level of boosting, the player must do tricks until he or she fills his meter up, and in order to stay at that level, the player must do 4 "super" tricks without crashing. Once this level was achieved, the music would add a few more harmonic lines, a vocal pat, or a melody. This feedback in the aural space encouraged the player and gave the player motivation to maintain his sense of motion, provided that the song was aesthetically engaging and in tune with the visual space. As the player reached higher levels of boost, more parts to the song were added and eventually, the whole song played when the player reached the final level, allowing him to boost as much as he wanted for a certain period of time. The layering of instrumentation provided feedback and encouragement for what the player was doing.
The SSX series did not only use the aural space as a form of encouragement, however. The games also created a tension and release mechanic through its use of music while the player was doing tricks. In the exaggerated physics of the SSX games, the player stays in the air for a long time compared to other games when he or she launches off a ramp. This allowed them to do multiple tricks, and created a dynamic that involved how many tricks a player was willing to do before he landed for fear of becoming to greedy and crashing. When he or she launched into the air, the music track's vocal parts and bass parts cut out, leaving only the middle frequencies while the player was attempting to do tricks. The game put a "flanger" effect on this middle frequency, creating a sort of distortion that fit very well with the sensation of flying through the air. Depending on how the player landed, all of the parts would come back in triumphantly, or the piece would start back in its base mode with only a beat and a few harmonic lines. If the song was good, the player would want the first effect and would try as hard as he could to maintain the flow of music. This effect is similar to the moment in a piece of dance music where the percussion cuts off and the listeners are left with only the vocals and melodic lines, more commonly known as a "breakdown". Most producers will build up to a climax with added melodic or harmonic lines, rehashing themes that have been established before in the song, and once that climax is reached, the artist brings back the percussion with all of the lines present, letting them loose all at once and creating a portion of the song where the listener can let himself go.
The SSX series did a very good job of motivating and encouraging the player to maintain these moments, and ultimately, pursuing this line of progression in rhythm game development will be a much more interesting and rewarding endeavor than continuing to force the player to perform well in order to "succeed". If the player is to be rewarded in a music game, the player should be rewarded with more or better music, rather than a score screen at the end of the song telling him how "well" he did. Music games should be about preserving these moments of tension and release, using them as goals or rewards for players to strive for, and providing challenges that justify these rewards.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Trends in Real Time Tactics Games
Dawn of War 2 and the many DOTA clones popping up create an interesting exploration of the role of tactics in real time tactics games. In this case, I will define a model of real time tactics as any model in which resource management plays a key role in combat. However, these resources must be statistically represented and freely available to the player, for fear of being able to define Street Fighter as a real time tactics game (Street Fighter can be considered real time tactics if the resources that you manage are your health and frames lost or gained by using certain moves).
The ancestor of all real time tactics games is obviously Blizzard’s Starcraft, where high level play involves a high number of Actions Per Minute (APM), using these to directly control units. Blizzard released what they thought was a real time strategy game, but as the skill level of tournament players increased, the system revealed itself as a real time tactics game. Although I am not fully versed in the development of Starcraft, I am convinced that most of the constraints that led to the real time tactics nature of Starcraft were technology based. In other words, the reason players have to use control groups is because they are only able to select 12 units at a time or 1 building at a time, and the only reason this constraint was placed was because the level of simultaneous calculations for an ever-expanding unit pool was simply too much. It is possible that Blizzard intended the high APM nature of Starcraft to be the de facto standard of play, but until I am told so by someone with inside knowledge, I will assume that this was unintended.
However, developers took Blizzard’s vision to mean a localizing of scale and increasing of APM. The Command and Conquer series displayed a model similar to Starcraft’s in that the skill level of players was determined by their ability to produce a high number of APM while being aware of the larger picture. Blizzard later changed their vision to match their rival developers with the release of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, which reduced the unit cap but increased the number of active abilities each unit had, and introduced the Hero unit, which had to be micromanaged well in order to perform to its fullest potential.
