Articles on Pixel Poppers2021-06-14T00:00:00-07:00https://pixelpoppers.com/article/Doctor Professordocprof@pixelpoppers.comHugo -- gohugo.iohttps://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/2021-06-14T00:00:00-07:002021-06-14T00:00:00-07:00<p>This is <cite>Alto’s Adventure</cite>. It’s an endless runner in which you snowboard down a mountain to rescue your runaway llamas, doing tricks and avoiding obstacles along the way.</p>
<div align="center"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hxEVsKwW9lg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<!--<video class="center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/altos-adventure/altos-adventure.webp" controls>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/altos-adventure/altos-adventure.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/altos-adventure/altos-adventure.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/altos-adventure/altos-adventure.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
-->
<p>I love this game. It plays well, but what sets it apart is how lovely and chill it is. So much polish has gone into the atmosphere and it pays off. There’s the obvious stuff, like a beautiful art style and a soothing soundtrack, but on top of that are so many little touches. The sun moves across the sky, setting and rising as you play, changing not just brightness but color warmth and really selling the feeling that you’ve been snowboarding all night and a new day has dawned around you. Rainstorms come and go, with no effect on gameplay but helping the setting feel more like a living world. The sounds your board makes on the snow or when grinding on bunting lines or rooftops are rich and vivid - for me, they’re borderline ASMR-inducing when I play with headphones. And I love the way that the llamas slide down slopes instead of running once the incline is steep enough.</p>
<p>It all comes together to create a profound sense of joyful speed and solitude, coasting down this starkly beautiful yet somehow cozy mountainside. You’re one with the wind and the snow, and all there is is the descent in front of you. Obstacles and opportunities keep coming and you need to react to them just in time - once you learn and internalize how to respond to each situation that can arise, you do so without conscious thought, <em>faster</em> than conscious thought, the experience flowing through you as you flow down the mountain.</p>
<p>Endless runners are a lot <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/">like rhythm games</a> in this way - they create flow by presenting you with a series of rapid-fire cues you have to respond to without taking time to think. But in runners, the cues are procedurally generated, so you can’t memorize them and they can last forever. It’s like a song that never ends but keeps growing and changing. A theme with endless variation.</p>
<p>I’ve played a lot of endless runners that tweak the formula in various ways. But somehow, <cite>Alto’s Adventure</cite> is the one that most reminds me of where the genre got its start. It’s the one that feels the most like a pure descendant of the game that first popularized endless runners, the first one I ever played: <cite>Canabalt</cite>.</p>
<div align="center"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JTSkwWwP1ks" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<!--<video class="center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/canabalt/canabalt.webp" controls>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/canabalt/canabalt.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/canabalt/canabalt.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/canabalt/canabalt.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
-->
<p>This is <cite>Canabalt</cite>. It came out all the way back in 2009, and it was an eye-opener. It looked and played more or less like a 2D platformer, with the player running to the right and jumping at the right times to keep going. But it ran <em>for</em> you, leaving you to focus on reading the oncoming hazards and timing your jumps to avoid them. It took away the ability to be careful and forced you into a flow-inducing, adrenaline-maximizing, full-speed-ahead charge with barely any time to react. To make this possible, it had an incredibly simple one-button control scheme: tap to jump, hold to jump higher. That’s it. And yet within this framework, it still had extra depth from a risk and reward trade-off that was under the player’s control - your character ran faster and faster over time, but you could slow down by deliberately tripping over boxes or office chairs. Going faster meant achieving greater distances and higher scores more quickly, but made it much more difficult to react to hazards in time. Eventually, for one reason or another, you failed, and the game prompted you with a tantalizing message: “Tap to retry your daring escape.” It was easy to wonder, back before people knew what an “endless runner” was, whether the game could, perhaps, actually be beaten. Whether you really could escape if you just kept trying.</p>
<p>Games journalist and designer Tim Rogers published a <a href="http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=618">review</a> saying that <cite>Canabalt</cite> was what playing <cite>Super Mario Bros.</cite> felt like to a seven-year-old: endless and unconquerable. He called the game “Super Mario Tetris” for the way it turned the core mechanics of a platformer into a game you could play forever if you were skilled enough. He asked whether every game should have an endless mode, suggesting that any game mechanic that wasn’t enjoyable enough to stand on its own like this was in some sense a failure. Like driving ranges for golf players, endless modes offer mechanical purity and player-driven scope instead of the limits of a predefined set of levels.</p>
<p>But it wasn’t just the mechanics that made <cite>Canabalt</cite> compelling. It was the atmosphere. <cite>Canabalt</cite>’s storytelling was entirely environmental and implied. There was no intro or explanation, and you never saw what your character was running <em>from</em>. There was the tense mood of the backing music. There was the occasional shaking from low-flying aircraft. There were the mysterious monstrous silhouettes in the distance, the collapsing buildings, the missiles falling, the scattering doves, and there was you, running along a city skyline, jumping between rooftops and crashing through windows, not daring to stop - all expressively animated in grayscale pixel art. <cite>Canabalt</cite>’s atmosphere was as refined <em>and</em> open-ended as its mechanics, and they came together to create one singular drive: <em>keep going</em>.</p>
<p><cite>Canabalt</cite> quickly became popular with players, but it made an even bigger impact on game designers who immediately grasped the potential that it revealed. The next couple of years saw an explosion of similar games, each of which took <cite>Canabalt</cite>’s basic formula and expanded it in various directions. First these were called <cite>Canabalt</cite> clones, but before long it was clear that they formed a genre all their own and they were called endless runners. Many of them were hits in their own right.</p>
<p><cite>Robot Unicorn Attack</cite> gave the player a double-jump and dash attack and traded the mysterious grayscale disaster for a Lisa Frank-inspired rainbow dreamscape backed by an Erasure song.</p>
<!--<div align="center"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_HplqfuA8mg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
-->
<!--<video class="center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/robot-unicorn-attack/robot-unicorn-attack.webp" controls>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/robot-unicorn-attack/robot-unicorn-attack.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/robot-unicorn-attack/robot-unicorn-attack.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/robot-unicorn-attack/robot-unicorn-attack.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
-->
<video class="center" width="560" height="315" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/robot-unicorn-attack/robot-unicorn-attack.webp" controls>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/robot-unicorn-attack/robot-unicorn-attack.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/robot-unicorn-attack/robot-unicorn-attack.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/robot-unicorn-attack/robot-unicorn-attack.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
<p><cite>Temple Run</cite> evoked <cite>Indiana Jones</cite>, casting the player as a relic hunter escaping demonic monkeys by turning, sliding, and jumping their way past obstacles while steering to collect coins which could be spent on power-ups.</p>
<div align="center"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jIr0pM935Fo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<!--<video class="center" width="360" height="640" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/temple-run/temple-run.webp" controls>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/temple-run/temple-run.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/temple-run/temple-run.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/temple-run/temple-run.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
-->
<p><cite>Jetpack Joyride</cite> swapped out running for a jet pack - hold the button to rise up, release to drop down. On top of that came a variety of vehicles, each of which had its own different one-button control scheme, and a series of semi-random missions to keep the gameplay fresh.</p>
<div align="center"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HqdhHMRjAxM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<!--<video class="center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/jetpack-joyride/jetpack-joyride.webp" controls>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/jetpack-joyride/jetpack-joyride.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/jetpack-joyride/jetpack-joyride.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/jetpack-joyride/jetpack-joyride.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
-->
<p>Even triple-A developers took notice, and the second <cite>Mirror’s Edge</cite> was a prequel that followed up the first-person parkour game by applying the simple controls and nonstop forward motion of an endless runner to predesigned levels.</p>
<div align="center"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RPwSeLLquhE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<!--<video class="center" width="540" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/mirrors-edge/mirrors-edge.webp" controls>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/mirrors-edge/mirrors-edge.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/mirrors-edge/mirrors-edge.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/mirrors-edge/mirrors-edge.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
-->
<p>One of my favorite things in games is watching a genre evolve as designers explore its possibility space. And <cite>Canabalt</cite> revealed a space that was ripe for growth. Each of these follow-ups pushed things further, incorporated more complexity, tied in more elements of other kinds of games.</p>
<p>Soon came <cite>BIT.TRIP RUNNER</cite>, which embraced the similarity to rhythm games by straight-up <em>being</em> one, placing the obstacles and collectibles in such a way that handling them properly would create music.</p>
<div align="center"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/49Ohsp9spro" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<!--<video class="center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/bittrip-runner/bittrip-runner.webp" controls>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/bittrip-runner/bittrip-runner.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/bittrip-runner/bittrip-runner.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/bittrip-runner/bittrip-runner.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
-->
<p><cite>10000000</cite> tied endless runner elements - the continuous stream of obstacles and opportunities you must react to quickly - to a mix of match-3 puzzle and RPG progression.</p>
<div align="center"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CqcUto9Mp8g" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<!--<video class="center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/10000000/10000000.webp" controls>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/10000000/10000000.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/10000000/10000000.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/10000000/10000000.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
-->
<p><cite>Race the Sun</cite> adapted the endless runner to 3D by moving it into the sky, having you glide over a low-poly landscape collecting power-ups and trying not to crash.</p>
<div align="center"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SrhuBPCAUVE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<!--<video class="center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/race-the-sun/race-the-sun.webp" controls>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/race-the-sun/race-the-sun.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/race-the-sun/race-the-sun.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/race-the-sun/race-the-sun.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
-->
<p>Even Nintendo finally brought things full circle with their first mobile action game: <cite>Super Mario Run</cite>, an auto-running <cite>Super Mario</cite> platformer with both predesigned levels and procedurally-generated modes.</p>
<div align="center"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NoJLdgwiz3s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<!--<video class="center" width="360" height="640" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/super-mario-run/super-mario-run.webp" controls>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/super-mario-run/super-mario-run.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/super-mario-run/super-mario-run.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/super-mario-run/super-mario-run.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
-->
<p>There have been so many endless runners created in the past decade. But to me, <cite>Alto’s Adventure</cite> is the one that feels most like a descendant of <cite>Canabalt</cite> rather than an offshoot.</p>
<p>I think this is because, in its heart, <cite>Alto’s Adventure</cite> has the same priorities. It’s still a game of mechanical purity and evocative atmosphere. It still has a simple one-button control scheme - tap to jump, hold to do flips - while adding player-driven risk/reward trade-offs via the trick system and the optional rail-grinds. Variety comes not from giving you more abilities, but instead in creating more contexts in which to use them, through a wider range of environmental features and a mission system that tasks you with using those features to accomplish specific goals like jumping from ramps to grinds or evading the elders who occasionally pursue you. Completing these missions rewards you with new characters who have slightly different trade-offs such as a slower cruise speed but faster backflips. These changes recontextualize, rather than replace, the game’s core loop. The moment to moment gameplay is still about reacting in time to what’s in front of you, and everything that’s been added just enhances this central interaction. It’s an evolution that adds longevity without changing the focus. The game keeps you learning longer, and that means more opportunity for flow.</p>
<p>When I play <cite>Alto’s Adventure</cite>, I want to take it back in time. I want to show it to Adam Saltsman in September of 2009, right after he finished the <a href="http://adamatomic.com/canabalt/">original Flash version</a> of <cite>Canabalt</cite>, just before he ported it to iOS and it blew up. I want to tell him that this is a game that will be on PC and all major consoles in eleven years and that it only exists because of him.</p>
<p>“Look at the doors you opened for us,” I want to say to him. “Look what we have because you showed us we could.”</p>
<p>“Imagine what we’ll have tomorrow.”</p>
<aside class="extra"><p style="font-style:italic;margin-top:4em;">Want more? This article has <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2021/06/altos-adventure-canabalt/extra/">EXTRA CONTENT</a> available.</p></aside>
https://pixelpoppers.com/2020/09/easy-and-hard-modes-for-ui/2020-09-07T00:00:00-07:002020-09-07T00:00:00-07:00<p>Why don’t games have hard and easy modes <em>for the UI?</em> Different players have different needs, and one-size-fits-all solutions shrink a game’s audience.</p>
<p>In a blog post titled <a href="https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-importance-of-the-new-player-s-experience"><cite>The Importance of the New Player’s Experience</cite></a>, Josh Bycer catalogs several types of “new” players for a given game:</p>
<ol>
<li>Players who are new to this specific game, but familiar with other similar games or the conventions of the genre.</li>
<li>Players who are new to this game’s genre and conventions, but familiar with gaming in general.</li>
<li>Players who are completely new to gaming.</li>
<li>Players who have played this specific game, but have put it down for an extended period and are returning - <em>especially</em> if it is a live-service game which may have changed considerably in the meantime.</li>
</ol>
<p>All of these players need some amount of guidance (or at least reminders) to understand how to play the game, but the amount and nature of guidance needed varies considerably between them. One might expect games to thus present a few different levels of optional guidance to cater to each group, but it’s typical for games to design their tutorials and onboarding for only the <em>first</em> group, providing little help for the “new” players of other kinds.</p>
<p>Bycer points out that from a sales perspective, neglecting these players is bizarre. Providing adequate onboarding is how you win over new players and grow your customer base.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“There are many indie games out there who have achieved cult status, but fail to grow despite that, primarily due to their onboarding. I cannot stress this enough–every game regardless of its genre and fanbase should always have the new player experience in mind. . . . Every person you turn away due to poor tutorials is a potential fan permanently lost. . . .</p>
