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"Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!"
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By Ernest Adams
Gamasutra
March 13 , 1998
Vol. 2 Issue 11
Lately I have been playing a number of old games, and IÆve noticed
something interesting in comparison with todayÆs games. The
technology has changed enormously, of course. But some of the
design mistakes we made in the past are still being made in modern
games. The same irritating misfeatures and poorly-designed puzzles
that appeared in games as early as fifteen or twenty years ago are
still around.
Herewith a list of game misfeatures that IÆm tired of seeing. This
is a highly personal perspective and your opinion may differ, but
to me, these are a sign of sloppy, or lazy, game design.
Boring and Stupid Mazes
The original text adventure, Colossal Cave, had two mazes. One was
a series of rooms each of which was described thus: ôYouÆre in a
maze of twisty little passages, all alike.ö The other was a series
of rooms described as, ôYouÆre in a twisting little maze of
passages, all differentö (or ôYouÆre in a little twisty maze of
passages, all different,ö or ôYouÆre in a maze of little twisting
passages, all different,ö etc.). These were the prototypical
boring and stupid mazes. Colossal Cave was the first adventure
game ever, though, so I cut it a little slack. But that was over
twenty years ago; thereÆs no longer any excuse for doing that now.
Somebody gave me a copy of The Legend of Kyrandia a few years
back, and I played it with some pleasure û right up until I got to
the maze.
Mazes donÆt have to be boring and stupid. ItÆs possible to design
entertaining mazes by ordering the rooms according to a pattern
that the player can figure out. A maze should be attractive,
clever, and above all, fun to solve. If a maze isnÆt interesting
or a pleasure to be in, then itÆs a bad feature.
Games Without Maps
I have a notoriously poor sense of direction inside buildings, so
maybe itÆs just me. Still, in the video game world where all the
walls and floors use the same textures, places look too much
alike. In the real world, even the most rigid cubicle-hell office
building has something to distinguish one area from another û a
stain on the carpet, a cartoon posted outside someoneÆs cube. I
played Doom and had a great time. I fired up the Quake demo, found
out there was no map, and dumped it. I want a map. ThereÆs no
reason for withholding a map from me unless itÆs just to slow me
down, and thatÆs a poor substitute for providing real gameplay.
Bad game designer! No Twinkie!
Incongruous or Fantasy-Killing Elements
Sometimes an adventure game will present you with a puzzle, or
other obstacle, that is completely outside the fantasy youÆre
supposed to be having. In my opinion, thatÆs a case of the
designer running out of ideas, and itÆs disappointing to the
player. If youÆve taken me away to a magical world where IÆm a
heroic knight on a glorious quest to rescue the fearsome princess,
donÆt make me sit and play Mastermind with the dragon. If I
absolutely must play a game with him, it should be Nine MenÆs
Morris, but frankly, it would be more appropriate just to thrash
the scoundrel soundly.
This leads quite naturally to my next complaint, which isà
Pointless Surrealism
A number of games have come out which eschew the standard
SF/fantasy worlds and instead plunge the player into a twisted and
disturbing realm of yadda yadda yadda. Let me tell you something
about the capital-S Surrealism of the capital-A Art world: itÆs
not just randomness. Real Surrealism seeks to shock the mind into
a new awareness of [ the human condition | the nature of God | the
meaning of compassion | etc. ] through the juxtaposition of
seemingly unrelated objects and ideas û the key word being
ôseemingly.ö Although appearing bizarre and perhaps even
nonsensical at first, true Surrealism is informed by an underlying
theme.
I havenÆt seen any surrealism in computer games that could claim
such noble goals. Most of it has looked to me like somebody said,
ôà and when you reach the control room of the Doomsday Machine,
thereÆll be a clown in there! Yeah! ThatÆll be cool!ö Surrealism
is like prose poetry: easy to do, but extremely hard to do well.
ôItÆs surrealismö is not an adequate excuse for a poorly conceived
vision in the first place.
Which takes me effortlessly toà
Puzzles Requiring Extreme Lateral Thinking
These are puzzles of the ôuse the lampshade with the bulldozerö
variety. The designer may think heÆs being funny or even surreal,
but heÆs really just being adolescently tiresome. ItÆs lazy puzzle
design û making a puzzle difficult by making its solution obscure
or irrational. You can add to the playerÆs play-time by creating
ridiculous obstacles, but youÆre not really adding to his or her
enjoyment, and thatÆs supposed to be the point.