What all of these games shared was the inclusion of resource gathering units. Until Relic’s release of Dawn of War and Company of Heroes, the standard for resource management involved actual player-controlled units that collected the resources needed to build combat units, and different playstyles involved disrupting an opponent’s resource gathering force in order to slow their unit production and gain the upper hand. What is important to consider is that until Dawn of War, the vision of resource gathering manifested itself in player controlled units that were given direct orders by the players themselves. Of course, most of the gathering process itself was scripted by AI due to complexity issues (most developers wisely tend to put the complexity emphasis on the combat) but the units themselves still existed.
Most players tended to neglect the resource gathering units after their initial orders were given, only giving them orders when they were under attack or had gathered all of the resources in the vicinity. This all came to a head when Relic released Dawn of War, and ingeniously did away with these units, assuming that players would want them to always be gathering resources.
Relic changed these units into control points, which would accumulate resources on their own. In one fell swoop, resource units were taken out of the real time tactics picture and replaced with nodes, while keeping the sense of resource management intact. Instead of keeping the player’s attention on his gathering units, the player is instead forced to pay attention to the nodes that populate the map, and attacks on these nodes are akin to attacks on their resource production. Thus the resource management component of real time tactics is maintained, and the emphasis is shifted to the combat needed to keep the resources. Construction of buildings for unit production was still required, however, but the combat would almost never reach the base unless the objective was to destroy all buildings for victory.
Company of Heroes took this model and refined it as well as expanding on features that were underdeveloped in Dawn of War such as unit morale and terrain. It also expanded on the increasing role of hard counters in real time tactics games, realistically modeling the effect of small arms on armor and so forth. Company of Heroes remains the pinnacle of real time tactics games, striking a tight balance between unit and resource management.
However, both Company of Heroes and Dawn of War introduced a mechanic I find very disturbing, and that is the inclusion of “victory points”. These victory points are determined by an odd number of nodes on the map that are placed in balanced areas of the map, allowing each player equal access to all of the points. If a player controls the majority of these nodes, then the opponent’s victory points count down, and the first player to reach zero victory points loses.
My problem with these victory points is that it removes a level of player versus player combat that I find crucial in any multiplayer game, and that is the feedback level. In Starcraft, victory was attained by destroying all of your opponent’s buildings and crushing their units in the process. On a fundamental level, the sight of destroying buildings and wreaking havoc on a defenseless player’s base provides enough incentive to win the match. As the skill level increased, though, it became easier to see when you had made a mistake that would lose the match for you, and this visceral feedback was reduced as players started quitting games before they had officially ended, seeing that their decisions had produced a losing result.
In Street Fighter III, IV and any fighting game beyond Street Fighter 2 (games that owe more than a passing debt to Starcraft), the impact of your decisions is made abundantly clear by your character reacting violently to a wrongly-guessed mix-up attempt or your opponent’s character crumpling to the blows you deal. Thus a player is always involved in the match on at least an emotional level, in contrast to Starcraft in which decisions made may affect the outcome only statistically, unseen to the player. Tim Rogers states it best:
“In the ideal game of Starcraft, your colorful blanket will sweep gently, smoothly, and without impediment over your enemy’s base as if it isn’t even there. You won’t have time to see any bodies left behind, because your units will be standing on top of them. You won’t see any individual explosions, because they’ll happen quickly and nearly simultaneously. In fact, if done with the right sorts of units, and when your victim is distracted elsewhere, it may happen without anyone ever seeing it.
Ideal victory in Starcraft is frictionless.”
What Relic created with their victory point system is a numerical representation of the “frictionless victory” that Starcraft pioneered. They have removed another element from the feedback required for a satisfying victory and as a result, nullified any emotional investment in the games at hand. In a world where anger is one of the only emotions that bring people to action, this development is a step taken in the wrong direction by a company that has done so much to innovate in the real time tactics genre.
Of course, this is understating the difficulty of balancing and creating a scenario where victory is the result of the enemy’s complete destruction while preventing a long stalemate, and one must wonder if this is an inherent trend of real time tactics.
