Quote:Original post by Sneftel

Quote:Original post by Telastyn
1> spend $x gold, see cutscene #1 (or some model in some other place).
2> spend 0 gold, see cutscene #2.

Not exactly a meaningful decision.

Is the "you win" versus "you lose" screen a meaningful decision?

Depends on if you're playing to win, or if you're playing for fun.

In response to exhibit 3 - It's an annoying and probably quite useless response, but one I'm surprised nobody has mentioned explicitly: people like to win things, and to explore things thoroughly. If game developers continually reinforce players' expectation that reward is a monotonic function of effort, they'll always strive to maximise this by reloading and so on. In a way you could say it's the players' fault due to their nature, but really I think it's the developers.

To 'solve' exhibits 2 and 3, it seems to me that game developers have two choices. One is to make all information available to the player up front to prevent their frustration at 'having to' reload later. The other is to make less information available in general, to encourage players to think for themselves whether they want to do things - why does the little girl need to mention the "It would have been nice if..."? Additionally there should be some variability - not necessarily randomness though as this just changes exhibit 2 to an issue of gambling. If developers made sure that giving gold to beggars doesn't always advance the player's character, that sometimes it has negative effects, or sometimes the effects are just cosmetic. The key though is that the outcome should be based on the situation and game world rather than random or fixed chance. This would make the player judge for themselves whether they think it would be a good idea to give money to beggars. Of course, this is not trivial to implement at all, and would require a particularly rich game world (and likely AI) to achieve in a non-arbitrary way.

Good topic, by the way, I enjoy having a good think about game design every now and then!

Quote:Original post by Telastyn
A more realistic example is seeing him get up, and run towards the nearest bar just to get wasted (possibly creating for an entertaining situation to observe, or a much needed distraction so you can sneak behind the staff-only doors while the guards kick him out).

There is something similar in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II. You give a beggar some money, and in the next sequence a couple of thugs beat him to death and steal it. It was meant to show that it's not easy distinguish between good and evil deeds, since some deeds may seem good at first but the long term effect may be a negative one.

Quote:Original post by Sneftel
[...] I have difficulty separating my persona as a game developer from my persona as a game player. As someone who methodically gambled away several hundred gold in Monkey Island 2 one gold piece at a time, just to see what would happen, I might not be the best judge of what other people will want to go back and see. [...] Weird, huh?

Indeed, I'm much the same. It's obviously the game designer in us all that drives us to break and experiment with games like this. It would be interesting to hear what a gamer thinks about all this, since I think the answers you'll get here will be rather skewed.

Having said that, I'd like to hear how you'd answer your own questions - I presume you were after a discussion rather than an actual answer!

Aha!

The revolutionary concept that games shouldn't treat you like a total dick!

The issue is this: many, if not most developers, are focused on the process.

"The player can't win the game very easily or else it will be boring. How can I make the game less likely to be won?

"I know, I'll compile a list!"

1. Put a spike pit in a hidden area in the middle of the dungeon.
2....

"Hmmm...I'll stick with one. I'm a genius!"

Which makes perfect sense...statistically. On average, ye badly placed spike trap will increase time for player completion of the level, making it "harder."

Congrats, you've succeeded at pissing off your entire playerbase with a hidden spike trap in the middle of the dungeon.

But don't fear! It's OK now, everyone does it, so its an accepted mechanic.

Quote:That's something I've thought about--the tough love approach, where a degree of randomness makes it statistically infeasible for players to go back and try something else. There are tricky details to work out to prevent such a mechanic from becoming a convenient-to-exploit cheat in its own right, but I'm confident one could pull it off. As you say, though, this would require a particularly rich game world and a particularly adaptable AI. Just how far beyond our current capabilities it is remains to be seen.

I suppose "tough love," essentially a random spike trap instead of a memorable hidden one, is a step in the right direction.

But it doesn't confront the issue. Is the end goal to impede the player? If you're designing from a standpoint of creating choices through deficit, every method you implement is going to carry the taint of that methodology. The player should never be given the false choice of "You can go down path A, or path B," regardless of whether or not path B is attained through random chance, or if path A costs 15% of your net worth. Exclusivity just cuts pieces of game play out or sticks them in odd places...like behind replays of other sections of game play.

Example:

EXHIBIT ONE:

- Exclusive super abilities that limit your possible play choices, with or without your knowledge.

You can go down path A, B, C, D, or E. Not both at the same time, not a combination, nothing interesting. Just one of those. By choosing one path, you lose out the the experience of the other four and the system doesn't even account for the possibility of mixing paths A and D, for instance. You can't fly and have hands, and you can't do all the cool things that might be specific to that combination. There is one way to do anything. There's no notion of something interesting, like say, flying over enemies and hitting them with sharper than average bows and then sneaking around the dragon lands and manipulating their traps with your hands. Or sneaking around enemies, pelting dragons with your arrows, and flying around their traps. Or sneaking around their traps...

You get the idea. You are given the path instead of a field. You don't carve the river, you just ride along it. And only along the river you chose.

Of course, the ride ends and the developers complain about the large workload of providing extensive tracts of river for you to continually float downward along, mindlessly.

EXHIBIT TWO:

- You have a "choice." You can ride the pony, or you can gouge your eyes out. Choose. Seriously.

