Video games are a lot different than they were 10 years ago. Lately, certain 'features' have become rampant in a lot of video games. Sometimes, the mass media hype these features, even though such features may in fact hinder rather than enhance the games in question. This article lists several of these features, and try to bring out another way of looking at them, namely at the inherent limitations they bring into the games which employ them.
A shadow can be seen as a visible shape, but it can also be described scientifically as an area of absence of light. Most of us are not very conscious about the scientific statement when we see shadows, are we? This essay will try to bring out the similarly non-apparent view on some prominent game 'features'.
This article has been written based on the following premise: a game is primarily an arena of player intervention, where the player(s) makes decisions and takes actions, sees the results of those actions, and makes further decisions based on the feedback. The most central quality of a game is playability, that is, how interesting the decision-making (and execution) process is.
First-person perspective games had appeared a long time ago (in Battlezone, Tailgunner and earlier games), but the style hasn't really taken off until recent hardware technology has been able to employ the 3-D rendering technique to the degree we see in today's games. The first-person perspective viewpoint can generate very high realism and an immersing atmosphere.
When we look at the first-person perspective from the standpoint of offering informative feedback to support the player's decision-making process, we can see that it has both strengths and weaknesses. In most 2-D games, game objects in a 2-D game world are displayed in the two dimensions clearly. Whereas in a first-person perspective 3-D game, game objects in a 3-D game world are displayed clearly in two dimensions, and not as clearly in the third dimension. It should be noticed that the two dimensions that are clear are not the same two as those in a side-view or top-view 2-D game: the less clear dimension, the dimension of depth, is often the principal factor representing the distance between the player character and the game objects. Depending on the design of the game, the imprecision of information in this dimension may be a large inhibition to playability. (On the other hand, with a careful design the two dimensions that are displayed with clarity may be employed to enhance playability.)
The first-person perspective itself provides the player with information only in the region covered by the projection, namely to the front of the player character. It offers no information to the side or to the rear. Depending on the design of the game, this lack of information may enhance playability, or, more likely, it may inhibit it. The simple truth is that without careful planning and consideration of this factor, the result is easily a game highly reliant on precognition (memory): success in the game would be highly dependent on whether the player 'knows by precognition' (has memorized) the information that is not displayed. Such games often do not have very good longevity (be long-lasting), because it is not easy to design a game that is interesting as two games: the game without knowledge from precognition, and the game with it. Despite the merits of the first-person perspective view in terms of visual realism and atmosphere, it is not very informative, and the player may too often have to interact with game objects he cannot see, and that (at least in some cases) may be an inhibition to playability.
The first video games did not have power-up systems. I believe that the first major use of power-up systems came up around the time of the arcade shooters Twin-Bee and Gradius. Since then, many, if not most, games have a power-up system of some sort.
A power-up system allows the player character to gain additional powers and capabilities as play progresses. This very nature also means that the player character is denied same powers and capabilities when play begins. As much as being a system of acquisition, a power-up system is also a system of denial. As well as offering a sense of power and growth as the player character becomes more powerful, a power-up system can cause feelings of weakness and struggle when the player character is not in a very powerful state. While a carefully designed power-up system can itself generate playability, the game designer should ask himself if a more interesting game would result by simply allowing the player full power-up, and thus more strategy options, all the time, and do away with any power-up system. My observation is that there are games that benefit from their power-up systems, but most games have their playability inhibited because their power-up systems were just put together in line with orthodox practice, without deeper consideration for playability.
Without very delicate efforts at game balance (and that means IMO most games with power-ups), the game may become dominated by its power-up system, rather than by the skill of the player: the player can clear the areas even when half-asleep with the power-ups, while an abnormally high amount of skill is required without. Despite the sense of fulfillment sometimes conveyed by a power-up system, it may not be very contributing to the playability of a game, unless used with care. Unfortunately, the first games with power-up systems, including the shooting games I cited above, did not show any satisfactory effort in this aspect, and many later games simply followed them.
In early video games, game secrets were few or non-existent. Somewhere along the line, players were surprised and delighted to discover a few hidden features in certain games. Today, most games have lots of secrets indiscriminately.