I am convinced that it isn’t, much to my relief, as games such as DOTA and its clones create all the visceral feedback players need to remain emotionally invested in a game. Relic’s Dawn of War 2 attempted this by decreasing the scale of combat yet again, but went too far in this localization.
The logical end of this decreasing of scale lies in models such as the player-versus-player combat of World of Warcraft. In WoW, the only “squad” the player manages is his own avatar, and the resources managed are those involved in the use of abilities that benefit the player or hurt the opponent. Cooldowns on skills can also be seen as a resource. Thus, a well-played game of WoW Arena involves the management of these resources, ability cooldowns and knowledge of when to use these to either disrupt the enemy’s resources or gain an advantage in the security of your own. The visceral feedback is still maintained through the display of your avatar, so the emotional level is still maintained. In order to create better, more involving games, developers must realize that an investment must be made in order to motivate the player to succeed, and if the player’s emotions are what he invests, then the developer must take advantage of that fact.
The ancestor of all real time tactics games is obviously Blizzard’s Starcraft, where high level play involves a high number of Actions Per Minute (APM), using these to directly control units. Blizzard released what they thought was a real time strategy game, but as the skill level of tournament players increased, the system revealed itself as a real time tactics game. Although I am not fully versed in the development of Starcraft, I am convinced that most of the constraints that led to the real time tactics nature of Starcraft were technology based. In other words, the reason players have to use control groups is because they are only able to select 12 units at a time or 1 building at a time, and the only reason this constraint was placed was because the level of simultaneous calculations for an ever-expanding unit pool was simply too much. It is possible that Blizzard intended the high APM nature of Starcraft to be the de facto standard of play, but until I am told so by someone with inside knowledge, I will assume that this was unintended.
However, developers took Blizzard’s vision to mean a localizing of scale and increasing of APM. The Command and Conquer series displayed a model similar to Starcraft’s in that the skill level of players was determined by their ability to produce a high number of APM while being aware of the larger picture. Blizzard later changed their vision to match their rival developers with the release of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, which reduced the unit cap but increased the number of active abilities each unit had, and introduced the Hero unit, which had to be micromanaged well in order to perform to its fullest potential.
What all of these games shared was the inclusion of resource gathering units. Until Relic’s release of Dawn of War and Company of Heroes, the standard for resource management involved actual player-controlled units that collected the resources needed to build combat units, and different playstyles involved disrupting an opponent’s resource gathering force in order to slow their unit production and gain the upper hand. What is important to consider is that until Dawn of War, the vision of resource gathering manifested itself in player controlled units that were given direct orders by the players themselves. Of course, most of the gathering process itself was scripted by AI due to complexity issues (most developers wisely tend to put the complexity emphasis on the combat) but the units themselves still existed.
Most players tended to neglect the resource gathering units after their initial orders were given, only giving them orders when they were under attack or had gathered all of the resources in the vicinity. This all came to a head when Relic released Dawn of War, and ingeniously did away with these units, assuming that players would want them to always be gathering resources.
Relic changed these units into control points, which would accumulate resources on their own. In one fell swoop, resource units were taken out of the real time tactics picture and replaced with nodes, while keeping the sense of resource management intact. Instead of keeping the player’s attention on his gathering units, the player is instead forced to pay attention to the nodes that populate the map, and attacks on these nodes are akin to attacks on their resource production. Thus the resource management component of real time tactics is maintained, and the emphasis is shifted to the combat needed to keep the resources. Construction of buildings for unit production was still required, however, but the combat would almost never reach the base unless the objective was to destroy all buildings for victory.
Company of Heroes took this model and refined it as well as expanding on features that were underdeveloped in Dawn of War such as unit morale and terrain. It also expanded on the increasing role of hard counters in real time tactics games, realistically modeling the effect of small arms on armor and so forth. Company of Heroes remains the pinnacle of real time tactics games, striking a tight balance between unit and resource management.
However, both Company of Heroes and Dawn of War introduced a mechanic I find very disturbing, and that is the inclusion of “victory points”. These victory points are determined by an odd number of nodes on the map that are placed in balanced areas of the map, allowing each player equal access to all of the points. If a player controls the majority of these nodes, then the opponent’s victory points count down, and the first player to reach zero victory points loses.