<p>Remember: every game is somebody’s first, and thinking about your onboarding and tutorials along those lines will ultimately make you a better designer and give your game a better chance of being played."<br>
—Josh Bycer, <a href="https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-importance-of-the-new-player-s-experience"><cite>The Importance of the New Player’s Experience</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet many games don’t follow this advice. While it’s (<a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2010/01/hardcore-gamers-are-afraid-of-easy-mode/">mostly</a>) accepted that <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2009/11/in-praise-of-easy/">games should have easy modes</a>, this is only a partial solution. Lowering difficulty gives the player <em>more time</em> to learn and practice without the interruption of failure and the delay of punishment. But it doesn’t make the game’s interactions or systems any clearer or easier to learn.</p>
<p>The first thing any new player has to learn is how to <em>control</em> a game. But <em>which type</em> of new player they are has a huge effect on how much there is to learn. Anyone who’s played modern first-person 3D games on PC knows to move with WASD and aim with the mouse, but others can’t reasonably be expected to know this. Yet even some of the best-regarded games of this type fail to teach this information to their players, as YouTuber Razbuten discovered when his non-gamer wife tried <cite>Portal</cite>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[S]he isn’t looking around at all, and that is because she didn’t realize she was supposed to use the mouse. In fairness, the instructions at the start explain how to move and how to pick things up, but they do assume that players will just know to use the mouse to look around. Given that she doesn’t spend her free time watching me play games on my computer, why would she?"<br>
—Razbuten, <a href="https://youtu.be/ax7f3JZJHSw?t=354"><cite>What Games Are Like For Someone Who Doesn’t Play Games</cite></a> at 5:54</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For veteran players who have internalized the control methods of modern gaming, it’s easy to forget how <a href="http://www.duelinganalogs.com/comic/guest-strip-by-ross-nover/">complex and intimidating they can be</a> and how much new players have to learn just to be able to play at <em>all</em> before they have the foundation required to focus on playing <em>well</em>. But you can remind yourself what that’s like by trying a game with a control method totally unlike what you’re used to - such as moving from handheld controllers to dance pads to play <cite>Dance Dance Revolution</cite>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If you’ve never played DDR before, the process is pretty simple. It’s basically Guitar Hero that you play with your feet. . . . Your feet don’t move as freely as your thumbs, and you have to contend with annoying stuff like gravity that will humiliate you if you’re so busy pressing buttons with your feet that you forget to use them to keep the floor away from your ass. . . .</p>
<p>…[T]he really interesting thing about DDR is how it requires learning everything from scratch. This is what it feels like to be a completely new gamer and have nothing on which to build. . . . Stripped of all of your dual shock controller experience, you can once again discover something you likely haven’t felt since childhood: A complete inability to react in a sensible manner, even if you know what you <strong>want</strong> to do. . . . After a good DDR stumble you’ll be able to see how a newcomer ends up bumping into walls and aiming at the floor in your typical shooter and how they can die in the tutorial on easy mode. . . . When [you] stagger away and the game taunts [you] for being a failure [you] can see how much fun gaming is without an easy mode for people trying to learn."<br>
—Shamus Young, <a href="https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=8417"><cite>Dance Dance Revolution: Learning To Push Buttons</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, experienced PC gamers and skilled <cite>DDR</cite> players don’t need to be interrupted by explanations and tips for things they already know. Invasive “help” from a game can be disruptive and obnoxious to a skilled player.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Every stage [in <em>Super Mario Galaxy</em>] has a host of talking animals on hand to present you with not-so-subtle hints re: your objectives and how you’re supposed to accomplish them, whether you ask for these hints or not. [One stage more than halfway through the game] is a particularly obnoxious offender. You get in the water, right, and you’re swimming, right? It’s a hell of a long distance to swim. The far shore is way out there. Anyway, you get about halfway there, and a penguin glides by in the water, literally unavoidable. When he gets close enough to you, a huge text box pops out flagrantly onto the screen:</p>
<p>‘PRESS THE A BUTTON TO SWIM!’</p>
<p>Am I not already swimming? . . . [T]here is a chance that the player is not pressing the A button to swim. See, in <em>Super Mario Galaxy</em>, it’s possible to swim <em>very, very slowly</em> by simply tilting the analog stick. . . . How do we solve this? By telling every player, regardless of his current course of action, that he can press the A button to swim faster (even if he is swimming as fast as he can)?"<br>
—Tim Rogers, <a href="https://kotaku.com/stop-telling-me-what-to-do-5354035"><cite>Stop Telling Me What To Do!</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>A one-size-fits-all approach either leaves newbies confused or veterans annoyed. This is similar to the problem that a single flat difficulty level leaves unskilled players frustrated or skilled ones bored. We solve that second problem by having multiple difficulty levels for a game. Why not solve the first problem by having multiple difficulty levels <em>for a game’s UI?</em></p>
<p>Different players - or even the same player at different times - need different amounts of information. Some people made fun of <cite>The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword</cite> for having an on-screen Wiimote diagram with labeled buttons cluttering the screen with a reminder of all the controls, but this is actually a great example of doing things right - because <a href="http://www.writingfordesigners.com/?p=17499">this diagram is optional</a>. New or lapsed players (and even <cite>Zelda</cite> veterans would be new to this particular control scheme) could leave it on while learning or remembering the controls, and then turn it off once it became just a distraction. It’s essentially hard and easy mode for controller reminders.</p>
<p>And just as some games have ways to control their difficulty through gameplay rather than through out-of-game menus, it’s also possible to control UI complexity through gameplay.</p>
<p>As noted by Sebastian Long, the first few hours of <cite>Animal Crossing: New Horizons</cite> see the player using a variety of tools that must be swapped between using a simple but inefficient inventory menu. It isn’t until a bit later that the player gains access to the quick-select Tool Ring, which makes this faster and easier.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It’s a slightly laborious process to open the in-game inventory, move the cursor to your desired tool with the d-pad, and double-tap to ‘hold’. . . And so, when the in-game shop is constructed, it’s a welcome surprise to find a purchasable <strong>‘Tool Ring’</strong>: a radial quick-select menu for speedy access to those essential tools."<br>
—Sebastian Long, <a href="https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/should-players-buy-their-own-ui-"><cite>Should Players Buy Their Own UI?</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>So why does <cite>New Horizons</cite> force the player to use the arguably-inferior inventory screen for a while before offering up the Tool Ring? To avoid overwhelming the player. The inventory is one of the game’s most complex and abstract interfaces, and this approach guarantees the player will have time to get used to it before the Tool Ring can add a new layer of complexity and abstraction on top of it. As Long <a href="https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/should-players-buy-their-own-ui-">puts it</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Delaying the addition of complex ideas can also empower teams to introduce more complexity than might otherwise have been tolerated or appropriate for a given audience, had it been introduced all-at-once.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As a veteran player, I would have been fine starting with the Tool Ring, but I can easily imagine less-experienced players appreciating the gentle introduction of mechanics and UI conventions. The game starts you on easy mode for the tool selection UI, and then lets you opt into hard mode. It’s a solid compromise and if anything, <cite>New Horizons</cite> doesn’t go nearly far enough with this idea - most aspects of the UI are kept simple forever, resulting in many repeated actions becoming incredibly tedious (and fans have put together <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auTi3stuL5M">demo</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLqka2zD0P4">videos</a> showing off more advanced interfaces that you <em>can’t</em> buy).</p>
<p>A game’s UI sits between the player and the game’s internal world and rules. For skilled players, it’s a rich source of useful information and an elegant toolset for communicating actions back into the game. For new players, it’s a barrier that must be overcome in order to gain access to the actual game underneath. Nobody can learn or enjoy a game while they are still struggling with the interface.</p>
<p>In a perfect world, UIs would adjust to the player’s needs and provide the right amount of onboarding, reminders, assistance, and complexity over time to allow players to get into the game and have a good time with it. This way, it’d be much easier to win over new players - of any category - without annoying anyone else.</p>
<aside class="extra"><p style="font-style:italic;margin-top:4em;">Want more? This article has <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2020/09/easy-and-hard-modes-for-ui/extra/">EXTRA CONTENT</a> available.</p></aside>
https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/08/forced-playstyles/2019-08-29T08:00:00-07:002019-08-29T08:00:00-07:00<p>When we play games for fun, we often need a goal system to shepherd us along. This is what makes it a “game” instead of a “toy” - the goals direct the player toward particular experiences. In most cases, the game designer tries to make the experience of achieving those goals enjoyable (though there are <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2012/12/tropes-and-trolls-when-the-game-is-not-what-you-think-it-is/">deliberate subversions</a> of this as well). But since games are an interactive medium, the designer can only give the player a set of tools and suggest how to use them in ways that will be fun. It’s up to the player to decide what to actually do.</p>
<p>This presents a problem - the player may choose to use those tools in a different and less-fun way if it seems to be a more effective way to reach the game’s goals. As Greg McClanahan put it in his fantastic post <a href="https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/achievement-design-101">Achievement Design 101</a>, “What game designers in general often seem to ignore is that when players are presented a goal, their first inclination is to devise the most <em>efficient</em> (not necessarily the most fun) means of reaching that goal. . . . Show the player the end point, and that player will take the quickest and easiest route, regardless of whatever path the game intended for him to take.”</p>
<figure>
<a href="http://www.awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=120318">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/08/forced-playstyles/housebroken.png" alt="Awkward Zombie comic about Sora getting Winnie the Pooh out of Rabbit's house by destroying the house instead of playing Rabbit's minigame." />
</a>
<figcaption>
<p>
<a href="http://www.awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=120318">
http://www.awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=120318
</a>
</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Andrew Yoder’s article <a href="https://andrewyoderdesign.blog/2019/08/04/the-door-problem-of-combat-design/">The Door Problem of Combat Design</a> examines this issue through the lens of level design in first-person shooters. You can build an awesome combat arena, but if you aren’t careful the gameplay incentives can cause the player to use the doorway into the arena as a choke point for a safer but less satisfying encounter. Yoder summarizes the problem this way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“. . . I invite a friend to playtest. My friend walks along the hallway, enters the arena, and alerts the monsters, all according to plan. Then things go wrong. Instead of fighting in the arena, my friend steps back into the hall and fights from the doorway as the enemies funnel in. Instead of a dynamic gun ballet of dodged projectiles and swirling destruction, my friend has turned my level into a shooting gallery: dull, safe, and slow.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The rest of the <a href="https://andrewyoderdesign.blog/2019/08/04/the-door-problem-of-combat-design/">article</a> suggests several clever ways to modify the level design to actually change the player’s incentives and draw them into the arena and toward the more interesting experience. As Yoder puts it, “If I want my friend to fight in the arena, I need to change the level geometry so the space is more positive and inviting than fighting from the door.”</p>
<p>A less sophisticated designer might be inclined to just <em>block off</em> the option they don’t want the player to take. For example, <a href="https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/108549-blog-the-door-problem-of-combat-design/?tab=comments#comment-2021620">this forum comment</a> in response to Yoder’s article: “Or just, y’know, force him to move forward a bit before you spring the monsters and make the door shut behind him so he can’t just back the hell up.” And yes, there’s a sense in which this is the easiest solution to the problem, but it’s also maybe the <em>worst</em> solution to the problem.</p>
<p>This sort of approach is what I think of as <em>forcing a playstyle.</em> It’s making design choices to prevent or discourage certain player behavior in order to require or encourage different behavior - regardless of what the rest of the design incentivizes. It can look like the simplest way to fix a design that encourages unfun behavior, but it doesn’t actually fix it. The design still encourages that behavior - the player is just <em>prevented from or punished for doing what the design encourages them to do</em> which is <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/glossary/game-design/#incoherent-design">incoherent design</a> and a recipe for frustration.</p>
<p>That’s the first point about forced playstyles I want to underline: <strong>blocking off play options without changing incentive structures is incoherent design and causes frustration.</strong> It steers players into a wall.</p>
<figure>
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/08/forced-playstyles/coyote.jpg" alt="Wile E. Coyote about to run into a wall with a painted-on tunnel entrance." />
</figure>
<p>If your first-person shooter punishes mistakes and makes close combat highly risky, the player is encouraged to act cautiously and make use of defensible choke points like hallways. If the player carefully approaches the doorway to a combat arena and is suddenly forced through it and it slams shut behind them, or they proceed into an empty room and then suddenly enemies teleport in, not only does that take away the player’s ability to choose their own experience, it is likely to reduce immersion and feel like the game is cheating. If the player then gets overwhelmed by enemies and fails, it won’t feel like their loss was entirely their own fault - they were <em>trying</em> to be careful and weren’t allowed to be.</p>
<p>Let’s take another look at the problem the designer is trying to solve. Recall Yoder’s summary: “Instead of a dynamic gun ballet of dodged projectiles and swirling destruction, my friend has turned my level into a shooting gallery: dull, safe, and slow.” This framing <em>assumes</em> that the shooting gallery isn’t fun (or at least is much less fun than the intended arena combat). But fun isn’t an objective quality of the game - it’s dependent on what the player enjoys, and different players prefer different playstyles. What about players who enjoy finding clever ways to minimize risk and maximize their control over outcomes? For example, in the <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20645914">Hacker News thread</a> about Yoder’s article, one commenter <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20663286">said</a>, “I remember playing the entirety of Doom, and IIRC, Doom II, in a careful, methodical manner, and I never found it ‘boring’.”</p>
<p>This complicates questions of fun and of incentive structures: different players have different <em>internal</em> incentives steering them to find fun in different ways. For large differences in taste, we can simply direct players to different games or different genres - there’s no change you could feasibly make to the level design of a first-person shooter to make it enjoyable to someone who only likes visual novels. For smaller differences, we can provide different game modes - <em>Minecraft</em> has both Creative and Survival modes because the underlying structure of the game can supply valuable experiences to similar-but-distinct audiences with relatively minor tweaks.</p>
<p>But when differences in taste get small enough, they can become invisible. If you love first-person shooters because they let you overcome odds through crazy high-risk action, it’s easy to forget that other players might love those same games for the experience of overcoming those same odds through preparation and caution. It’s easy to forget that the same exact content can be enjoyed through different but equally-valid playstyles. And if a game designer forgets that, they can be tempted to slap a roadblock in front of anyone trying to play their first-person shooter in a slow and cautious way, even though that’s what some players would actually prefer to do.</p>