Puzzles Permitting No Lateral Thinking At All
You come to a locked door. The obvious solution is to find the
key, but itÆs also the most boring, so maybe the game provides
some other way to get it open. But like as not, thereÆs only one
solution, whatever it is.
In text-adventure terms, this was known as the ôfind the right
verbö problem û you were dead in the water until you figured out
exactly what verb the game was waiting for you to say. Break? Hit?
Smash? Demolish? Pound? Incinerate? And a lot of games today have
the same problem: an obstacle which can only be overcome in one
way. The game doesnÆt encourage the player to think; it demands
that the player read the designerÆs mind.
In the real world, think of all the things you can do with a
locked door:
* Find the key
* Pick the lock
* Force or persuade the person who has the key to open it
* Trick someone on the other side into opening it (maybe just
by knocking!)
* Break the door down, burn it, cut it, dissolve it with acid,
etc.
* Circumvent it û go through a window instead, or cut a hole in
the wall.
The list is limited only by your imagination.
OK, I know this is a tall order. As a developer, itÆs difficult
and expensive to think of all the ways that someone could try to
get through a door and to implement them all. Still, now that we
have the have the power to create ôdeformable environmentsö û that
is, your gunshots and explosions actually affect everything in the
real world and not just your enemies û itÆs time to add a little
variety to our worlds, to reward players who do some lateral
thinking.
Puzzles Requiring Obscure Knowledge From Outside the Game
I owe this one to my friend, the genius puzzle-master Scott Kim
(http://www.scottkim.com). I didnÆt think of it until he read a
draft of this column and pointed it out to me. This is a cheap
trick, and even more irritating than inside jokes. No, I donÆt
know the name of the third track on Sgt. PepperÆs Lonely Hearts
Club Band, and if itÆs vital that I know it for the game, then the
game is just weird. (Trivia games like You DonÆt Know Jack are of
course excluded from this gripe û with them you know what youÆre
getting into.)
A Switch in One Room Opens a Door In Another Room A Mile Away
Nor does it have to be a door û I mean any item which affects a
game obstacle a long way off. Doom was guilty of this a lot, but
the worst example ever was in The HitchhikerÆs Guide to the
Galaxy, an Infocom text adventure. In that game, if you didnÆt
pick up the junk mail at the very beginning of the game, it was
unwinnable at the very end. This misfeature is profoundly and
pointlessly irritating. With the exception of refineries and
nuclear power plants, in most places in the world the knob for a
door is û wonder of wonders û in the door. ItÆs another example of
lazy puzzle design, making the problem difficult not by cleverness
but artificially extending the time it takes to solve it.
Only One of [some large number] of Possible Combinations Is the
Right One
More lazy puzzle design. At the end of Infidel, which was another
Infocom adventure, you had to do four things in a certain
sequence. The number of possible combinations is 4! (four
factorial, or 24). There was no clue whatsoever as to the correct
sequence; you just had to try them all. Yuck. Yet another
time-waster with no enjoyment value.
Kill Monster/Take Sword/Sell Sword/Buy A Different Sword/Kill
Another Monster
...or in other words, the canonical RPG experience. You may have
heard John F. KennedyÆs joke that Washington D.C. is a city of
southern efficiency and northern charm. Well, in my opinion most
RPGÆs combine the pulse-pounding excitement of a business
simulation with the intellectual challenge of a shooter. I play
games of medieval adventure and heroism to slay princesses and
rescue dragons; I donÆt play them to spend two-thirds of my time
dickering with shopkeepers. I want to be a hero, but the game
forces me to be an itinerant second-hand arms dealer. Earning
money by robbing corpses doesnÆt make me feel all that noble,
either.
You Have 30 Seconds to Figure Out This Level Before You Die
With the length of time most games take to load their core
modules, this isnÆt clever or challenging; itÆs just frustrating.
If thereÆs a trick to the solution for which no clues are
provided, then itÆs just another annoying trial-and-error
time-waster. If clues are provided, then you need a reasonable
amount of time to think them over. The military doesnÆt charge
blindly into unreconnoitered territory û or if they do, they
usually regret it. Expecting your player to do it is unreasonable.