My problem with these victory points is that it removes a level of player versus player combat that I find crucial in any multiplayer game, and that is the feedback level. In Starcraft, victory was attained by destroying all of your opponent’s buildings and crushing their units in the process. On a fundamental level, the sight of destroying buildings and wreaking havoc on a defenseless player’s base provides enough incentive to win the match. As the skill level increased, though, it became easier to see when you had made a mistake that would lose the match for you, and this visceral feedback was reduced as players started quitting games before they had officially ended, seeing that their decisions had produced a losing result.
In Street Fighter III, IV and any fighting game beyond Street Fighter 2 (games that owe more than a passing debt to Starcraft), the impact of your decisions is made abundantly clear by your character reacting violently to a wrongly-guessed mix-up attempt or your opponent’s character crumpling to the blows you deal. Thus a player is always involved in the match on at least an emotional level, in contrast to Starcraft in which decisions made may affect the outcome only statistically, unseen to the player. Tim Rogers states it best:
“In the ideal game of Starcraft, your colorful blanket will sweep gently, smoothly, and without impediment over your enemy’s base as if it isn’t even there. You won’t have time to see any bodies left behind, because your units will be standing on top of them. You won’t see any individual explosions, because they’ll happen quickly and nearly simultaneously. In fact, if done with the right sorts of units, and when your victim is distracted elsewhere, it may happen without anyone ever seeing it.
Ideal victory in Starcraft is frictionless.”
What Relic created with their victory point system is a numerical representation of the “frictionless victory” that Starcraft pioneered. They have removed another element from the feedback required for a satisfying victory and as a result, nullified any emotional investment in the games at hand. In a world where anger is one of the only emotions that bring people to action, this development is a step taken in the wrong direction by a company that has done so much to innovate in the real time tactics genre.
Of course, this is understating the difficulty of balancing and creating a scenario where victory is the result of the enemy’s complete destruction while preventing a long stalemate, and one must wonder if this is an inherent trend of real time tactics.
I am convinced that it isn’t, much to my relief, as games such as DOTA and its clones create all the visceral feedback players need to remain emotionally invested in a game. Relic’s Dawn of War 2 attempted this by decreasing the scale of combat yet again, but went too far in this localization.
The logical end of this decreasing of scale lies in models such as the player-versus-player combat of World of Warcraft. In WoW, the only “squad” the player manages is his own avatar, and the resources managed are those involved in the use of abilities that benefit the player or hurt the opponent. Cooldowns on skills can also be seen as a resource. Thus, a well-played game of WoW Arena involves the management of these resources, ability cooldowns and knowledge of when to use these to either disrupt the enemy’s resources or gain an advantage in the security of your own. The visceral feedback is still maintained through the display of your avatar, so the emotional level is still maintained. In order to create better, more involving games, developers must realize that an investment must be made in order to motivate the player to succeed, and if the player’s emotions are what he invests, then the developer must take advantage of that fact.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Rules of Context and Code
Rules of context and rules of code determine whether immersion is achieved when a player plays a video game. Technically, all rules of context are determined by the rules of code, since the rules of code are everything that defines the video game, but let us refer to the rules of context as the aesthetic and narrative traits a game possesses.
These different types of rules must first be defined. Rules laid down by the context can be broken, and as such are “soft” rules. For example, in Gears of War, the cover based mechanic is a rule that says if you are in cover, you have an advantageous position to one that is not in cover. However, one can play through the campaign mode completely ignoring cover and still succeed, albeit with a slightly harder experience than if one were to use cover. Another example is the ability of player characters to jump on command as seen in cutscenes in Resident Evil 5 (this ability is not actually allowed in the game, breaking the immersion, as stated below). Rules of context most commonly involve mechanics of games, but they also include some rules created when the narrative allows.
Rules created by the code cannot be broken. These rules include boundaries, weapon damage, run speed, and any other calculation-based axiom that the game must subscribe to. Only through programming oversight can these rules be broken, and even then, the rules are not actually being “broken”, but manipulated in a way to cause circumstances unusual to the game’s context.