<p>That’s the second point about forced playstyles I want to underline: <strong>blocking off play options reduces player agency and shuts out part of the audience’s preferred experience.</strong> It tells players they are only allowed to enjoy the game the way the <em>designer</em> prefers.</p>
<figure>
<a href="https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/09/02">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/08/forced-playstyles/self-improvement.jpg" alt="Penny Arcade comic about how Deus Ex: Revolution lets you build non-combat characters and then forces you into direct combat situations." />
</a>
<figcaption>
<p>
<a href="https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/09/02">
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/09/02
</a>
</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Forcing a playstyle blocks off approaches that the player could otherwise have chosen. Because the designer feared that a player might play in a way they wouldn’t enjoy, the player who <em>wants</em> to play that way is no longer allowed to. This can enhance the experience of the first player, but at the cost of damaging the experience of the second player.</p>
<p>Giving the player freedom to select their own experience means some of those players will choose <em>not</em> to play in the way the designer thinks is the most fun. That can be scary for a designer who’s trying to give players the best possible experience. But the player who genuinely wants a different experience than the one the designer has in mind? They can’t be forced into enjoying the designer’s intended path by blocking off the others. Blocking paths off instead of making the intended path more appealing just reduces a game’s audience by turning away the people who prefer those paths.</p>
<p>If you don’t like the way people are playing your game, you have a few options. You can do the quick and easy thing and wall off the behavior you don’t like, forcing your intended playstyle. But if you don’t otherwise change the design, now you’re just <em>sending players into a wall</em> which is guaranteed to cause frustration and cut off an enjoyable experience for the players who <em>genuinely prefer</em> playing the blocked-off way.</p>
<p>Instead, you could do <a href="https://andrewyoderdesign.blog/2019/08/04/the-door-problem-of-combat-design/">what Yoder does</a>: dig in, understand why players make the choices they do, and modify your design so that they’ll be encouraged to what they’ll find the most fun. This isn’t easy - Yoder has to dive deep into the question of what level design in a first-person shooter is <em>for</em> and look closely at how his level interacts with the game’s incentives on a granular level. But this enables him to find and fix the real problem, resulting in a level that looks a lot more fun to actually play - without taking any agency away from the player or doing anything that feels unfair.</p>
<p>As the designer, your job isn’t to make the player do something. It’s to make them <em>want</em> to.</p>
<aside class="extra"><p style="font-style:italic;margin-top:4em;">Want more? This article has <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/08/forced-playstyles/extra/">EXTRA CONTENT</a> available.</p></aside>
https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/2019-06-17T00:00:00-07:002019-06-17T00:00:00-07:00<h3 id="rhythm-games-are-for-flow">Rhythm Games are For Flow</h3>
<p>Why do people play rhythm games?</p>
<p>I don’t speak for everyone, but based on the comments I could find online, I think a lot of people share my reason: Rhythm games let us lose ourselves in music, and that feels good.</p>
<p>Musicians will tell you: when things are going well, making music puts you in a euphoric state of complete absorption. You are no longer aware of your own self as a separate entity; you’re one with the music. An anonymous composer put it this way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as though you almost don’t exist. I have experienced this time and again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching it in a state of awe and wonderment. And [the music] just flows out of itself.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This quote was provided by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXIeFJCqsPs">TED talk</a> on “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)">flow</a>”. Flow is a popular term in games analysis, but in case you haven’t come across it before, here’s a brief summary: “flow” is a term coined and popularized by Csikszentmihalyi to refer to a particular mental and emotional state of being “in the zone”. It’s a form of focus that allows for continual high-level performance without conscious thought. Researchers studying this state in musicians have described it as “effortless attention.”</p>
<p>Flow feels great, but it generally requires a high level of skill. Learning to play a musical instrument well enough to enter a flow state takes a lot of effort, and many of us don’t want to or can’t afford to spend our limited time and energy on this. And for those of us in that position, rhythm games provide another way to achieve flow with a much lower barrier to entry.</p>
<video class="gifv center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/rock-band-3-gameplay.jpg" autoplay muted loop playsinline>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/rock-band-3-gameplay.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/rock-band-3-gameplay.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/rock-band-3-gameplay.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
<p>Some games like <cite>Guitar Hero</cite> or <cite>Rock Band</cite> simulate the playing of actual instruments, allowing the player to also <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2010/02/pretending-to-rock-fake-artificial-and-valuable-achievement/">fantasize about being a real-life rock star</a>. But this isn’t necessary for creating flow, and many rhythm games take a more abstract approach. As long as the player’s actions match the rhythm, the player can get lost in the music even if what they’re doing doesn’t look like any real-life musical activity. <!--P4D footage here --></p>
<p>After all, sheet music is already an abstract visual representation of music. Sight-reading sheet music is a matter of parsing visual cues and performing the right motions with the right timing on a musical instrument. It’s not that different from parsing on-screen visual cues and performing the right motions with the right timing on a game controller. The connection is easy to see in games like <cite>Rock Band</cite> where the cues resemble scrolling sheet music, but it’s still the same in other games like <cite>Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Future Tone</cite> where the cues don’t look like any sheet music that could exist on paper. These cues may be abstract, but they still represent specific actions that must be taken at the right time.</p>
<video class="gifv center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/hatsune-miku-cues.jpg" autoplay muted loop playsinline>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/hatsune-miku-cues.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/hatsune-miku-cues.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/hatsune-miku-cues.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
<p>Other games may use other metaphors, like <cite>Bit.Trip Runner</cite> where the cues resemble an auto-running platformer. You still have to recognize what action is implied by each cue and perform it at the right time - it’s just that the cues are things like rocks which imply the action of jumping over them. Seeing an approaching rock means to hit the jump button at the right time, just like seeing an approaching musical note can mean to hit the right piano key at the right time.</p>
<video class="gifv center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/btr-rocks.jpg" autoplay muted loop playsinline>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/btr-rocks.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/btr-rocks.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/btr-rocks.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
<p>So, while a game controller is much easier to get the hang of than most musical instruments and the cues of rhythm games tend to be less complicated than those for actual music, playing a rhythm game can tap into the same principles that create flow in actual music-making. You can lose yourself in a rhythm game in basically the same way you can lose yourself in a musical performance. Flow is flow, regardless of where you find it.</p>
<p>But that does mean that finding it requires the same conditions. There are a few things that researchers agree you need in order to create and maintain flow. Researchers may group and describe them somewhat differently, but these are the basic ideas:</p>
<ol>
<li>Clear goals</li>
<li>Immediate and clear feedback</li>
<li>Challenge that matches skill</li>
</ol>
<p>Imagine a musician sight-reading a new piece. It’s within their ability to play, but unfamiliar and somewhat difficult so it requires focus. They don’t have time to <em>think</em> about all the notes they’re seeing on the page - the song keeps going, so they have to respond immediately to each note as it comes. They hear the notes as they play them, and make adjustments on the fly if something sounds off. This process is faster than conscious thought - it’s basically automatic. This is effortless attention. This is flow.</p>
<p>Video games can provide these same factors and create a similar flow experience. Their interactive nature means that they can provide immediate feedback to the player’s actions, and multiple difficulty settings let challenge be adjusted to match skill. But some rhythm games stumble a bit with readability and present unclear goals as a result. Even if the feedback and challenge are tuned perfectly, unclear goals will destroy flow, so readability absolutely shouldn’t be neglected. Let’s take a look at a few ways I’ve seen this go wrong.</p>
<h3 id="failure-mode-unexplained-cues">Failure Mode: Unexplained Cues</h3>
<p>Remember our sight-reading musician? They’re playing a new piece, are deep in flow, and having a great time. Each note in their sheet music presents a goal - to perform the right action with the right timing to create the sound the note represents. Suppose that suddenly in the middle of the song, mixed in with the rest of the notes, there’s a symbol the musician has never seen before.</p>
<p>Before this point, the notation has been standard, the sheet music has been readable, and the goals have been clear. But this new symbol is not standard, the musician doesn’t know how to read it, and the goal it presents isn’t clear. The musician can’t proceed automatically with effortless attention - they have to engage conscious thought and try to figure out what the symbol means, breaking their flow.</p>
<p>This is true even if the actual meaning of the symbol turns out to be simple and easily accomplished. It doesn’t matter whether the goal is easy if it isn’t clear. The musician won’t be able to maintain flow on songs that use this new symbol until they learn and internalize that symbol and can respond to it without conscious thought.</p>
<p>This situation isn’t common with sheet music which has had the same basic notation for several hundred years. But rhythm games don’t have standard notation to lean on. Like most video games, they need to teach the player what their own cues mean. The player needs to know how to read the cues in order for the goals to be clear and for flow to be possible. Tutorials in rhythm games are like learning to read musical notation. Once the player has been taught, they should be able to sight-read the game’s levels just as musicians can sight-read sheet music.</p>
<p>But in practice, that’s not always the case. Let’s take an example from <cite>Aaero</cite>, a rhythm shooting game. The tutorial explains how to maneuver the ship to follow curving rails and how to target and destroy enemies. These mechanics are easy to understand and after a bit of practice they become automatic. After completing the tutorial, most players can probably get through the first couple songs in a satisfying state of flow.</p>
<p>But then <cite>Aaero</cite> starts using cues it never taught to the player. The third song begins with moving barriers that damage the player’s ship if they don’t fly to the right place - if that happens a few times, they fail the song and must start over. But how is the player supposed to know what the right place is? There’s nothing like this in the tutorial, and the barriers don’t leave much time to react.</p>
<video class="gifv center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/aaero-crusher.jpg" autoplay muted loop playsinline>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/aaero-crusher.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/aaero-crusher.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/aaero-crusher.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
<p>It turns out that the colored lights around the perimeter are the cue. Red lights indicate barriers that will block the player and blue lights indicate barriers that won’t, so the ship needs to be positioned at the intersection of the lines implied by the blue lights.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/aaero-crusher-hint_hu31a63621c180ece1a59edbc9e6e738cc_108280_640x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Screenshot of barrier with implied lines and safe flight zone drawn in." />
</figure>
<p>Once explained, it’s easy enough to understand, but nothing in the game explains it. These barriers are like the unfamiliar symbol that stopped our hypothetical musician from sight-reading their sheet music - and similarly, the barriers make it impossible to sight-read <cite>Aaero</cite>. The player can’t respond automatically and must step back and figure out what the cue means.</p>
<p>For a rhythm game to be readable, it needs to explain its cues to the player <em>before</em> testing on them.</p>
<h3 id="failure-mode-ambiguous-cues">Failure Mode: Ambiguous Cues</h3>
<p>Let’s go back to our sight-reading musician. Suppose they’ve learned all the symbols their sheet music uses, including the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_(music)">sharp</a> symbol which normally indicates a note being a half-step higher. But it turns out that in <em>this</em> sheet music, a sharp actually means a half-step <em>lower</em> if it appears in an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpeggio">arpeggio</a>.</p>
<p>Even though the musician knows everything required to play the song correctly, it would still be difficult to sight-read. Whenever they see a sharp, they have to fight their previously-trained instinct to automatically interpret it as a higher note and look at the surrounding notes to see whether it actually needs to be played as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_(music)">flat</a>. They might eventually be able to make this an automatic response, but it’d be difficult and in the meantime just seeing a sharp can break their flow.</p>
<p>Again, sheet music in real life doesn’t really do this, but some games do. Let’s take an example from <cite>Bit.Trip Runner</cite>’s sequel, <cite>Runner2</cite>. <cite>Runner2</cite> does a good job avoiding the “unexplained cues” failure mode by introducing abilities in short tutorials at the beginnings of early levels. The player is taught how to use each ability, shown what cues prompt the use of that ability, and given the chance to practice using the ability in response to appropriate cues. Later on, these cues will appear mixed in with other cues as part of the game’s regular challenge. By that time, the player has hopefully internalized the meaning of the cues so they can respond automatically and maintain flow. Each cue is used throughout the game, and although levels are grouped into worlds that each have their own visual theme, the cues use consistent iconography and have identical behavior. Once the player is taught to slide under that fireball in world one, they know to slide under fireballs in later worlds as well.</p>
<video class="gifv center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner2-fireball-slide.jpg" autoplay muted loop playsinline>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner2-fireball-slide.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner2-fireball-slide.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner2-fireball-slide.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
<p>But then something funny happens. After sliding under fireballs for many levels, a fireball comes along while the player character is riding a rail. The rail slopes downward, so the fireball is actually below the player character when it appears. If the player tries to go under the fireball, they’ll collide with another obstacle. Instead, and opposite to every fireball so far encountered, the player needs to jump over it.</p>
<video class="gifv center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner2-fireball-rail.jpg" autoplay muted loop playsinline>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner2-fireball-rail.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner2-fireball-rail.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner2-fireball-rail.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
<p>This may seem like a minor quibble, but the game has broken its own rules and its implicit promise that the same cues will always require the same actions. A fireball <em>usually</em> means “slide” but sometimes it means “jump.” Just like the musician couldn’t react automatically to sharps anymore, the <cite>Runner2</cite> player can’t react automatically to fireballs anymore. Now they have to consider the environment - are there height changes such that the meaning of the fireball is reversed?</p>
<p>The fireball cue no longer presents a clear goal, but an ambiguous one. To read it, the player must focus on other details they were previously taught to ignore. Fireballs now require conscious evaluation, breaking flow.</p>
<p>The next sequel, <cite>Runner3</cite>, adds even more ambiguity. That game introduces the slide move in its third level, teaching the player to use it to go under a series of wooden structures.</p>
<!-- level 1-3 starts at 00:23:50 -->