If youÆre going to place your player in imminent danger from the
very first second she sees the screen, then at least one out of
every three of her possible choices should lead to safety.
Stupid Opponents
Another thing IÆm tired of is stupid monsters who lumber towards
you until you shoot them. This was the Doom technique, and that of
a million video games since the dawn of time. Instead of providing
you with an intelligent challenge, the game seeks to overwhelm you
with sheer numbers. Yawn. Space Invaders may have been brilliant
and addictive in its day, but itÆs time to move on.
So letÆs get imaginative! How about some cowardly monsters who
take one potshot at you, then run away to fight another day? Or
maybe some monsters who duck in and out of cover? How about one
that runs off at the first sight of you and brings back half a
dozen friends û if you can nail it on its way out, then it canÆt
raise the alarm. Or what about some who try to sneak around and
come up behind you? Or who offer direct battle, but run away when
theyÆre injured, rather than fighting idiotically to the death?
Maybe we could have some monsters whose job is to lure you out of
cover so their friends can shoot at you. (That was the role of the
flying saucer in the original coin-op Battle Zone.) Or even û
gasp! û some monsters who are smart enough to do all these things,
like, say, people are! Zounds!
None of these ideas are new; itÆs just that we donÆt see them that
often. Why? Laziness again. Dumb monsters are easy to program.
Smart ones arenÆt. And itÆs easy to balance a game with dumb
opponents. You just figure out the appropriate ratio of monsters
to ôhealthö powerups. To make the game harder, you change the
ratio. But itÆs boring. LetÆs put a little thought into monster
design, give our customers a new challenge.
Two other things IÆm tired of û these are aesthetic rather than
design elements, but IÆll throw Æem in for good measure.
Poor Acting
Bad acting is a distraction, no less in a computer game than in a
movie theater. It breaks your suspension of disbelief. When a bad
actor is surrounded by good actors, itÆs especially noticeable,
and you find yourself praying that their character will be killed
off. And most of the acting in computer games is still pretty
poor.
Fortunately, this is a problem that will probably take care of
itself in the end. Competition will force us to develop some
competence in this area. If we can manage to get up to the
TV-movie-of-the-week level, IÆll be happy. John Gielgud and
Katharine HepburnÆs talents would be wasted in a computer game,
where the point is supposed to be interactivity anyway. ItÆs
better to do without acting in a computer game than to include bad
acting, and usually cheaper and easier as well.
Neat, Tidy Explosions
Look closely at a picture of a place where a bomb went off. ItÆs a
mess. A real mess. Things are broken into pieces of all sizes,
from chunks that are nearly the whole object, to shrapnel and
slivers, down to dust. And theyÆre twisted, shredded, barely
recognizable. Things that are blown up by a bomb donÆt fall neatly
apart into four or five little polygons û theyÆre blasted to
smithereens.
I suppose for the sake of our stomachs weÆll have to preserve the
TV and film fiction that people who die violently do so quickly
and quietly rather than screaming and rolling around; but I donÆt
see any need to pretend that high explosives are less than
apallingly destructive. Bombs ruin things û lives and buildings.
They leave the places theyÆve been shattered and unattractive.
LetÆs tell the truth about them.
Conclusion
Scott Kim tells me that IÆm being a bit harsh by labeling some of
these misfeatures as ôlazyö puzzle design. He points out that
puzzle design is hard work to begin with, and unless youÆre quite
familiar with the games of the past, itÆs easy to make the same
mistakes again without knowing it. In addition, a lot of people
come into puzzle design from other fields like programming or art,
and so donÆt have much experience at it.
IÆll buy that. But now that you have this handy list, at least you
neednÆt make these mistakes, right?
-----
Ernest Adams is an audio/video producer for Electronic Arts,
currently working on the Madden NFL Football product line. Once
upon a time, he was a software engineer. He has developed on-line
games, computer games, and console games for everything from the
IBM 360 mainframe to the Nintendo Ultra 64. He was a founder of
the Computer Game Developers' Association, and is a frequent
lecturer at the Computer Game Developers' Conference and anyplace
else that people will listen to him. Ernest would be happy to
receive E-mail about his columns at eadams@ea.com. The views in
this column are not necessarily those of Electronic Arts.
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