A conflict of design and code become apparent when the player tries to “break” rules laid down by code when believing that he is following rules set by the design. A common example of this conflict is the invisible wall, in which the player believes that he or she is capable of passing through an area restricted by code. The reason for this conflict is created by the context of the world the player inhabits. If the designer has created a context that makes an action seem legal, the player will always attempt to perform such an action.
The problem with expanding the scope of a game’s context is that when a designer expands the scope of a game, he or she allows more actions that can be performed through the rules laid down by design. In Grand Theft Auto, a seemingly realistic city that is inhabited by many occupants allows the player to enter buildings. Thus, a rule that the player is allowed to enter buildings is laid down by the design. However, the game does not allow all buildings to be entered, as rendering and coding the number of buildings present in that game would take much more time. This also happens with Resident Evil 5, as player characters are portrayed as very athletically fit and able. When the player desires to jump over an object he cannot get past, though, he finds that he is unable to, even though the cutscene witnessed previously shows the player character jumping many times (using instanced jumping “areas” does not count as the ability to jump).
A player is immersed in the world he is playing in the video game if these rules of design and code agree with each other. When these two sets of rules agree, the player will no longer feel compelled to break any rules from both sets, because the context gives him no reason not think he can break rules created by the code, and the code is constructed in such a manner as to prevent a circumstance that results in the breaking of a context rule. When a rule of context gives the player the impression that he can do something that is prohibited by a rule of code (or vice versa), immersion is broken.
These different types of rules must first be defined. Rules laid down by the context can be broken, and as such are “soft” rules. For example, in Gears of War, the cover based mechanic is a rule that says if you are in cover, you have an advantageous position to one that is not in cover. However, one can play through the campaign mode completely ignoring cover and still succeed, albeit with a slightly harder experience than if one were to use cover. Another example is the ability of player characters to jump on command as seen in cutscenes in Resident Evil 5 (this ability is not actually allowed in the game, breaking the immersion, as stated below). Rules of context most commonly involve mechanics of games, but they also include some rules created when the narrative allows.
Rules created by the code cannot be broken. These rules include boundaries, weapon damage, run speed, and any other calculation-based axiom that the game must subscribe to. Only through programming oversight can these rules be broken, and even then, the rules are not actually being “broken”, but manipulated in a way to cause circumstances unusual to the game’s context.
A conflict of design and code become apparent when the player tries to “break” rules laid down by code when believing that he is following rules set by the design. A common example of this conflict is the invisible wall, in which the player believes that he or she is capable of passing through an area restricted by code. The reason for this conflict is created by the context of the world the player inhabits. If the designer has created a context that makes an action seem legal, the player will always attempt to perform such an action.
The problem with expanding the scope of a game’s context is that when a designer expands the scope of a game, he or she allows more actions that can be performed through the rules laid down by design. In Grand Theft Auto, a seemingly realistic city that is inhabited by many occupants allows the player to enter buildings. Thus, a rule that the player is allowed to enter buildings is laid down by the design. However, the game does not allow all buildings to be entered, as rendering and coding the number of buildings present in that game would take much more time. This also happens with Resident Evil 5, as player characters are portrayed as very athletically fit and able. When the player desires to jump over an object he cannot get past, though, he finds that he is unable to, even though the cutscene witnessed previously shows the player character jumping many times (using instanced jumping “areas” does not count as the ability to jump).
A player is immersed in the world he is playing in the video game if these rules of design and code agree with each other. When these two sets of rules agree, the player will no longer feel compelled to break any rules from both sets, because the context gives him no reason not think he can break rules created by the code, and the code is constructed in such a manner as to prevent a circumstance that results in the breaking of a context rule. When a rule of context gives the player the impression that he can do something that is prohibited by a rule of code (or vice versa), immersion is broken.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Video Game Rules and Why We Break Them
Why do video game rules get broken so much? In real-life games like basketball or soccer, the rules are there so that the players can compete against each other using a set of standards. No one in competitive play thinks of breaking the rules, and if a group wants to break these rules, it is usually agreed that these rules can be broken by everyone, rather than one player. The consequence for breaking these rules consistently is being prohibited from playing the game. No one wants to play basketball with someone who refuses to dribble unless everyone agrees not to dribble. So it is established that people don’t usually break the rules in real-life games. So why is it that players want to break the rules in video games?