<video class="gifv center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-3-slide.jpg" autoplay muted loop playsinline>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-3-slide.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-3-slide.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-3-slide.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
<p>More wooden structures like these recur in the next several levels as obstacles to be slid under. They are a clear and consistent cue for using the slide move. That’s all well and good.</p>
<p>Then in the ninth level, <cite>Runner3</cite> introduces a new move: the double-jump. At first this seems fine; it’s just a way to cross particularly long gaps or go over particularly tall obstacles. But then the game presents one of the wooden structures the player has previously needed to slide under - with a gold collectible on top of it.</p>
<!-- level 1-9 starts at 01:18:53 -->
<video class="gifv center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-9-box.jpg" autoplay muted loop playsinline>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-9-box.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-9-box.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-9-box.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
<p>Looking at <em>just</em> this, everything still seems fine. It’s clear that the player is supposed to double-jump over the structure and collect the gold. The cue is readable and the player can respond automatically. The problem is that - just like with the fireballs - this <em>inverts</em> the meaning of a previously-established cue. Up to this point, the game has consistently presented wooden structures as an obstacle to be slid under, and now suddenly the player is obliged to jump over them.</p>
<p>However, it’s actually much worse than the fireballs in <cite>Runner2</cite>. In that case, the player had to be vigilant to look for height changes around fireballs to know the proper response. But in <cite>Runner3</cite>, the wooden structures the player is meant to jump over are at the <em>same height</em> as the ones they are meant to slide under. By sending the player over them when it’s still possible to go under, the game is emphasizing that the double-jump means that the player now has <em>choices</em>.</p>
<p>A <em>lot</em> of the obstacles that previously needed to be slid under can be double-jumped over. The player can even go back to previous levels and jump over those obstacles if they want to. That includes the wooden structures, but also floating enemies and <cite>Runner3</cite>’s equivalent to the fireballs. All of these obstacles are now <em>ambiguous</em> cues - they can all be avoided by going over <em>or</em> under them - and sometimes, but not <em>all</em> the time, there will be a correct answer.</p>
<video class="gifv center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-9-donuts.jpg" autoplay muted loop playsinline>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-9-donuts.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-9-donuts.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-9-donuts.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
<p>Every time the player comes across one of these obstacles, they don’t just have to figure out whether it’s slidable or jumpable - it’s usually both, and the player has to figure out what the consequences will be for each approach. There isn’t always gold sitting on top of or under it to make things clear. The player can’t respond automatically to each cue because the cue is no longer readable on its own. Its meaning changes with context, so the player has to look further ahead and consciously evaluate what’s coming or play the level multiple times so they <em>know</em> what’s coming.</p>
<p>For a rhythm game to be readable, its cues need to have consistent and unambiguous meanings that don’t change with external context.</p>
<h3 id="failure-mode-misleading-cues">Failure Mode: Misleading Cues</h3>
<p>Let’s check back in with our sight-reading musician. They’ve internalized all the cues in their sheet music, including the ones that can mean multiple different things. They can handle anything the song might throw at them. But now suppose that in some parts of their sheet music, the printed notes actually <em>move around</em> when the musician is about to play them.</p>
<p>At this point, the sheet music is <em>actively fighting</em> the musician. Even if they are fully versed in every symbol used by the song, it’s nearly impossible to sight-read, because some of the information it contains is outright false. The musician has no real choice but to play the song and memorize which notes move around with very little chance of getting them right the first time.</p>
<p>Of course, notes don’t move around in printed sheet music. But sometimes cues in rhythm games act this way. Here’s an example from the very first level of <cite>Runner3</cite>, when the player is still learning the basic vocabulary of the game. After the player runs onto this platform, it suddenly drops down and then tilts to an angle.</p>
<!-- level 1-1 starts at 02:58, first platform drop around 04:30 -->
<video class="gifv center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-1-platform.jpg" autoplay muted loop playsinline>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-1-platform.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-1-platform.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-1-platform.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
<p>The player couldn’t possibly predict either of these movements and they don’t have much time to notice that the end of the platform has ended up <em>slightly below</em> the next part of the path. There’s no obvious gap to make it clear the player should jump, but if the player <em>doesn’t</em> jump they’ll collide with the path and get sent back to the latest checkpoint. I’d expect the vast majority of players don’t jump on their first playthrough of this level - it’s not a clear goal since the cue is obscured by the sudden movements.</p>
<p>It’s a dirty trick for the game to play in its first level, but on the plus side I guess it’s good that the game shows its nature and intentions so early. <cite>Runner3</cite> keeps using unpredictable changes as a source of unfair difficulty, through things like moving platforms and sudden shifts in camera angle. <!-- 1-4 best example? --> A particularly brutal example comes in the game’s seventh level, which teaches the player to use spring pads for high jumps. After a few demonstrations of using the springs to cross gaps or gain altitude, the player comes to a cliff. Below the cliff is a platform with a spring pad, and the player might naturally expect to drop down and bounce back up, but - surprise! - <em>just</em> before the player reaches the cliff, with not nearly enough time for the player to react, the platform shoots up to the player’s height, and they’ll crash into its side if they didn’t somehow know they were supposed to jump.</p>
<!-- level 1-7 starts at 1:01:26, moment at around 1:01:55 -->
<video class="gifv center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-7-cliff.jpg" autoplay muted loop playsinline>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-7-cliff.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-7-cliff.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/runner3-1-7-cliff.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
<p>This kind of “gotcha” moment has no place in a rhythm game. It’s one thing to use surprises to slap the wrist of a careless player in a game like <cite>Dark Souls</cite>, but there is no way to play <cite>Runner3</cite> cautiously. The player character runs forward at constant speed regardless of the player’s input. In a game like <cite>Runner3</cite>, all that these surprises do is create trial-and-error gameplay by obscuring goals to the point where the player cannot reasonably achieve them without the extra information gained through failure. It’s a near-guaranteed loss of flow, as players can’t just look at what’s on the screen and respond automatically, and it keeps happening level after level.</p>
<p>I get the impression the creators wanted the game to be more visually interesting and to provide a lot of surprises and “wow” moments, but it ends up sacrificing readability to do so, resulting in a game that’s consistently impossible to sight-read.</p>
<p>For a rhythm game to be readable, its cues need to be presented in straightforward ways that don’t hide their meaning or deceive the player.</p>
<h3 id="getting-it-right-citebubsy-paws-on-firecite">Getting it Right: <cite>Bubsy: Paws on Fire!</cite></h3>
<p>As described above, <cite>Runner3</cite> is very difficult to read. But the good news is that the developer turned things around with their next game: <cite>Bubsy: Paws on Fire!</cite>. This is a game which plays like <cite>Runner</cite> but stars characters from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubsy">the <cite>Bubsy</cite> series</a>. And it’s enough of a refinement of the <cite>Runner</cite> formula that it ends up being a textbook example for doing readability <em>right</em> in a rhythm platformer.</p>
<p>The <cite>Runner</cite> games never really had a problem with tutorials or unexplained cues, but <cite>Paws on Fire!</cite> deserves credit for getting all of its tutorials out of the way very quickly. Each of the game’s four playable characters is simple and easy to understand, and all their abilities are taught in their first level. After that, the player is done learning what buttons do and the rest of the game is about applying those abilities in more difficult and interesting ways.</p>
<video class="gifv center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/bubsy-tutorial.jpg" autoplay muted loop playsinline>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/bubsy-tutorial.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/bubsy-tutorial.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/bubsy-tutorial.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
<p>Misleading cues aren’t really a thing either. The camera stays at a static angle, positioned to show the player what’s coming with plenty of time to react. And no parts of any stage suddenly move around before you get to them. What’s particularly interesting, though, is the way the game avoids ambiguous cues like <cite>Runner2</cite>’s fireballs or <cite>Runner3</cite>’s wooden structures.</p>
<p>At first glance, it may seem that <cite>Paws on Fire!</cite> has ambiguous cues - after all, it also includes obstacles that you can either go over or go under. But this time, <em>the obstacles aren’t the cues.</em> The collectibles are.</p>
<p>For example, one type of obstacle is a floating frog. Bubsy can jump onto these frogs, “pounce” through them, or avoid them completely. The player is never taught that the frog indicates a specific action. Instead, the pattern of collectible yarn balls <em>around</em> the frog makes it clear what the player should do.</p>
<video class="gifv center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/bubsy-frogs.jpg" autoplay muted loop playsinline>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/bubsy-frogs.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/bubsy-frogs.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/bubsy-frogs.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
<p>Each level of <cite>Paws on Fire!</cite> has one hundred fifty collectibles. That’s enough to show an ideal path through the entire level. The game’s cues thus indicate a <em>path</em> the player must follow by using the player character’s abilities, rather than mapping one-to-one to individual actions. Certain <em>patterns</em> suggest specific actions - an arc of collectibles suggests a jump while a row of them suggests a pounce - but ultimately the player just needs to be in the right places at the right times.</p>
<p>Obstacles can therefore be used in different ways throughout the game without creating any ambiguity. The player is trained early to follow the collectibles, and regardless of the obstacles that’s all they ever have to do - using the exact same abilities taught in the very first level. Even the game’s final level, which strings together difficult maneuvers above a floor of deadly saw blades, is still fundamentally about jumping and pouncing through patterns of yarn balls.</p>
<video class="gifv center" width="640" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/bubsy-difficult.jpg" autoplay muted loop playsinline>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/bubsy-difficult.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/bubsy-difficult.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/bubsy-difficult.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
<p>The levels of <cite>Bubsy: Paws on Fire!</cite> thus remain consistently readable even as they become quite difficult. Harder levels may take some practice to clear flawlessly, but the player can still sight-read those levels and easily understand what the goals are. The player can thus spend a <em>lot</em> of their play time in a flow state - and since that’s the point of a rhythm game, <cite>Bubsy: Paws on Fire!</cite> is arguably the best and most successful iteration of the <cite>Runner</cite> formula yet.</p>
<h3 id="reading-cues-should-be-the-easy-part">Reading Cues Should Be The Easy Part</h3>
<p>Real musical performances often require practice too. Just because you know how to read musical notation doesn’t mean you can play, say, <cite>The Flight of the Bumblebee</cite> on your first attempt. But the song is still readable. You could look at <a href="https://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtd.asp?ppn=MN0172905">the sheet music for <cite>The Flight of the Bumblebee</cite></a>, understand what it’s asking you to do, and know whether you’re up to the challenge. Similarly, you could look at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRDj1_5ekxg"><cite>Guitar Hero 3</cite>’s note chart for <cite>Through the Fire and Flames</cite></a>, understand what <em>it’s</em> asking you to do, and know whether you’re up to the challenge. To play these songs, you don’t need to memorize arbitrary surprises from cues that suddenly change meaning or become ambiguous - you need to improve your skill at performing the actions required by the cues. Understanding what you are being asked to do isn’t the hard part - <em>doing</em> it is.</p>
<p>This may seem like a subtle distinction, so let’s illustrate by comparing to a sight-reading musician again. But this time, let’s take Lieutenant Commander Data from <cite>Star Trek: The Next Generation</cite>. Data’s an android with perfectly accurate control over his own body, so precise physical movements aren’t difficult for him. With Data, the distinction is clear. Understanding what he’s being asked to do is the only part that <em>can</em> be hard. The <em>doing</em> it part is always trivial. Once he knows musical notation, he can sight-read and play <em>any</em> song.</p>
<div class="figure-row">
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/data-violin_hue959eb51bd5ff0b1f63b97394334a854_61027_240x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Data playing violin" />
</figure>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/data-oboe_hu49ea7b60f8ae6a963e9f820985bb40b2_53627_240x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Data playing oboe" />
</figure>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/data-guitar_hu611a6f8b1fb0ae895d82b8a2a1c9f8a4_82680_240x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Data playing guitar" />
</figure>
</div>
<p>It’s my argument that any well-designed rhythm game could also be sight-read by Data. Once he’s completed the tutorials, he should know everything he needs to know about the game’s cues and should be able to play every level or song perfectly on his first attempt. Any game for which this <em>isn’t</em> the case - where Data would sometimes fail because cues are ambiguous or misleading and thus cannot be sight-read - is not playing fair.</p>
<video class="gifv center" width="480" height="360" poster="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/data-slam.jpg" autoplay muted loop playsinline>
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/data-slam.webm" type="video/webm">
<source src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/data-slam.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<p>Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Here is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/video/data-slam.mp4">link to the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>
<p>That’s the bar that I think designers should have in mind when making rhythm games. Cues should be consistently readable, such that the challenge comes from executing the required actions in time, not deciphering them. Every time the player has to stop and think, every time the player has to learn through trial and error, and every time the player has to guess what the goal is, flow is destroyed and the player isn’t getting what they came for.</p>
<p>Rhythm games are at their best when the player doesn’t need to consider or choose their actions but can respond automatically to clear and consistent cues and lose themselves in the music. An unreadable rhythm game is a bad rhythm game.</p>
<aside class="extra"><p style="font-style:italic;margin-top:4em;">Want more? This article has <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/06/rhythm-and-readability/extra/">EXTRA CONTENT</a> available.</p></aside>
https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/03/go-beyond-intended-experiences/2019-03-18T00:00:00-07:002019-03-18T00:00:00-07:00<p>Games are designed to create particular mental and emotional states in their players. The <cite>Dark Souls</cite> games use difficulty to “<a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/dark-souls-3-hidetaka-miyazaki-interview">give players a sense of accomplishment by overcoming tremendous odds</a>”, <cite>Dead Rising</cite>’s replay-enforcing time limit and oddball weapon options <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070927193520/http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3152674&did=1">encourage humorous experimentation</a>, <cite>Far Cry 2</cite>’s unreliable weapons <a href="https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/11/20/why-far-cry-2-is-the-best-in-the-series/">force players to improvise in chaotic battles</a>, and so on. We call this the game’s “intended experience.”</p>
