The original idea of my Time's End project was to base a game around time, time-travel and the end of the universe. This could have taken many forms, but my original idea was for a puzzle/adventure style of game where the character would achieve the quest in an open ended environment where the player had full control of time travel within the context of the game.
As I considered the various options and refined how the game would work I found that I wanted to reduce the game to only the basic mechanic and remove all of the conventional 'game baggage'. By this I mean that there are certain conventions that are so 'intrinsic' to modern computer games that they are very hard to avoid. In this instance I found that as soon as I thought of a scenario involving a 'human' character setting out on a quest I wanted to put in encounters that would involve combat in some form. I found that if I developed the story of the character and the reasons for the character to exist and do the quest, it involved conflict and again a strong incentive for combat. So I had to ask myself why is this and is it what I want to do?
As to the why, I have looked at this and considered where it comes from. It is evident from the literature online and in books that the problem lies at the foundation of digital games. Most (an over generalisation I know) digital games are based on fantasy role playing games (the paper and pencil variety) first introduced in the 70s, which were themselves derived from war gaming which has been around for much longer. The basis of all of these games is that the players create a character and go on epic quests which involve both fighting in and exploring a fantasy world created by a games master. The combat system is the basis of (all?) these games! The stories and scenarios only really work because the character has to overcome something which is preventing them from completing their quest, whether it is puzzles or monsters (the terminology in gaming for anything that moves and opposes the player, mobs - mobile monsters). The inspiration for many games undoubtedly also comes from film - but can only be represented in game terms using the rules set up by FRPGs. Looking at the kinds of film which have inspired games, I see the same pattern, action/adventure games involving quests with opposing forces and puzzles to overcome. Similarly looking at the literature which inspires games I see the same pattern.
There are very good reasons why this is the dominant paradigm in digital games, the mechanisms of FRPGs translate very readily and easily into computer programming code. The problem is that the unwritten rules of FRPGs the 'role playing' bit where the games master interacts with the players, talks, discusses and makes the story come alive - cannot be translated in to computer code, at least not in any 'meaningful' way (again an over generalisation but I am arguing that it is essentially true because my understanding of 'meaningful' goes beyond what I see in current games). The reason for this is fairly obvious, computers cannot 'think' they cannot react to nor evaluate situations, they cannot 'improvise'. All this does is leave game programmers with attempting to 'script' specific interactions and constrain players to a very narrow story line with specific predetermined outcomes (essentially putting in very dumb, wooden, actors who generally have only one line of dialogue and a very brief appearance before they die). Certainly it is possible to do this so that games 'work' but it will be a long time before such scripting achieves the level needed to approach even an approximation of the sophistication of human interaction.
Given these limitations what then can be done with digital games? Not much is my answer. People are aware of the limitations of the medium and are doing the best they can to improve the way games work using current technology however without massive research and development into making computers 'understand' the world and human interaction this will remain very limited (I have seen characters with as many as 7 different responses when I 'speak' to them! For speak, read push a button, and always the same lines and always the same responses but more than one). Games companies cannot afford this level of research (yet?) and they do not need it yet, while current game technology still sells and makes money why would the bother to go further? Is it even necessary - is there anything wrong with the current limitations on digital games? I think the answer is no, digital games are fine in their current form. Not only that, the digital game industry is still growing and expanding into different areas so any limitations are seen as transitory - things will get better is the assumption. Since computers cannot play characters why not return to the root of FRP and get people to play the characters - Multi-Player Online Games - Social Online Networks. Online worlds and gaming provide an alternative route to achieving something like the kind of interactions needed to satisfy people's need for 'engaging content'. But that is a different issue...
What about other forms of game non-FRP games? What about traditional strategy based games are they dead or do they have a future in the digital world? What about simulation of 'real life' activities are these type of game meaningful?
I think that traditional strategy based games will form the basis of what is now called 'casual games', however the problem is that the majority of these have to be single player games (although they could be played as multi player games within an online community e.g. Travian).
The problem with such strategy games is that if the game requires an opponent or opponents then these are played by the computer. Computer programs are very, very good at strategy and have to be 'dumbed down' to allow ordinary humans to play against them. Hence strategy games with no opponent will probably tend to be more popular? It seems that these days people do not like loosing and can only be fooled by a game for so long before they realise they are being 'allowed' to win - it is good for the ego, until you find out the truth...
Simulation of real life activities such as driving, golf, skiing, skating etc. will probably continue to be popular so long as the simulation can convincingly portray the action and hide the amount of 'assistance' being given to the player in order to allow them to succeed (sounds familiar? allowing people to win fool them in to believing they are good, stroke their ego - it works).
So what does this all this mean for Time's End? What I found was that on the one hand I was being asked to implement a role-playing type of scenario, developing a character and creating a story for the character to follow. Which is all fine except that the story must include conflict and conflict means combat, but I wanted to avoid combat. Which ever way the story is written, which ever part of the story forms the game it ultimately involves conflict (because that is the basis of story telling). OK, so what happens if I remove the conflict and just keep the puzzle solving bit?
What I had in mind was a maze type game involving puzzle solving to complete the quest (I removed all of the puzzles that involved combat). What is left is a maze that the player has to traverse with 'environmental' puzzles required in order to complete the quest. So I had a look at maze generation and maze theory to see what has been done already. Essentially traditional mazes can be solved by a 5 year old in about 2 seconds so the maze becomes nothing more than a consumer of time. However, maze theory does indicate that there are mazes which cannot be solved by traditional means. So I devised a multi dimensional ever changing maze that requires a little bit more than just wandering around in order to solve i.e. a strategy a bit more complex than 'follow the left hand wall'. The point of the game being that the player has to find things in a maze in a given time limit, so the maze has to delay the player sufficiently to make the time restriction meaningful. Also the maze has to be different every time the player plays the game so that the maze cannot be mapped (again a traditional method of solving a maze - which for digital games means 'look up the answer on the internet' and when I say the answer I mean 'The Answer' because most games have only one effective solution). OK So I have my game, it avoids all the common things in current digital games and it has a level of complexity that would allow it to be re-playable. Job done? No. It is too easy, what about doing something else, something more difficult? What about doing research into something that is an issue with digital games and for which a new insight would be helpful.
As Pooh Bear would say 'Think, Think, Think ...'
1 comment:
With regard to gameplay that does not take advantage of combat, it's a tough one isn't it? As I also want to avoid violence (generally, we avoid it in real life, why would we want it in games?) I've been asking very similar questions of myself.
Looking at other media (film, television, particularly fiction), it is difficult to find things that would translate to enjoyable, meaningful gameplay. All of a sudden, it becomes clear why there's so many violent games - because it's easy to design/program and generally enjoyable for existing audiences to play.
As for the story additions and the talk of overcoming challenges, sorry if I'm stating the obvious here, but it's well worth looking at the narrative tool of The Hero's Journey. It's such an old and widely used framework in one fashion or another that it's again clear why games designers use it so often.
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