One of the universal “rules” of a modern video game is the invisible wall. This rule states that if a player attempts to go past a certain boundary he will be prevented from crossing that boundary, through various methods. Mainstream games criticism always bemoans the inclusion of these walls, and even my own immersion is broken when I run into one of these rules. So why do we as players feel compelled to try and break this rule?
There are invisible walls in Super Mario Bros. These walls are to the very left and to the very right of the screen (there is no invisible wall for the top). Why do I never feel compelled to test whether the barriers of the level are intact? The answer is because the game does not give me any reason to think I can, want, or need to. In fact, this answer can be abstracted to answer the question of why I don’t feel the need to break ANY rules in Mario. However, Super Mario Bros. is a rather old example and its rules are mostly derived from the technology of the time. Levels can only go so far before the coder runs out of space, etc etc. So we will take another example instead – Portal.
Portal says I can’t break the invisible wall rule. It makes this clear by creating spaces that I can’t use the portal gun on. It also has a robot voice telling me not to break the rules. If I try to break these rules, I will die, according to the robot and also according to the fact that I actually die if I don’t do what I am told to. Portal oppresses me and squashes any chance I have of getting out. All I have to break invisible walls with is a portal gun. What could I possibly do with that?
A lot, apparently. What makes Portal such an interesting example for this analysis is the fact that the game actually DOES encourage you to break the invisible wall rule. The game sets this up by not allowing you to break any rules and confining you in a space with a toolset that does not allow you to accomplish much more than the challenge set out for you, but giving you a context that is rather worrisome in its implications. You are a rat in a maze, being looked on by researchers as you try to find the cheese at the end. By oppressing you at the beginning, Portal actively encourages players to rebel, and then gives the player an opportunity to do so at the tail end of the game.
Grand Theft Auto IV wants players to rebel too. However, it goes about this in a different and ultimately less effective way, and this is by allowing the players to do whatever they please. The ability to shoot cops and steal cars is encouraged and even required in some parts. The game tells players that this is "bad" by having the police interfere whenever the player does a "wrong" thing, but these deeds are required to progress. Grand Theft Auto tells the player that he can break all of the rules he wants to, so the players acts on his impulses and attempts to do so. When the player comes to a rule he can't break, however, (such as entering an uncoded building or trying to leave the invisible boundary), his immersion is broken and he is thrown unceremoniously back into the realm of the game. Because the developers of Grand Theft Auto want me to break the rules by creating a game that tells me I can, they ultimately set themselves up for having the player's immersion broken when he finds that he can't do something the game's context tells him he can.
This leads back to why players break (or try to break) rules of code and context, but more importantly, it determines whether it is acceptable to allow the player to break these rules. The players break the rules because they are compelled to through the game's context (or because of some fatal desire to find programming oversights, in which case the player should please step out of the basement and go play a sport). The acceptability of this rule breaking is determined by whether it is the developer's intent to allow the player to do such things. If it is, as in Valve's Portal, then it is acceptable to do so. If it isn't, as in Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto, then immersion is broken.
One of the universal “rules” of a modern video game is the invisible wall. This rule states that if a player attempts to go past a certain boundary he will be prevented from crossing that boundary, through various methods. Mainstream games criticism always bemoans the inclusion of these walls, and even my own immersion is broken when I run into one of these rules. So why do we as players feel compelled to try and break this rule?
There are invisible walls in Super Mario Bros. These walls are to the very left and to the very right of the screen (there is no invisible wall for the top). Why do I never feel compelled to test whether the barriers of the level are intact? The answer is because the game does not give me any reason to think I can, want, or need to. In fact, this answer can be abstracted to answer the question of why I don’t feel the need to break ANY rules in Mario. However, Super Mario Bros. is a rather old example and its rules are mostly derived from the technology of the time. Levels can only go so far before the coder runs out of space, etc etc. So we will take another example instead – Portal.