<p>Good games are those which successfully guide their players to worthwhile experiences, so the designer’s intent is key to a game’s quality. This leads some of us to conclude that designer intent should be elevated above player freedom - that players should be prevented from altering a game’s experience lest they ruin it for themselves.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Decisions like [<cite>Dark Souls</cite>’s difficulty level, <cite>Dead Rising</cite>’s time limit, and <cite>Far Cry 2</cite>’s jamming weapons] might be controversial, but if they’re an integral part of the experience that the developer is trying to create, then the player shouldn’t feel like they’re entitled to be able to mess with this stuff through options, modes, and toggles. Because that would screw with the developer’s intentions and could end up ruining the game in the long run."<br>
—Mark Brown, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NInNVEHj_G4"><cite>What Makes Celeste’s Assist Mode Special | Game Maker’s Toolkit</cite></a> (<a href="https://youtu.be/NInNVEHj_G4?t=22">at 22 seconds</a>) (to be fair, the rest of the video adds a lot of nuance to this position)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I <em>strongly</em> disagree with this. To me, the designer’s intent is the starting point and not the finish line. If we cling to it and discourage players from exploring any further, we rob it of most of its value. Here’s why.</p>
<h2 id="1-the-intent-is-sometimes-evil">1. The intent is sometimes evil.</h2>
<p>Game designers, as a rule, are not Santa Claus. While there are folks out there hand-crafting games for the good people of the world out of pure generosity, designers (and developers, and artists, and writers, and testers, and distributors, etc.) generally need to eat. Consequently, most games of note are products or services that are designed in part to make money.</p>
<p>There’s a common idea that some creators make money in order to make games while other creators make games in order to make money. The poster child for “make games to make money” is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Arts">Electronic Arts</a>, whose <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTLFNlu2N_M">well-documented love affair with loot boxes</a> came to a head with the <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kz3y99/star-wars-battlefront-ii-review">poorly-received</a> <cite>Star Wars Battlefront II</cite>.</p>
<figure class="right">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Battlefront_II_%282017_video_game%29">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/03/go-beyond-intended-experiences/star-wars-battlefront-ii_hubb8e2e0c963d682cb31a130342ae2db7_175789_250x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Cover art for Star Wars Battlefront II" />
</a>
</figure>
<p>When a player <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7cff0b/seriously_i_paid_80_to_have_vader_locked/">complained on Reddit</a> about the game’s exploitative structure and the fact that after paying $80 for the game it turned out that a character as iconic as Darth Vader was not available for play, a representative from EA defended the game with an appeal to designer intent: the <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7cff0b/seriously_i_paid_80_to_have_vader_locked/dppum98/">reply comment</a> opened with “The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes.”</p>
<p>So naturally, the community <del>rallied around EA’s vision and called the complainer an entitled whiner for rejecting the intended experience…</del></p>
<p><strong>Oh wait, no, my bad</strong> - they immediately turned the EA rep’s response into <a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/the-most-downvoted-comment-in-reddit-history-is-now-a-star-wars-battlefront-2-mod/">the most downvoted comment in Reddit history</a> and the backlash against the game was so strong that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Battlefront_II_(2017_video_game)#Government_responses">multiple governments got involved</a>.</p>
<p><cite>Star Wars Battlefront II</cite> makes it blindingly obvious that its designers don’t have the audience’s best interests at heart. And when the intended experience is clearly “the player opens their wallet again and shells out for loot boxes because otherwise it <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7c6bjm/it_takes_40_hours_to_unlock_a_hero_spreadsheet/">takes forty hours to unlock a single character</a>” we have no problem rejecting that intent. But most games aren’t anywhere near this blatant. There are a lot of gray areas.</p>
<p>What about games that use “<a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/glossary/game-design/#fun-pain">fun pain</a>” to encourage players to pay for otherwise-free experiences, thereby creating a form of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination">price discrimination</a> that allows whales to subsidize free players, meaning that <a href="https://youtu.be/PFUDEJ09kB0?t=1800">more people can experience the game than if it had a flat cost</a>? What about games that <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2010/12/doing-my-dailies-why-i-quit-wow-and-started-working-out/">create social obligation</a> to keep players involved, resulting in a stronger player base and opportunity for high-quality shared experiences? What about games that directly reward engagement to make players feel good about coming back <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/10/how-engagement-rewards-backfire-the-overjustification-effect-and-the-peak-end-rule/">whether they want to or not</a>?</p>
<p>How can we tell when the designer is actually trying to harm the audience for their own profit, versus when they’re just trying to do what they have to do to survive a crowded marketplace and share their art? Here’s a hint: it doesn’t actually matter. The motives don’t change the outcome. Regardless of why, the intended experience is designed to sacrifice some amount of player well-being for profit, directly through purchases or indirectly through engagement. In these cases, constraining ourselves to only follow designer intent is downright <em>bad</em> for us.</p>
<p>But okay, this is clearly a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man">straw man</a>, right? After all, the community <em>did</em> rally against <cite>Star Wars Battlefront II</cite>. Nobody’s out there saying the reason we shouldn’t have an easy mode in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy_Crush_Saga"><cite>Candy Crush Saga</cite></a> is to protect its artistic vision. The real conversation is about games designed to enrich the audience, not exploit them - even if those games must be sold for money. So if we <em>just</em> focus on games where we can be confident the designer isn’t trying to exploit the player, is it safe for us to privilege <em>those</em> artists' intent and discourage people from subverting it?</p>
<p>Well, no. Because:</p>
<h2 id="2-its-bad-accessibility">2. It’s bad accessibility.</h2>
<p><cite>Spyro Reignited Trilogy</cite>, a 2018 collection of remakes of the first three <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyro"><cite>Spyro the Dragon</cite> games</a>, launched with no subtitles for its cutscenes. When <a href="https://www.gamepitt.co.uk/theres-something-missing-from-the-spyro-reignited-collection/">challenged on this, an Activision spokesperson’s response</a> opened with “When [the developer] set out to make an awesome game collection, there were certain decisions that needed to be made throughout the process. The team remained committed to keep the integrity and legacy of Spyro that fans remembered intact.”</p>
<figure class="center">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyro_Reignited_Trilogy">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/03/go-beyond-intended-experiences/spyro-reignited-trilogy_hu301a0e3da32f862d7e95f93fa841e071_241598_500x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Cover art for Spyro Reignited Trilogy" />
</a>
</figure>
<p>This wasn’t a bug; it was a choice by the creators. So when some people complained about the omission, naturally the community <del>pointed out that reading subtitles would ruin the pacing of the dialog and distract from the animation and if you couldn’t hear the spoken dialog maybe the game just wasn’t for you…</del></p>
<p><strong>Oh wait, no, my bad</strong> - they <a href="https://kotaku.com/the-new-spyro-doesnt-have-subtitles-in-its-cutscenes-w-1830550020">ragged on Activision for sacrificing accessibility to save money</a> and hiding behind an <a href="https://www.mcvuk.com/business/activision-defends-deliberate-decision-not-to-subtitle-cutscenes-in-spyro-reignited-collection">arguably outright false</a> claim that there is no “industry standard” for subtitles, and four months after launch <a href="https://support.activision.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/Latest-Updates-for-Spyro-Reignited-Trilogy">subtitles were patched in</a>.</p>
<p>Even those of us with perfect hearing are aware that <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Spyro/comments/8afi6f/spyro_trilogy_subtitles/">deaf and hard-of-hearing people exist and like games too</a>. Even if we believe that the <em>ideal</em> way to experience <cite>Spyro</cite>’s cutscenes is with both sight and sound, we recognize that’s not actually an option for everyone - and it’s better to use a simple accommodation like subtitles to share a <em>similar</em> experience than to slam the door in the face of people who can’t have <em>exactly</em> the intended experience. As a community, we seem to understand that accessibility accommodations are about letting people <em>share</em> in the experience, even if on the surface they look like they <em>subvert</em> the experience.</p>
<p>Hearing impairment is easy to understand. A developer can pop in some earplugs and see that yeah, their game is hard to understand without subtitles when you can’t clearly hear what the characters are saying. Other barriers to accessibility are less well-known or harder to understand if you’ve never been faced with them. Even if a designer watches all of Mark Brown’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc38fcMFcV_vvWOhMDriBlVocTZ8mKQzR">“Designing for Disability” videos</a> and makes sure to handle everything listed there, that won’t make their game accessible to absolutely everyone who might want to play it.</p>
<p>One thing designers can do as a final safety net is to ensure that no player has to be blocked by the game’s challenges if they don’t want to be. As I’ve <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2009/11/in-praise-of-easy-lowering-the-barrier-to-entry/">written before</a>, optional easy modes or even the ability to skip sections of gameplay are valuable ways to let as many people as possible share the experience to some degree. In an ideal world, it would be possible for each player to just fix whatever it is about the game that’s specifically blocking them; but a world in which they can lower <em>general</em> difficulty enough to get by anyway - even if that’s lowering it all the way to zero - is still better than one in which they can’t play the game at all.</p>
<p>To be clear, I recognize that accommodations aren’t free. Not every designer can afford to focus on accessibility. My argument is that if you wouldn’t argue against subtitles to preserve designer intent, then you shouldn’t argue against Easy Mode for that reason either.</p>
<p>But come on, this is a straw man too, right? Accessibility is hard and people understand that accommodations make sense as a compromise where feasible. Nobody’s <em>really</em> saying that people with disabilities shouldn’t be able to play <cite>Dark Souls</cite>. So if we just focus on cases where accessibility concerns are solved or irrelevant (and the designer isn’t trying to exploit the player), can we safely appeal to designer intent and tell people not to violate it?</p>
<p>Still no. Here’s why:</p>
<h2 id="3-the-designer-doesnt-know-you">3. The designer doesn’t know you.</h2>
<p>We just talked about how game designers have to take the player’s physical capabilities into account to ensure a game can be experienced as intended and how that’s an impossible ideal since people have a huge range of physical capabilities. But this is actually true for <em>everything else</em> about the player, too. Most games are intended to be played by people the designer doesn’t know personally. That means the designer has to design for an imagined audience. Ideally, most players will overlap with the imagined audience in most ways. But any way a real player deviates from the imagined player adds risk that the game won’t be experienced as intended.</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_(video_game)"><cite>SOMA</cite></a> is a survival horror game released by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frictional_Games">Frictional Games</a> in 2015. The player character explores a mysterious facility, solving puzzles and learning about his situation while using stealth to avoid deadly monsters. Some players <a href="https://www.cgmagonline.com/2016/02/08/soma-better-without-enemies/">disliked the monsters and the effect they had on gameplay</a> and would have preferred experiencing the game’s story without them, but as game director Thomas Grip <a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/frictional-on-designing-somas-new-monster-free-safe-mode/">explained</a>, “The fear and tension that comes from those encounters are there in order to deliver a certain mood. The intention was to make sure players felt that this was a really unpleasant world to be in, and a lot of the game’s themes relied on evoking this.”</p>
<figure class="right">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_%28video_game%29">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/03/go-beyond-intended-experiences/soma_huc8efdf6ffe858af7e681642c8ae9a96b_40881_250x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Cover art for SOMA" />
</a>
</figure>
<p>When a modder subverted this intent by releasing a mod called “<a href="https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=560988617">Wuss Mode</a>” that prevented the monsters from attacking, the community <del>told him to suck it up and play the game right instead of trying to make it about himself…</del></p>
<p><strong>Oh wait, no, my bad</strong> - enough players preferred the modified experience that Wuss Mode became the most-subscribed mod for <cite>SOMA</cite> on Steam, and <a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/frictional-on-designing-somas-new-monster-free-safe-mode/">Frictional Games patched the game with an improved and official “Safe Mode” option with similar effects</a>.</p>
<p>Frictional wanted to create a certain mood of tension and fear, but <cite>SOMA</cite>’s original design didn’t create that mood in every player. Some players instead <a href="https://jphanderson.wordpress.com/2016/11/12/a-critique-of-soma/">found that the monsters “looked cool, not creepy” and that their AI resulted in them being “roaming inconveniences rather than scares”</a>. Simply put - people are different, and the same design can easily create very different experiences for different people. Adhering to a one-size-fits-all design philosophy and preventing players from tailoring their experience means that <em>fewer</em> players can get the intended experience. <cite>SOMA</cite> director Thomas Grip (the guy we just quoted about the intended experience) <a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/frictional-on-designing-somas-new-monster-free-safe-mode/">put it this way</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I’m all for users modding the experience to suit their needs. The monsters in the game are quite divisive and you could argue that Wuss Mode intends to fix a design flaw. If you think of it that way, I guess you could see the mod as a critique directed at me. But I have a hard time getting upset about that. I just really like it when people take things into their own hands like this.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Game designers can’t read your mind. They don’t know your skill level on any of the mechanics or challenges in their game. They don’t know what emotional reactions you’re going to have to their game’s content based on your experiences and associations. The designer may have an intended experience in mind, but they can’t know for sure what the game needs to provide to <em>create</em> that experience for any particular player. Why should the player privilege the designer’s <em>guess</em> over their own <em>self-knowledge?</em></p>
<p>But surely this is <em>also</em> a straw man, right? We understand that different groups of players have different cultural knowledge and different experiences with varying game genres. Nobody’s denying that every game has a target audience and some players are necessarily outside of that audience due to their tastes and skills. So if we just look at situations where we’re confident the player is in the right demographic to receive the game’s intended experience (and there are no accessibility concerns and the designer isn’t trying to exploit the player), <em>now</em> can we say that players should only experience the game as the designer intended?</p>
<p>Nope! Because of this:</p>
<h2 id="4-you-dont-know-the-designer">4. You don’t know the designer.</h2>
<p>A lot of the time, we can only guess what the intended experience even <em>is</em> in the first place. Unless the designer comes right out and says what they were going for, all we have is the game itself and we can’t read it without injecting our own values and biases. Maybe there’s something about the game that <em>we</em> really like, so we assume it was core to the designer’s intent - but in fact, it was arbitrary or downright misinterpreted.</p>
<p><cite>Katamari Damacy</cite> is a 2004 game in which the player character is tasked with rolling around a sticky ball to collect everyday objects into an ever-growing pile of assorted stuff until it’s suitable to be turned into a star. The game’s lighthearted quirkiness, colorful world, beautiful soundtrack, and simple-but-engaging gameplay made it a hit. <a href="https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-2/katamari-damacy/critic-reviews">Reviews</a> described it as “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20041019080555/http://www.etoychest.org/content.php?review.549">pure joy right from the start</a>”, having “<a href="https://gamecritics.com/erin-bell/review/">the ability to evoke a sense of wonder</a>”, or indeed “<a href="https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/r_katamaridamacy_ps2">the happiest game I’ve ever played</a>”.</p>
