When talking about stories in videogames the topic of cutscenes always comes to the surface. Just the concept of taking control from the player is a flawed one because of the focus in interactivity that the medium has. But we still use cutscenes because it’s the best way we know of that let’s the game have action sequences outside of the engine and most importantly allows for traditional storytelling by forcing the player’s hand.

Then again, the cutscenes all by themselves are not the problem, it’s the use of them. I’ve read (not played) that Bioshock had one particular cutscene where the lack of interactivity was deliberate and used to great effect. I won’t go into details because of it’s spoiler nature, but suffice it to say that this particular part of the game deserves applause. Of course this is shinning jewel that shines even brighter because of the deserted surroundings. I seriously don’t know any other example where the use of a cutscene is well justified.

Moving on, interesting stories in any form of media have flawed characters because we can’t relate to someone who is perfect in every way. But in videogames the player becomes the main character, so the flaws the game tries to impose on the player feel forced most of the time. Character flaws almost never surface through gameplay since controlling a handicapped protagonist isn’t exactly a thrilling experience. So we are treated almost always with character flaws that show up only in dialog or pre-scripted events. This is not desirable either but it’s the most harmless common option that I know of.
A better approach to this would be taking advantage of the inherent interactivity and have the main character show the flaws of the player. But then again, how the game is supposed to do that? Well, one way of trying to achieve this would be by taking into acount the player’s choices on non-obvious solutions for a problem. Or cater to the player’s ego shinning through the main character (Shamus McLaser already talked about this).

Having interactivity is a mayor advantage and handicap at the same time: The player is much more engaged by the actions happening on a screen but this is ruined by the over-use of pre-scripted events, so traditional storytelling just isn’t suited well for the medium. If given in short bursts this events can be used to spice things up a bit by giving the player interesting situations that he would otherwise not encounter.

The way we tell our stories through games supports itself mostly on text in dialogs, sound in voice acting and videos in cutscenes, so it is really hard to see videogames as a storytelling medium in it’s own right. This problem is agravated by the ability of quick saving and loading: undo everything bad that happens, be it death or minor hp loss due to a trap. Nothing has meaning, success is expected and anything else is negated. This causes nothing interesting to happen during gameplay, the part that is exclusive to the medium. In a nutshell if it were not for the alien inclusions of text, voice and video the stories told would be the most boring of them all. There is no failure that one can speak of, anything can be retried until successful. If the game has no multiple endings either the player wins or walks out without finishing it.

Of course none of this applies to puzzle games nor multiplayer nor little distractions justified only by the mechanics.

Why do we play games? It’s a question so simple, so obvious that I wouldn’t be surprised if 80% of the game design population never tried to answer this. Answering this question will not be the holy grail of game design, but I’m sure it would help the designer on some big decisions, like what’s missing or better yet, what needs to be cut. Of course there’s going to be a conflict between what the player wants to play and what the designer wants to design. There’s also the concept of target audience that I’ll not poke here, not even with a 7 foot stick. All this aspects come into play when designing a game, but this is not the point of the question. The question is there waiting to be answered; what do we do with that answer is a whole other subject.

So, without further ado, here’s the list of reasons that I’ll be expanding upon in the next couple of months:

• Rewards.
• Escapism.
• Interest / Intrigue.
• Experimentation.
• Challenge.
• Investment.
• Social aspect.
• Time killing.
• Fun.

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The whole rewards topic is deeper than what I’ve covered with the previous post, but I need to explore the other reasons further before returning to this again.

