If we''re talking about interactivity in a game world, then I''d like to add my own thoughts to this post.

I agree with the statement Paul brought up; I think it''s a very bad idea to add realistic objects to your world and not allow players to manipulate them. Most objects (walls, furniture, vehicles) don''t make very good toys. On the other hand, if I see a glass jar, toilet, or microwave oven, I should be able to smash it, flush it, or turn it on.

Coincidental to Paul''s statement, I read somewhere that you should add as many destructible objects to your game as possible, however extraneous they are. The more things a player can break/throw/use in some way, the more immersive your world will become.

Just a quick comment for Wavinator: you''re saying realism amounts to an increased budget. Of course it does. If game design were easy, we''d all be doing it. I''m not sure what kind of response you were expecting with this post. I don''t think anyone can disagree with you.

Some folks will spend the extra time to make their worlds more realistic, and some folks won''t. The important thing is that you only add as much realism as it takes to make your world plausible, and then you stop there. Plausibility is the key to immersiveness, not gratuitous realism.


"As a man begins to live more seriously within, he begins to live more simply without."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

quote:Original post by Tom

Just a quick comment for Wavinator: you''re saying realism amounts to an increased budget. Of course it does. If game design were easy, we''d all be doing it. I''m not sure what kind of response you were expecting with this post. I don''t think anyone can disagree with you.

My point was more about what was leading us into this increased realism budget crunch. I suspect that, with rising expectations of detail, _FEWER_ AND_FEWER of us will be doing game design (realized, anyway) unless we find some way of being clever.

I mostly wanted to see what people thought of this. Usually we talk about what publishers won''t do, as if the problems would go away if we got the right publishers. We also tend to accuse publishers of focusing on graphics to the exclusion of all else. Yet within this RPG heavy forum I''ve noticed a zeal for detail oriented games. As I noted above, this is what I think leads to the trap.

It''s not just a case of game design being difficult as a matter of course. Yes, this is true, and no one can argue it.

But I suspect that we don''t have to paint ourselves into this corner. I think clever abstraction is one way to do it. I''m looking for others.



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Just waiting for the mothership...

Thanks for the feedback, guys!

quote:Original post by Ironblayde

I think you''re right about the direction in which things are heading, but what can we really do about it? Hardware is improving all the time, and the game companies out there who don''t do what they can to keep up, utilizing all the greater memory and faster processors that come out, get left behind.

Yeah, funny enough the thing that made me realize this was finally putting the beginnings of an idea I had into a 3D environment. My intent was to get away from sprites, and try to "keep up" (as much as any shareware looking game can, anyway).

I think one solution is to cater to try to manage the player''s expectations. Don''t tease them with implied detail that you can''t fulfill, be it graphical or gameplay or whatever.

quote:Original post by kseh

Assuming you''re looking for an explanation why this is so:

Excellent explanation, btw. I keep looking for ways to apply strategy game''s level of abstraction to an RPG-like''s environment. Text, icons, backgrounds, easy UI, etc. may be the way to go. Let cheap assets fill out the details because, as Sid Meier says, the game''s happening in the player''s mind anyway.

quote:

So what do you do when you''re trying to provide an interactive world with some degree of realism? Be a jerk.

Ouch!!!! This == not good, I think. Then you get a kind of save/restore traumatic player thinking. I firmly believe that you should never arbitrarily punish the player. At least you have to warn them. If you''re a jerk, they won''t come back.

quote:Original post by JSwing

The solution, IMO, is to add detail, but throw out the realism.

I agree with this, to a point. In the science fiction environment I''m working in I can use "automation" to explain away a lot of things. But I''m very much a fan of consistency. I think players deserve to have a world that makes sense.

For some things you want to show (like a crowded city, for example) you''re just going to have to get creative in representation, technology, and depiction. Throwing out the realism won''t work.

quote:Original post by Thr33d

main point: we have substituted graphic realism for psycological
reasoning which is what game design is for... all in all, we
have taken out the design and instead given the gamer eye candy
and a little ai...

Agreed. Like I noted above, the game happens in the player''s mind. I think the less complicated the gameplay, the more you need pretty pictures to re-inforce what''s going on. So maybe the publishers will control all the Quake ad infinitum development, and independents and garage developers can succeed by focusing on the psychological aspects.



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Just waiting for the mothership...

quote:Original post by Morbo

Nowdays, however, we are being presented with artwork that suggests something that can be explored, like a huge skyscraper with thousands of windows (think UT), but it _can''t_ be explored. It''s a black hole, but we can see it. Of course this doesn''t sit well with the player. It leaves our curiousity unsatisfied.

Exactly!!! Exactly! It''s a tease for something that''s technologically impossible.

quote:
This can be abstracted a little further to include things like footprints on snow, and indestructible weeds. The weeds look so detailed and real that we implicitly think they _are_ real. But when they fail to behave realisically, we are left dissapointed. And this is definately a problem: game developers cannot be expected to make every part of the world behave like real.

I think the more your world fiction EXPLAINS the world''s limits, the better off you are. I played an old game that let you land on hundred of planets (Starflight). Just about anything you were shown, you could explore. No teasing.

But every similar game after it didn''t allow the same freedom, providing either flat bitmaps (Star Control), or only specific areas (Planet''s Edge) to land. It didn''t make sense, it was arbitrary, and it wasn''t explained. Thus these games were less satisfying. They all showed you a huge universe, but the last two''s environs were really cardboard houses.

quote:
-snip Zelda explanation-

This is good. Tough to do, though, for some settings / genres. I don''t know why, but it seems like fantasy games can get away with neat and tidy environments. It''s harder in the modern or futuristic world. There''s simply an expectation of complexity than you had in "simpler times." (Which, btw, was just as complicated... )

But I ultimately agree with what you say. You have to measure not just whatever you put into your game, but the cascade of implications that comes with each aspect or element. "So, you can drive a car? Well, what happens if you leave it in the street? What happens if you crash into other people?" etc. etc.

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Just waiting for the mothership...