<figure class="right">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katamari_Damacy">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/03/go-beyond-intended-experiences/katamari-damacy_huc92546d6aa6b96fba7bdbf09981f74e1_220810_250x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Cover art for Katamari Damacy" />
</a>
</figure>
<p>But it turns out that game director Keita Takahashi had a very different intent. As <a href="https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/katamari-was-comment-on-consumerism">reported by Eurogamer</a>, Takahashi revealed at a 2009 Game Developers Conference that he’d created a world populated with fun objects for the player to collect as a cynical comment about society.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If there are few objects, I feel lonely. If there are more objects, they will make things more colourful. But when they’re rolled up, they’re gone. I felt empty. I feel the same way about the disposable society. I think I successfully expressed my cynical stance towards the consumption society by making Katamari - but still I felt empty when the objects were gone.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Since it was now public knowledge that <cite>Katamari Damacy</cite> was dark and cynical, <del>people felt terrible about accidentally having fun and immediately stopped playing the game and its sequels rather than trample on what they now knew to be Takahashi’s intent…</del></p>
<p><strong>Oh wait, no, my bad</strong> - the series kept going and even brought a remaster of the original to PC and Nintendo Switch in late 2018 which is <a href="https://www.metacritic.com/game/switch/katamari-damacy-reroll">scored in the eighties on Metacritic</a>.</p>
<p><cite>Katamari Damacy</cite> was popular for years before Takahashi revealed what he’d had in mind for it. While <a href="http://archives.insertcredit.com/reviews/katamari/">some players found loneliness at the game’s core</a>, it seems that most experienced the opposite, finding it <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20041216115827/http://www.xequted.com/article.php?subaction=showfull&id=1099564642&ucat=4&type=reviews">“like sitting in the same room as a happy, cheerful, and funny friend”</a>. None of these players were <em>wrong</em> - they could have argued with each other about which experience was the intended one, but <em>even now that we know</em> the game was supposed to be depressing that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of people were genuinely uplifted by it.</p>
<p>If a game’s intended experience can be so lost in translation that most players are left with the opposite emotions, doesn’t that mean the intent is <em>not</em> the true heart of the game? Doesn’t that mean it would be folly to appeal to that intent to decide how people should experience the game?</p>
<p>But come on, this is clearly <em>yet another</em> straw man, right? Obviously some creators fail to express their vision. Nobody’s saying that a designer’s <em>stated</em> intent is more important than <em>what the game actually is.</em> So if we look at cases where the intent is embodied clearly (and the player is set up to receive it correctly, and there are no accessibility concerns, and the designer isn’t trying to exploit the player), <em>now</em> can we <em>please</em> admit that the intended experience is more important than the player’s whims?</p>
<p>Haha, of course not. And here is why:</p>
<h2 id="5-its-needlessly-limiting">5. It’s needlessly limiting.</h2>
<p>Creation is collaborative and iterative.</p>
<p><cite>StarCraft</cite> and <cite>Warcraft III</cite> are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_strategy">real-time strategy</a> games released by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_Entertainment">Blizzard Entertainment</a> in 1998 and 2002 respectively. Each came with a powerful map editor allowing players to create their own custom scenarios. One modder used <cite>StarCraft</cite>’s editing tools to create a map titled <a href="https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Aeon_of_Strife_(map)"><cite>Aeon of Strife</cite></a> with gameplay very different from <cite>StarCraft</cite>’s standard - resembling more that of a particular mode in a 1998 game called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Cop:_LAPD"><cite>Future Cop: LAPD</cite></a>. This map was then converted for <cite>Warcraft III</cite> by another modder, with the new map being called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_the_Ancients"><cite>Defense of the Ancients</cite></a> (<cite>DotA</cite> for short).</p>
<p>Variations and improvements were added by a number of modders, <del>but since this was just a pileup of subversions of designer intent nobody paid much attention to the results…</del></p>
<p><strong>Oh wait, no, my bad</strong> - this directly caused the explosive popularization of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplayer_online_battle_arena">MOBA</a> genre, with one of the prominent modders joining <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation">Valve Corporation</a> and helping them release direct sequel <cite>Dota 2</cite> while another became the first hire at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Games">Riot Games</a> and helped them create spiritual successor <cite>League of Legends</cite> which for a time was <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2012/07/11/riot-games-league-of-legends-officially-becomes-most-played-pc-game-in-the-world/">the most-played PC game in North America and Europe</a>.</p>
<figure class="right">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Legends">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/03/go-beyond-intended-experiences/league-of-legends_hu5457919bdd3a081ce5d4f2b2d385ed1a_580546_250x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Cover art for League of Legends" />
</a>
</figure>
<p>This was only possible because of a spirit of playful experimentation and inventiveness. It’s because modders saw untapped potential in <cite>Future Cop: LAPD</cite>, in <cite>StarCraft</cite>, in <cite>Warcraft III</cite>, and even in each other’s work. If any link in that chain had been viewed as complete, closed, and final, we never would have gotten an incredibly popular set of games.</p>
<p>No more straw men. This is my true objection. Even if you’re sure you’re sure you’re correctly understanding and receiving a benevolently-designed experience - why <em>stop</em> there? Why elevate a designer above yourself when it comes to shaping your own experiences?</p>
<p>I’m not saying game design is easy - quite the opposite. The space of all possible designs is <em>huge</em> and most potential games wouldn’t be <a href="https://i.imgur.com/hvQ49ST.gif">any fun at all</a>. Designers are explorers who venture out into that space in search of interesting and enjoyable experiences. A finished game is a beacon in design space, pointing to a good spot so the rest of us may also be enriched by it. But if we flock to the beacon and <em>just stay there,</em> we are discarding most of its value. Good spots in design space tend to be clustered - finding one means there are probably <em>many</em> nearby. The beacon <em>frees</em> us to explore by giving us a great starting point. It shouldn’t be a <em>prison.</em></p>
<p>Consider a board game. If you open the box and find just a board and some differently-colored pawns with no rules explaining what to do with them, it’d be hard to play a fun game unless you yourself happen to be a skilled game designer. But with rules included, you can understand why the board looks the way it does and comes with those particular pieces. The designer’s intent has guided you to a good spot in design space and you can now have a good time playing the game as suggested.</p>
<p>But once you know why the pawns are different colors, you can decide to swap some of them for coins because you’re colorblind or just want things more visually distinct. Once you know how the pawns move, you can experiment with an accelerated version where they move twice as many spaces because you don’t have much time to play or you think it might be more fun. The rules have increased the value of the game pieces by pointing to a high-quality spot in design space. That value increases <em>more</em> if you can then branch out to find nearby spots that serve your needs even better. Forcing you to stay <em>only</em> in the spot described by the written rules cuts off that value.</p>
<p>Games aren’t perfect jewels plucked from the heavens and delivered in pure form. Games are ideas filtered through human capabilities, cultural lenses, economic realities, and technological limitations. A good designer with good resources can create valuable experiences, but there are <em>so many more</em> experiences than any one designer can imagine, let alone implement.</p>
<p><cite>Dark Souls</cite> without difficulty, <cite>Dead Rising</cite> without time limits, <cite>Far Cry 2</cite> without weapon jamming - these would all inarguably be different from the games their respective designers set out to make. But that doesn’t mean they are automatically worse for every player. That doesn’t mean they aren’t worth experiencing. To pretend otherwise makes our world smaller, darker, and sadder.</p>
<p>I’d rather go exploring.</p>
<h2 id="postscript-why-is-this-even-a-question">Postscript: Why is this even a question?</h2>
<p>As I’ve <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2010/12/uncharted-one-chance-and-cheating/">touched on before</a>, it used to be <a href="https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/8qg7gk/how-cheat-codes-vanished-from-video-games">standard practice</a> for games to provide mechanisms for players to easily subvert the intended experience and play around the boundaries. No one would argue that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software">id Software</a> intended for the original <cite>DOOM</cite> to be played with unlimited health and the ability to walk through walls, but the fact that the player can easily do so <a href="https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Doom_cheat_codes">by typing in some short codes</a> makes the game <em>better</em>, not worse.</p>
<figure class="right">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_%281993_video_game%29">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/03/go-beyond-intended-experiences/doom_huf451f3b5ebd17c7c6412a4cdac50f5f3_39178_250x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Cover art for DOOM" />
</a>
</figure>
<p>Why did this change? How did we lose the expectation that when you buy a game, you can look under the hood and play around with what you find? It’s hard to pin a specific motive on an industry-spanning trend, but my sense is that it’s about money and not about commitment to artistic vision. It’s about changes in technology increasing the amount of control that game developers can enforce on their games, and the application of that control to make more money.</p>
<p>Game modification devices like the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Genie">Game Genie</a> became infeasible as game consoles moved from cartridges to discs, and as both console and PC games became internet-connected (and mobile gaming basically <em>started</em> that way) it became possible to stamp out unsanctioned player tinkering and patch any exploits found after launch. This is sometimes good - internet-enabled centralized control means that game service providers can essentially referee online matches and prevent players from violating agreed-upon rules. But it doesn’t improve the play experience to have a referee artificially limiting the options of players who are just messing around by themselves, or of players who’d like to agree to play with a different set of rules. It doesn’t make the game better to take away the ability to explore its design space to see what makes it tick and how it could be tweaked or even improved.</p>
<p>What it <em>does</em> do is let the publisher <em>sell more things.</em> Some of these effects are obvious - “<a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/glossary/game-design/#fun-pain">fun pain</a>” doesn’t drive microtransactions if players can just type a code to fill their stamina meters or unlock characters. But some are more subtle and indirect. <cite>Warcraft III</cite>’s powerful map editor enabled fans to jump-start an immensely popular game genre that earned a fortune - but that money didn’t go to Blizzard. It wasn’t until 2015 that Blizzard launched their own take on MOBAs, <cite>Heroes of the Storm</cite>, which had to compete against the games created by Blizzard’s own fans. It never reached their level of success and entered a “<a href="https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/22833558/heroes-of-the-storm-news">long-term sustainability</a>” phase in late 2018 as Blizzard moved developers to other projects and canceled upcoming tournaments.</p>
<p>So perhaps it’s not surprising that when Blizzard released <cite>Diablo III</cite> in 2012, it <a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/diablo-3-cannot-be-played-offline/">required a constant online connection even when playing alone</a> and <a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/diablo-3-mods-expressly-prohibited-by-blizzard/">completely prevented modding</a>. This frustrated many players (and triggered <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_III#Controversies">consumer-rights violation investigations</a> since the game was often unplayable due to connection problems), so why would Blizzard set things up this way? Because it <em>also</em> meant that players had constant access to the <a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/diablo-3-will-let-players-buy-and-sell-items-for-real-money/">real-money auction house</a> and no mod-based alternative way to check out rare equipment.</p>
<p>This is why industry heavies refer to player tinkering as “cheating” and normalize the idea that it should be prevented - and then turn around and sell <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/4/17936292/assassins-creed-odyssey-xp-boost-price">experience boosters to speed up progression in a premium AAA title</a>. This is why major publishers have increasingly migrated to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_as_a_service">games-as-a-service</a> models and why they’re <a href="https://www.slashgear.com/game-streaming-is-the-future-and-its-scary-12533958/">pushing for a streaming-based future</a>. Because it means they can exert more control over the player’s experience. And that means they can make more money.</p>
<p>I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to normalize the idea that games are only meant to be played and not meant to be played <em>with</em>. I don’t want to hand control of my play time over to those who would reduce its quality in order to extract more of my money. But I think that’s how we got here.</p>
<aside class="extra"><p style="font-style:italic;margin-top:4em;">Want more? This article has <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2019/03/go-beyond-intended-experiences/extra/">EXTRA CONTENT</a> available.</p></aside>
https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/12/art-kitsch-and-video-games/2018-12-24T00:00:00-07:002018-12-24T00:00:00-07:00<figure class="center">
<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BQJRw2ygflf/">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/12/art-kitsch-and-video-games/let-people-enjoy-things_huf075e8606ddfdcf88d86d778ff68a577_113877_0x500_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="A comic in which one person is watching sports, a second starts mocking this, and the first covers the second's mouth and says, 'Let people enjoy things.'" />
</a>
<figcaption>
<p>
<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BQJRw2ygflf/">
https://www.instagram.com/p/BQJRw2ygflf/
</a>
</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Oh no! You just found out that somebody likes a thing you don’t like. What do you do?</p>
<p>If your answer is “keep my mouth shut so they can keep enjoying the thing even though I know it’s trash,” then I congratulate you for at least mastering the first step of basic civility. But there’s another step beyond that one: open-mindedness. It’s recognizing that you almost certainly <em>don’t</em> know that the thing is trash. It’s genuinely seeking to understand what it is that people enjoy about the thing. And if you master this step too, your life can be much richer.</p>
<p>I’m going to explain why this is the case, but first I need to talk about kitsch for a minute - after all, “kitsch” is practically shorthand for “art only liked by people with worse taste than me.”</p>
<p>Kitsch is a category of art designed to appeal to mainstream audiences rather than those with refined tastes. If so-called “high art” is one end of a spectrum, kitsch is the other end. Think <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogs_Playing_Poker"><cite>Dogs Playing Poker</cite></a> as opposed to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso)"><cite>Guernica</cite></a>, or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy_Crush_Saga"><cite>Candy Crush Saga</cite></a> as opposed to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_(2012_video_game)"><cite>Journey</cite></a>.</p>
<p>Kitsch has been defined <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsch#History">multiple ways</a>, but to me the most useful framing is from Tomáš Kulka’s book <cite>Kitsch and Art</cite>. Kulka defines kitsch as art with three properties: it “depicts objects or themes that are highly charged with stock emotions” and which are “instantly and effortlessly identifiable”, presented in a way that does not “enrich our associations relating to the depicted objects or themes.”</p>
<p>Kitsch, then, is powered by familiarity. It delivers an emotional payload by portraying familiar subjects in a familiar way.</p>
<figure class="center">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_from_Want_%28painting%29">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/12/art-kitsch-and-video-games/Freedom-from-Want_hu0a944bc83a8e83992e5e5a6f24d2da32_309258_0x500_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="A painting of a 1940s American family around a dinner table apparently about to enjoy a Thanksgiving feast." />
</a>
<figcaption>
<p>Freedom from Want, a 1943 painting by Norman Rockwell, depicts a traditional American holiday dinner.