Similar contrasting viewpoints can be taken on game secrets, in the same way as those on power-ups. As much as being 'extra' stuff that is not obvious to find, a game secret is an absence of information. A secret can be seen as merely a game feature about which information is withheld from the player.
Of course, in the old times when secrets were few, it would have been delightful to find one. However, when they come in flooding amounts in today's games, that value of delight diminished.
From the standpoint of playability, secrets are primarily lack of information, and thus indiscriminate use is undesirable. Ideally, in an interesting, playable game, the player would be making interesting decisions based on information he receives; with indiscriminate inclusion of secrets, the decisions can only be based on guesswork, and/or exhaustive search (carpet searching), if not precognition, rather than information received. Though sometimes a well-designed secret (with clever hints, etc.) would be interesting to find, I believe that the backbone of playability should be interesting decisions based on (displayed) information, and that it should be possible to create such interesting decision situations without reliance on secrets, and to design such to be more interesting than secret discovery. Sometimes a game featuring "tons of secrets" in fact has the secrets substituted for playability.
Why cannot secrets form a basis for playability? It is because by its very nature, a secret is a one-time, expendable feature; once a secret has been discovered, it is known by precognition (memorized) and no longer a secret. (Note that the impact of the game feature itself, rather than the state of information about it, on playability is another issue.) If all a game has for its playability are secrets, the game would not remain interesting for very long (relative to the resources spent on creating it).
In practice, many games include secrets which have not been carefully designed (with concerns about their effects on playability), and the result is that the playability is inhibited or absent. For example, a secret involving an extremely powerful power-up can become disruptive to game balance, and a game in which secrets play too large a part ends up being a game of pure precognition.
Recently, there has been a trend for games to include features (such as playable characters, extra graphics, etc.) which are initially locked and unavailable to the player, and need to be unlocked by clearing certain requirements when playing the game.
These are just in the same vein as the last two categories discussed above. A game cannot generate extra features when being played (exceptions are future); any game feature has to be programmed in when the game was being developed. Thus making a feature one that can be unlocked is merely denying the feature initially to the player. The claim that such arrangement extends the "replay value" or (in my words) longevity of the game shows a lack of understanding of the essential nature of playability. Motivitating the player to play the game in order to unlock certain features does not constitute true playability; motivitating the player to play the game by presenting an interesting arena of decision-making is what playability should really be about. Making features initially unavailable cannot give the game a larger volume than making those features initially available. If a player finds himself playing to unlock certain features, but loses any interest in playing more after having unlocked those features, this is probably an indication that the game isn't really a brilliantly designed game with rich playability to being with. And if a player never enjoys any game unless motivitated by features that can be unlocked, clearly the player has not understood the true essence of playability, and has not been getting as much enjoyment from the gaming hobby as one who understands said essence could have. Just like power-ups, while thoughtful use of locked features can help playability in some way (for example, by improving the accessibility, or ease of learning, of the game by locking out features which might make the game overly complex at the initial stage), in most instances, their use is irrelevant and contributes nothing to playability, and often disrupts it on the contrary (by forcing the player to play a smaller game until he has unlocked the features).
In extreme cases, the locked features do not become available just by playing the game, but rather, the player has to make an internet connection and "download" the unlock from some source. Keeping in mind that such features have to be programmed in and included in the original software in order to ever become available, we see that this is not utilization, but rather abuse, of the internet capabilities of the console hardware. Such ploy cannot add anything to playability, and most likely disrupts it, so there is no reason whatsoever for this completely unnecessary and stupid arrangement. If the unlock key costs extra save game memory space to store, this becomes a stupid waste of said space, too. Lately, Capcom in particular has been guilty of these stupid crimes in their Dreamcast game products.
We looked at some popular game 'features', and their possible negative impact on playability in additional to the commonly known positive ones. It is hoped that this article will dispel the widely-held shallow view that these 'features' are always, indiscriminately desirable. The purpose of this article is not to discourage use of these features in game design, but rather by bringing to light the possible drawbacks, encourage good game design through a better understanding of the true nature of the features. Only when the drawbacks have been identified and understood can they be circumvented or dealt with, so that the true merits of these features can be brought out with interesting games of high playability.
Copyright 10 October 1997 Alan Shiu Ho Kwan
Alan Kwan / tarot@netvigator.com / last modified 2 April 00