Portal says I can’t break the invisible wall rule. It makes this clear by creating spaces that I can’t use the portal gun on. It also has a robot voice telling me not to break the rules. If I try to break these rules, I will die, according to the robot and also according to the fact that I actually die if I don’t do what I am told to. Portal oppresses me and squashes any chance I have of getting out. All I have to break invisible walls with is a portal gun. What could I possibly do with that?
A lot, apparently. What makes Portal such an interesting example for this analysis is the fact that the game actually DOES encourage you to break the invisible wall rule. The game sets this up by not allowing you to break any rules and confining you in a space with a toolset that does not allow you to accomplish much more than the challenge set out for you, but giving you a context that is rather worrisome in its implications. You are a rat in a maze, being looked on by researchers as you try to find the cheese at the end. By oppressing you at the beginning, Portal actively encourages players to rebel, and then gives the player an opportunity to do so at the tail end of the game.
Grand Theft Auto IV wants players to rebel too. However, it goes about this in a different and ultimately less effective way, and this is by allowing the players to do whatever they please. The ability to shoot cops and steal cars is encouraged and even required in some parts. The game tells players that this is "bad" by having the police interfere whenever the player does a "wrong" thing, but these deeds are required to progress. Grand Theft Auto tells the player that he can break all of the rules he wants to, so the players acts on his impulses and attempts to do so. When the player comes to a rule he can't break, however, (such as entering an uncoded building or trying to leave the invisible boundary), his immersion is broken and he is thrown unceremoniously back into the realm of the game. Because the developers of Grand Theft Auto want me to break the rules by creating a game that tells me I can, they ultimately set themselves up for having the player's immersion broken when he finds that he can't do something the game's context tells him he can.
This leads back to why players break (or try to break) rules of code and context, but more importantly, it determines whether it is acceptable to allow the player to break these rules. The players break the rules because they are compelled to through the game's context (or because of some fatal desire to find programming oversights, in which case the player should please step out of the basement and go play a sport). The acceptability of this rule breaking is determined by whether it is the developer's intent to allow the player to do such things. If it is, as in Valve's Portal, then it is acceptable to do so. If it isn't, as in Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto, then immersion is broken.
Aborted attempts at intellectual discussion!
This is a game blog! This will contain psuedo-intellectual discussions (with myself) of game design topics and trends I find of interest.
A lot of these posts will be of a different style because most of the posts are actually articles that I wrote in Microsoft Word while attempting to preserve my diarrhea-like paths of logic when thinking of video games. I write very dryly when attempting to preserve diarrhea.
Even though I discuss things with myself, you too are welcome to join! Most of my ideas are probably wrong or not fully developed, and I would like intelligent readers to tell me how I'm wrong or underdeveloped so that I can avoid this stuff in the future!
I am not very sure how frequent my postings will be. It took me something along the lines of 2 weeks to create 6 articles that are almost post-worthy, so you do the math. I'm hoping that I'll be able to churn out something of interest every week but various things may disrupt this schedule.
I actually want you to read this! I'm just kidding! It was my pathetic attempt to be clever!
A lot of these posts will be of a different style because most of the posts are actually articles that I wrote in Microsoft Word while attempting to preserve my diarrhea-like paths of logic when thinking of video games. I write very dryly when attempting to preserve diarrhea.
Even though I discuss things with myself, you too are welcome to join! Most of my ideas are probably wrong or not fully developed, and I would like intelligent readers to tell me how I'm wrong or underdeveloped so that I can avoid this stuff in the future!
I am not very sure how frequent my postings will be. It took me something along the lines of 2 weeks to create 6 articles that are almost post-worthy, so you do the math. I'm hoping that I'll be able to churn out something of interest every week but various things may disrupt this schedule.
I actually want you to read this! I'm just kidding! It was my pathetic attempt to be clever!
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