</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Kitsch” is often used as a derogatory term, but there’s no reason for this to be a value judgment. All art has its audience and while some people seek out innovation, others enjoy the familiar. For convenience and clarity, I’m going to borrow names for these groups from Tadhg Kelly, who uses <cite>Harry Potter</cite> terms and labels them “magicals” and “muggles”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“In almost every market, there are those who explore and those who don’t. Those who want to be informed, and those who don’t care. Those who avidly chase after the new thing, and those who like the old thing which they understand.</p>
<p>The first group are <em>magicals</em>: the engaged and passionate fans who devote time and interest to the market. The second group are <em>muggles</em>, who may be passingly familiar with the market but come with their own expectations that they aren’t motivated to change."<br>
—Tadhg Kelly, <a href="https://www.whatgamesare.com/2011/03/muggles-casual-and-social-gamers.html"><cite>Muggles [Casual and Social Gamers]</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Kelly summarizes magicals as “open to change” while muggles are “expectant of satisfaction” (and goes into <a href="https://www.whatgamesare.com/2011/03/muggles-casual-and-social-gamers.html">many specific examples</a>). I like to think of it as <em>playfulness</em> versus <em>goal-orientation.</em> Suppose you want a cup of coffee - do you want to try out new and unusual ways of preparing coffee to see what exciting and surprising things can be done with beans these days (magical)? Or do you just want a dose of caffeine without having to put too much time and thought into it so you can get on with your day (muggle)? Alternatively, suppose you’re picking a game to play - do you want to experience an emotionally-mature story or master innovative mechanics (magical)? Or do you just want to turn your brain off for a while with a well-understood activity (muggle)?</p>
<p>Magicals and muggles can respond very differently to a given work, which goes a long way to explain why critics might pan something that the public loves or vice versa. Most people sufficiently interested in and knowledgeable about films, books, games, etc. to be able to review them are magicals. To make a living writing about these works they must consume a near-constant stream of them, heightening the <a href="https://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/experienced-points/12193-Games-Journalists-Views-and-Tastes-Tend-to-Change-With-Age-and-M">familiarity of kitsch and the refreshment of the avant-garde</a>. While there are still certainly critics who <a href="https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/1016551">value polished execution over innovation</a>, for many it’s <a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/01/11/action-half-life-the-5am/">worth putting up with a lot of frustration or disorientation to see something new</a>. And that’s fine, but there’s a risk of forgetting that enjoyment of novelty is a factor of the audience rather than proof of inherent quality of the work.</p>
<figure class="right">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cabin_in_the_Woods">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/12/art-kitsch-and-video-games/cabin-in-the-woods_hu01246c70dccb8a421f6c703fe2774adb_2211312_250x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Movie poster for 'The Cabin in the Woods'" />
</a>
</figure>
<blockquote>
<p>“Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s [2012 film] <cite>The Cabin In The Woods</cite> [is] designed to look like a cliched horror movie from the outside but hides a series of game changing plot twists inside. What those twists add up to feels an awful lot like an angry, resentful slap to the face of the audience itself. . . .</p>
<p>[The film implies that horror movie audiences are] not just screaming for blood, but demanding that it be the same blood. They <strong>want</strong> formula. They <strong>expect</strong> cliché. They want the comfort of familiarity, to see the same basic thing (telling the same basic story and reinforcing the same basic message) over and over with as few surprises as possible. . . .</p>
<p><cite>Cabin</cite> ultimately stretches that particular metaphor to the breaking point. . . . It’s a feast for discerning film geeks and horror buffs alike, but it’s also the sort of lunacy that’s bound to make less adventurous filmgoers confused or even angry. . . . ‘I didn’t know it was gonna be all <strong>weird</strong> like that!’ raged one theatergoer to her partners at one of my (four, so far) viewings of the film. ‘That was <strong>stupid</strong>! Go get our money back!’ grumbled another, evidently unaware of how perfectly they were making the film’s point <strong>for</strong> it."<br>
—Bob Chipman, <a href="https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/moviesandtv/columns/moviebob/9561-Re-Take-The-Cabin"><cite>Re-Take The Cabin</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s not clear how Chipman felt about those other audience members (or if he still feels that way - this review is more than six and a half years old). But it is clear how differently the film landed for him and for them.</p>
<p>When it comes to movies, Chipman is a magical - <a href="https://moviebobcentral.com/about/">his handle is even “MovieBob”</a>. As such, he enjoyed <cite>The Cabin in the Woods</cite> as a commentary on horror films. It didn’t bother him that the film was “designed to look like a cliched horror movie” but was actually something quite different - after all, he was going to see and review it regardless and the surprises meant for a memorably different experience and plenty to write about.</p>
<p>The audience members Chipman quoted were clearly muggles. They were looking for kitsch. They expected a standard horror movie as implicitly promised by the film’s marketing, spent time and money to see it, and in exchange received something that was not only very different from what they thought they were paying for but which actually insulted them for wanting it at all.</p>
<p>It’s easy for a magical to see these frustrated muggles living up to exactly what the film implies about them. It’s easy to read them as missing the point due to lack of sophistication and having tastes too unrefined to enjoy a very clever film. But the fact is that they have been misled into spending money on something they didn’t want - and there was <em>nothing wrong</em> with what they did want.</p>
<p>Imagine that after a long day you stop into a restaurant and order a familiar dish. Halfway through eating it, you realize it somehow has a tennis shoe baked in. Shocked, you demand an explanation - and it turns out that you’ve accidentally found yourself in an experimental restaurant designed to change the way you think about the commodification of comfort food. All you wanted was to relax with a nice warm meal, and that’s what you - quite reasonably - thought you were paying for, but that’s not what you got.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/12/art-kitsch-and-video-games/shoe-casserole_hu831a556e644f698f06f7bab476f01bf6_533463_400x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Casserole with a shoe sticking out of it" />
</figure>
<p>It would be totally reasonable to be upset in this situation, to feel misled and even demand your money back. It would be <em>infuriating</em> to be mocked for being too unsophisticated to appreciate the dish’s message or to be told you were proving the restaurant’s point <em>for</em> them. The issue isn’t whether you’re capable of enjoying playful irony and deconstruction - that’s not what you paid for in this particular transaction. On this subject, in this moment, you were a muggle seeking kitsch.</p>
<p>As Kelly points out in defining muggles and magicals, everyone is <em>both</em> a muggle and a magical - and in fact, we are all <em>mostly</em> muggle. Those of us who take pride in being magicals in some subjects would do well to remember that we are muggles in the vast majority of subjects that exist.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“As children we tend to have a curiosity about everything, but by the time we are a few years into the working world our curiosity has usually zeroed in on a few subjects. . . . Most of the people reading this blog are passionately interested in video games but have very little to say on the subject of modern art. Many geeks are proud of their cooking, but have zero interest in fashion. You may well be an art muggle, but a sports magical, inquisitive about pottery yet indifferent to soap operas. In short, it seems that we are built to specialise rather than generalise."<br>
—Tadhg Kelly, <a href="https://www.whatgamesare.com/2011/03/muggles-casual-and-social-gamers.html"><cite>Muggles [Casual and Social Gamers]</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Looking down on someone who’s a muggle in an area in which you are a magical is absurd. It just means they have placed their limited time and attention in a different place than you - almost certainly there are other subjects in which your tastes would seem dreadfully kitschy to them, in which you are the muggle and they are the magical.</p>
<p>You may be tempted to argue that your chosen subjects are deeper and more interesting, thus revealing your superior tastes. But of <em>course</em> the things you’re invested in seem more interesting to you. Whatever <a href="https://xkcd.com/915/">you look at closely seems deep</a>, and you can’t possibly see beyond the surface of anything you only glance at. If you don’t seek out news, commentary, or analysis on a subject, the only things you’ll hear about are the ones that are so popular or have such a strong marketing push behind them that you can’t <em>avoid</em> hearing about them. Kitsch is the only thing that you’re likely to see without even looking for it, so anything you aren’t paying attention to will look like kitsch. It’s very easy to trick yourself into believing that justifies your lack of attention.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I believe books and films are better mediums [than video games], and better uses of my time. But how can I say that when I admit I am unfamiliar with video games? Because I have recently seen classic films by Fassbinder, Ozu, Herzog, Scorsese and Kurosawa, and have recently read novels by Dickens, Cormac McCarthy, Bellow, Nabokov and Hugo, and if there were video games in the same league, someone somewhere who was familiar with the best work in all three mediums would have made a convincing argument in their defense."<br>
—Roger Ebert, <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/answer-man/a-buddhist-walks-into-a-chat-room-"><cite>A Buddhist walks into a chat room …</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I fell into this trap with licensed sports games. I’ve never paid attention to them, so only the most mass-market titles make any sort of impression on me at all - and by definition, these are the kitschiest possible works in this category. For years, I only heard about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madden_NFL"><cite>Madden NFL</cite></a>, a famously stagnant franchise coasting on an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madden_NFL#Exclusivity">exclusive license</a> allowing it to put out <a href="https://www.muthead.com/forums/madden/mut-discussion/514760-madden-every-3-years-with-updated-rosters-instead">new full-price titles every year</a> that are essentially just <a href="https://www.gamespot.com/forums/xbox-association-1000003/is-there-a-reason-to-buy-madden-or-ncaa-football-e-27412311/">roster updates</a>. So that’s what licensed sports games were to me, and there was no reason to pay them any further attention.</p>
<figure class="right">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_2K14">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/12/art-kitsch-and-video-games/nba-2k14_hub7e2232124beced5e8dbf9a4e071fce6_352531_250x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Cover art for NBA 2K14 game" />
</a>
</figure>
<p>Then, when <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_2K14"><cite>NBA 2K14</cite></a> went <a href="https://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/06/02/playstation-plus-trine-2-pixeljunk-shooter-ultimate-nba-2k14-free-for-members/">free on PlayStation Plus</a>, I found out it had <a href="https://unrealitymag.com/nba-2k14-for-next-gen-a-sports-game-with-a-plot-and-rpg-elements/">narrative and role-playing elements</a>. I was blown away watching <a href="http://andinthega.me/characters/">Senpai-chan</a> play through a post-game press conference in the <a href="https://forums.operationsports.com/features/1748/nba-2k14-my-career-mode-makes-and-misses/">My Career mode</a> making dialog choices that separately influenced how teammates and fans felt about the player character. I was amazed that a licensed sports game would have so much more depth and context than the pickup games of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Jam_(1993_video_game)"><cite>NBA Jam</cite></a> I’d played as a child.</p>
<p>But then I realized - why should that be amazing? Professional sports are a big deal, with huge diverse fanbases that of course would overlap extensively with video game fans. Why <em>wouldn’t</em> their licensed games grow and innovate? How arrogant had it been for me to assume that <cite>Madden</cite> told me all I needed to know to judge an entire genre - and in fact, how arrogant was it for me to assume I knew enough even to judge <cite>Madden</cite> without playing a single game in the series? After all, what I’d heard about <cite>Madden</cite> was just the shallowest, most digestible, easiest to repeat take on the franchise. The snappiest sound bite is never the most accurate summation. How could I hear someone complain about <cite>Madden</cite>’s annualization and decide I knew everything I needed to?</p>
<p>Because I was ignorant of whatever depth and innovation was there, I concluded there wasn’t any worth looking for. It’s as if I had closed my eyes and then decided that since I saw nothing, there was nothing to see, and thus no point in <em>opening</em> my eyes. I dismissed players of licensed sports games as gaming muggles, when in fact <em>I</em> was a muggle-in-denial about sports games!</p>
<p>I try to remember this lesson and avoid dismissing that which I do not understand. If something is popular, there’s probably a reason for it - depth and nuance that may not be immediately obvious to an outsider muggle. I try to remember how <em>I</em> feel when I see someone offhandedly dismiss as <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/6s1aqd/thor_ragnaroks_jeff_goldblums_reaction_when_asked/">shallow</a> and <a href="https://www.giantbomb.com/dynasty-warriors/3025-169/forums/why-do-people-keep-buying-these-236047/">samey</a> entire categories of media or experiences that <em>I</em> know to be <a href="https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2018/12/12">interesting and varied</a>.</p>
<figure class="center">
<a href="https://catandgirl.com/cat-and-girl-are-relative/">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/12/art-kitsch-and-video-games/2002-07-29-cg0105relative.gif" alt="Cat and Girl comic about how 'Connoisseurship makes anything interesting.'" />