Once again, two clearcut choices with obvious outcomes. In an actual conversation, there is an entire spectrum of factors in multiple dimensions that merely influence the outcome. That's a helluva lot of interactivity. Exhibit two is the classic false choice. There is no interactivity. Hymerman suggested randomness. I disagree: randomness still means no interactivity.

Ideally, things more detailed and eventually more intuitive provide better game play mechanisms. The object should be to enhance player fun. Mimicking things like actual conversations as opposed to providing false or random choices is probably pushing closer towards "fun." Providing and intuitive subgame based on the dynamics of conversation would probably be better. Take the example of the balance mechanism employed in the Tony Hawk series of games: the more complicated maneuvers you execute, the harder it becomes to balance your character. This fills in for actual fatigue (as you aren't likely to become fatigued in a reasonable amount of time just by flicking an analog stick) in a believable, intuitive fashion. It provides an easily understandable and intuitive challenge. That's on the far end of the spectrum from the simple false choice. What we need is a "balance" minigame for conversations.

EXHIBIT THREE:

- They key you don't know you didn't get opens the chest you haven't found that you can't open. Unless you trek through the dungeon, skip over the spike pit, and talk to the old beggar again but get the key/doll/relic/whateverthefack this time. E.g., the game deprives you of important information without you knowing what you don't know and without providing ample opportunity for you to discover it.

Many of us should be familiar with this situation. You walk into an presentation, prepared based on the information you've been given. The judges/audience look up expectantly for you scale model of your product - the scale model the packet hasn't told you that you should have brought. Everyone else has one, so you're obviously the dumb one that read the packet and couldn't put two and two together, right?

Your scale model is your little girl's favorite doll. The solution?

If you want a model in the presentation, put it in the god damned packet! Be either very witty and intuitive with a spectrum of success (You had a "good enough" model, or you got the doll and it was dirty due to a set of clues) or be deadpan and clear. You get the doll because the girl screams "GET MY DOLLY PWEASE!!!" Clear.

When the game is unintuitive, vindictive, and unclear, you will lose faith in it. It's a natural reaction to an improper source of information - your intention is to discredit it. But games are more than a source of information, so we will often play with "improper sources" for other reasons. "People" can have their cake and eat it too: there can be uncertainty without panic and with the positive air of chance as opposed to fear of failure. You can have imperfect information and accept it as a limitation of your perception (As in games such as Soccer or Basketball) instead of a limitation of the simulation. What's possible with current tech? I dunno. But "possible," "practical," and "feasible," are poor descriptors of an ideal sort of game. You know, shoot for the moon, if you miss, you'll land among the stars? Cull out the impossible after you've decided upon the ideal, not before. Just like you have perfect information and are limited by your perception in games, the answer is out there, you just have to make sure you don't shortchange yourself in finding it.

Therein, the depth or lack thereof of current game play is as much a necessary evil as 2D sprites, or eight bit color, or train transportation, or the un-feasibility of the early flying machine. Its a lack of foresight that leads to the belief that what currently "works" well enough (Hidden spike pits, obvious beggar questions, unknown dolly) is somehow automatically in the right vein.

In fact, the current approach to game play management is actually very primitive. Game play mechanisms are put in place in a reactionary fashion. False choices in development are equivalent to flinging poo in the workplace and jumping and screaming at unfriendly employees encroaching on your lunch bench. Many decisions about game play devices ultimately come down to this:

It's crunch time, I don't know how to finish this feature, I'll just fling some poo at the wall and see what sticks. If it takes longer to beat/is less easily completed, it has served its purpose.

The end doesn't justify the means when you're developing a project that is meant to be played for the value of each individual moment. The outcome is a certain type of game play. The "fun" and value comes when getting to that outcome in a sensible fashion. You should win and fail for a reason. If you're developing to provide a certain length of challenge or a certain stereotyped set of paths for the player to follow, you're missing the point. The reason you're building into the game is this:

"Get to the end without dying."

That's a pretty primitive reason. Why can't we see this:

"Go out into the world and try not to compromise your morals."

Or this:

"Do what you want without dying."

Avoiding the failure condition of the game has become the object. If you look at games that are popular and longstanding, they feature a pretty interesting set of dynamics. Take sports. Your goal is to score points while preventing the enemy from doing the same. That's a fundamental aspect of most every sport. In many, if not most computer games, the goal of "scoring more points" either lacks inherent value or is superseded by the need to avoid various forms of failure.

Ever seen a game of football where everyone plays defense? All the time? Playing many games today is like playing football on an infinite field - either the end is unreachable and you can never score, or the end is so empty that you may as well keep giving turnovers to keep the game in play. Fundamentally, everyone is focused on not giving the other guy an inch. A lack of scoring motive does not constitute a lack of defensive motive, and this is a deadlock good games should try to avoid. Players will be motivated to continue merely by fear of failure. That's the wrong way around. Players should be afraid of failure because they are motivated to continue, or perhaps simply motivated to continue and bolstered by the possibility of failure. It plays on that most primitive human emotion: existential fear. I'd rather enjoy my games than fear them. If I'm playing a game made with fear of failure in mind, I'm not going to trust it. I'm going to treat it as a predator and try and elude it - I'm going to fight with it instead of play with it.