So, continuing with the list, we arrive to the concept of escapism. Some people play games because they can escape from reality, forgetting about their real life problems and just be sucked in into the happenings on the screen. Some games try to enhance this by toning down levels of abstraction, such as the GUI. Seeing characters with bars over their heads is not as inmersive as seeing them change their posture according to how beaten down they are. A recent great example would be the way Alone in the Dark shows the inventory: The main character opens his jacket to reveal a lot of inside pockets with the items he has. I can’t recall any game that showed were all the items you are supposedly carrying are. I don’t wanna know where mario and luigi keep all the coins they keep collecting.
Frankly I think that a way of aproaching inmersiveness is trying to keep the player on his toes. The player is so focused on the actions that he forgets everything else around him. You know when you are at the movies and you are only focused on the film? In those moments you don’t think about all the people around you, until that is, someone gets a call from the cellphone or yells or throws food at the screen. A game is exactly like that, but the distractions take the form of awkward controls and sometimes awkward GUI. For example when you look down to the joystick to remind yourself where is that damm button, or when you can’t find an option on the menu.
So, in short, the inmersiveness is enhanced for greater effect when the gameplay is intuitive and the player can get used to it in a matter of minutes/seconds. The rest depends on the game design and genre.

Interest and intrigue is next up on the list, and I’ll be writting about that topic in the next part.

(Until I get my own host in a couple of days, I’ll use this blog for my game design thoughts.)

The very concept of reward in games interests me from a design point of view, since the game can alienate the player by giving him no feedback on his actions, or overcompensate for menial tasks. But the subject is a lot more complicated than just that, so let’s begin slowly, by just naming a few different types of rewards:

• With a numerical value. Money, score, exp, they are all basically the same type of reward.
• With story progression, be it a cutscene or a dialog or a simple animation of a door opening.
• With items. Quantifiable objects that the player has to collect in order to get a greater reward.
• Actually congratulating the player in text and/or flashy graphics.
• With power ups that enhance some gameplay aspect.
• With an adittional ability.
• With addittional media. Concept art, music, etc

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Different rewards are always suited better for different types of games. A brilliant game design on one genre might be a terrible mistake in another. The game designer has to think of his audience in orther to choose wisely what type of rewards he’s going to use.

Score/experience/money by itself is absolutely meaningless unless there’s other rewards that depend on it. For example, a highscore table, a new unlocked level, a new item/weapon, new characters, etc.

But let’s move on to something more juicy: the stackable rewards, or in other words, bigger rewards are given to the player the more he advances through the game. Truth be told, the rewards really don’t get better, they are just relative to the progress of the player, so in reality, the amount rewarded is always the same. Nevertheless this can become a rather dangerous game breaking aspect of the whole design when nearing the end.

The problem lays in that the “greatest” rewards are given when the game finishes, so they are of no use whatsoever because the player doesn’t have the chance to, you know, use it (depending of the type of reward as I’ve said earlier). A +45 platinum sword of liquid awesome dropped by the final boss is the single most useless reward. I just defeated the toughest monster in the world, why would I need better gear now? (I’m looking at you Fable) A “new game+” feature, a good wrapup of the story, a congratulatory message with flashy graphics and some access to hidden media would be a much better reward after finishing the game.

For RPGs the stacked rewards give a sense of improvement since everything keeps getting better the more the player progresses. But if the game finishes at some point then before this happens there needs to be a change in the system so that the player is rewarded with other type of rewards. Before the two final bosses, give the player the best weapons (through a sidequest possibly) and give him useful ways to spend all his resources. That little advice will help your game avoid the RPG sindrome that plagues a shameful porcentage of the genre.

In general, games have continuous rewards and big nuggets separated from each other. So from beginning to end the game ideally would have a steady stream of rewards and progress, kicking it up to a maximum when it finishes.

Let’s analize the classic Mario for it’s simplicity and elegance: No matter were you go, there’s always bound to be some coins floating in the air to be picked up by you. Then there’s some hidden items in brick blocks, question blocks and even thin air. And then there are shortcuts, sometimes hidden really well. This game works, it’s absolutely brilliant in it’s game design for it’s time. Sadly the ending is all but rewarding, level after level the princess was in another castle, and when the player finally get’s there…well, see for yourselves:

There’s much more to talk about, but I’ll keep quiet for now since life is interfering with my thought process.

Well, hello, and welcome to this humble little blog that I hope to update rather often with the latest news of the gaming industry that strike my fancy.  This is not going to be my main blog, so bear with me if I only update it with youtube videos of something funny a buddy of mine showed to me a while ago.

Just remember, you’ve been warned.