</a>
<figcaption>
<p>
<a href="https://catandgirl.com/cat-and-girl-are-relative/">
https://catandgirl.com/cat-and-girl-are-relative/
</a>
</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>None of us have the time to take a close look at everything. It’s totally reasonable to extrapolate from limited information when guessing whether something is aligned enough to your own tastes to be worth your time. (I, for example, plan to continue not playing <cite>Madden</cite>.) But it’s not reasonable to conclude that something you’ve skipped is shallow or valueless or that the people who do enjoy it are intellectually lazy or artistically crass. <em>Every time</em> I have taken a closer look at something I’d previously chosen to ignore, I find compelling depth.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“My closest friend, my cousin Kristina, has been perhaps the most hostile towards my affection for video games. . . . She thought I was wasting my life in the video games industry. . . . One night I decided I had built enough trust with Kristina to recommend my favourite game, <a href="https://elderscrolls.bethesda.net/skyrim">Skyrim</a>. She googled it and texted me back something like, ‘Uhhhhh I don’t know why you think I would play this. I don’t watch Game of Thrones. I don’t like swords. I don’t like fighting. I don’t like dragons.’' I told her she would hate the first bit with the dragon but just to get through it and then give it a chance and get back to me with her thoughts. . . . Three weeks later my phone rang. . . .I answered, and Kristina was crying.</p>
<p>She said to me, ‘Lydia died’. . . . She was talking about the character in Skyrim. For three weeks she had been playing Skyrim obsessively. And now she’d accidentally killed Lydia and she didn’t have a recent save game.</p>
<p>Kristina said to me through her tears that she didn’t realize that you could develop an emotional attachment to a character in a video game. She didn’t realize that you could create your character and exist as a version of yourself in a world full of characters whom you care about. I had never realized that she didn’t know this, because I knew this so deeply. She said to me that for all these years, it wasn’t that she didn’t like video games, it was that she didn’t know what they were."<br>
—Brie Code, <a href="https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-11-07-video-games-are-boring"><cite>Video Games Are Boring</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>When you don’t see the appeal in something that other people enjoy, your default assumption should be that you haven’t looked closely enough. Mocking that which you don’t understand reveals only your own willful ignorance, but you can still do one better than keeping your mouth shut. Engage with curiosity, not disdain. Ask <em>why</em> they like it, and then really listen. Keep an open mind and find out what makes it great. You’ll be surprised what you learn - and what new things you find to enrich your life or even fall in love with.</p>
<aside class="extra"><p style="font-style:italic;margin-top:4em;">Want more? This article has <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/12/art-kitsch-and-video-games/extra/">EXTRA CONTENT</a> available.</p></aside>
https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/10/how-engagement-rewards-backfire/2018-10-08T00:00:00-07:002018-10-08T00:00:00-07:00<p>Imagine you’re a kid at a new school deciding where to sit for lunch. Another kid sees you and offers you some candy, saying they have some extra they don’t want. You eagerly accept the candy and sit with the kid. The next day, you run into the same kid and they offer you candy again, explaining that their parents keep packing their lunch with this candy they don’t like. This keeps happening every day - when you sit with this kid at lunch, they give you candy.</p>
<p>Then one day you go to the candy store and see that same kid buying lots of the candy they supposedly don’t like. You realize they are deliberately getting this candy to give to other kids to try to make friends.</p>
<p>What might you say to this kid if you confronted them? Would you explain that their actions are not only clearly manipulative but also counterproductive in the long run - that they may have an easier time making new friends right now, but these people are likely to be put off when they realize what’s going on, even if they had actually enjoyed spending time together? Might you suggest that the kid should focus instead on being genuinely enjoyable to spend time with and seek out people with compatible personalities and shared interests who actually like spending time with them?</p>
<p>This is basically how I feel about games with log-in bonuses.</p>
<div class="figure-row">
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/10/how-engagement-rewards-backfire/holding-candy_hudbe507c256baf9cd6f4221d067670a0c_232285_0x250_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Photo of child holding candy by D Sharon Pruitt; see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Free_Child_Holding_Happy_Colorful_Rainbow_Taffy_Candy_(unedited)_Creative_Commons_(3354087435).jpg" />
</figure>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/10/how-engagement-rewards-backfire/animal-crossing-pocket-camp-log-in-bonus_huc91502c30b3654da0aad4e76de6874fd_78069_0x250_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Log-In Bonus schedule for Animal Crossing Pocket Camp" />
</figure>
</div>
<p>Some games offer rewards such as in-game currency, consumable items, or cosmetics just for starting the game up. These are generally referred to as “log-in bonuses” and tend to be on a daily schedule - once a day, you can log in to receive a bonus. This is a method for directly rewarding “engagement” - the industry term for user interactions with a property or service. You don’t have to overcome a difficult challenge, grind out resources, or spend currency. You just have to show up. As such, players who want the rewards might well show up at times when they otherwise wouldn’t have. Even on days when they don’t feel like playing, they might launch the game when they have a spare moment to get the reward. And then once the game is running, they might as well play for a while, right? And if they’re playing regularly, they’re more likely to maintain a subscription or make in-app purchases.</p>
<p>That’s the theory, anyway. <a href="https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-science-craft-of-designing-daily-rewards----and-why-ftp-games-need-them">By rewarding engagement, you increase it along with retention and daily active users and all sorts of important numbers</a>. For free-to-play or subscription-based games, this translates directly into revenue, though log-in bonuses can sometimes be found in premium titles as well.</p>
<p>Log-in bonuses are perhaps the most basic and direct way to reward engagement, but there are others. Some games provide daily rewards but make you work a bit harder for them, as in <a href="https://wow.gamepedia.com/Daily_quest"><cite>World of Warcraft</cite>’s daily quests</a>. Others make use of <a href="https://mobilefreetoplay.com/understanding-and-eliminating-energy-systems/">energy systems</a> or similar timers to encourage players to return frequently on a schedule that can change over time (often the early-game timers will be seconds or minutes long and later ones may span multiple days). Still others incentivize play during certain days via <a href="https://overwatch.gamepedia.com/Seasonal_events">seasonal events</a> or during certain hours by <a href="http://animalcrossing.wikia.com/wiki/Tom_Nook%27s_store">limiting the availability of particular content or mechanics</a>. Some games <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2010/12/doing-my-dailies-why-i-quit-wow-and-started-working-out/">create social obligation</a> to pressure players to help out their friends by playing more. There are endless possible variations, and of course there’s no reason a game must limit itself to just one.</p>
<p>Whatever the approach, engagement rewards have a common effect: if they are working, then by definition players are launching or playing the game at times when they otherwise wouldn’t. Game developers frequently <a href="https://marketingexperiments.com/a-b-testing/5-ab-tests-to-try-in-game-apps">run experiments</a> to maximize engagement and will try to make rewards as effective as possible - otherwise, why bother with them at all? And that means working to make sure players are launching or playing games even when they have no real desire to do so.</p>
<p>If a player is busy, has had their fill of a particular game for now, isn’t in the mood for its kind of gameplay, doesn’t usually game on weekdays, or for whatever other reason normally wouldn’t even consider playing a game but fires it up for the engagement rewards - in that moment, the game has ceased to be a fun diversion. It has become a transaction. Playing it is now a chore. This can’t help but erode players' interest in and affection for the game and make it that much harder for the game to go back to being desirable entertainment even if the player stops caring about the engagement rewards.</p>
<p>It’s well-known that extrinsic rewards can diminish the value of intrinsic ones. Psychologists refer to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect">overjustification effect</a> in which a task with inherent appeal (such as playing a fun game) becomes devalued by the addition of external rewards (such as log-in bonuses). According to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_evaluation_theory">cognitive evaluation theory</a>, the way the rewards are presented matters a lot: the effect is much worse if the external rewards are perceived as <em>manipulative</em> instead of <em>informational.</em> If a reward is clearly designed to control a person’s behavior, then that person’s actions unavoidably become either compliance or defiance - either way, the motivation is from an external source. Meanwhile, rewards that instead provide information about how well a person has completed a task are essentially performance-based feedback allowing that person to modify their actions as appropriate. Motivation is still internal; the reward just shines a light on it.</p>
<p>In games, this means that rewarding a player for a skilled performance can <em>improve</em> intrinsic motivation - for example, giving players scores and medals after action set-pieces can <a href="https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=36613">make it more appealing to improve the relevant skills</a>. But rewarding a player for completing a trivial action can <em>worsen</em> intrinsic motivation by framing that action as a hoop the game wants the player to jump through. And engagement rewards are specifically designed to reward trivial actions, with the most trivial possible being <em>starting the game at all</em> to get a log-in bonus.</p>
<div class="figure-row">
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/10/how-engagement-rewards-backfire/devil-may-cry-3-results_hue20157d9a6459f4a555d269a3ec15404_79145_300x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Results screen for Devil May Cry 3" />
</figure>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/10/how-engagement-rewards-backfire/go-vacation-daily-reward_hu84ccc1e1ac7d9bf4724618a61c292fe6_144480_300x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="'Horse of Legend' daily reward for Go Vacation" />
</figure>
</div>
<p>So if engagement rewards are working and are getting people to play games more, they are doing so in a way that gives the player a chore <em>and</em> externalizes the player’s motivation. Every time a player takes a break from playing a game for the fun of it but keeps engaging for the rewards, it becomes that much less likely they’ll want to play for fun again later. And once the inherent appeal of playing the game drops low enough, the engagement rewards cease to have any value at all. Why collect currency and items for a game you don’t even want to play? For me - and I bet for most players - my final interactions with a game whose engagement rewards worked are just rote reward collection with no real enjoyment and increasing annoyance, until I finally get sick enough of it to put the game down for good.</p>
<p>This may not seem like a terrible problem - after all, if the player liked the game they probably had a lot of fun with it before trailing off like that. The player got what they came for. They could easily still be a fan who recommends the game to others and comes back for the sequel, right?</p>
<p>Well, here’s the thing. Our memories of how things <em>end</em> have a huge effect on our opinion on their overall quality. Human memory seems to operate on what’s known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak%E2%80%93end_rule">peak-end rule</a> - when looking back on an experience, we judge it not by adding up its pleasures and subtracting its pains, but by considering only its most intense moment and how it ended. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak%E2%80%93end_rule#Research_and_examples">Several studies</a> back this up - when people are subjected to two similar unpleasant experiences such that one is objectively worse than the other but ends better (such as submerging a hand in painfully cold water for a full minute, versus doing the exact same thing but keeping the hand in the water for an additional thirty seconds during which it is slightly less cold), they <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1993.tb00589.x">would rather repeat the worse experience</a>.</p>
<p>How you feel at the end of an experience makes a big difference on you feel about the <em>entire</em> experience in hindsight. Even outside of studies, this makes intuitive sense - most of us have had pleasant experiences that felt ruined by how they ended.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“He said he’d been listening to a symphony, and it was absolutely glorious music and at the very end of the recording, there was a dreadful screeching sound. And then he added, really quite emotionally, it ruined the whole experience. But it hadn’t. What it had ruined were the memories of the experience. He had had the experience. He had had 20 minutes of glorious music. They counted for nothing because he was left with a memory; the memory was ruined, and the memory was all that he had gotten to keep."<br>
—Daniel Kahneman, <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory/transcript?language=en"><cite>The riddle of experience vs. memory</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>If the worst part of an experience is at the end - which it will be for a game if your final interactions with it are an unpleasant chore - that can easily dominate your judgment of that experience. Even if you have hours of fun with a game, if it ends with a sour taste that’s how you’re going to remember it. You won’t think of it as the game that you enjoyed for the first dozen hours; you’ll think of it as the game that became obnoxious and unpleasant at the end.</p>
<p>Engagement rewards don’t work on every player. But they confer no benefit for the players they don’t work on, and for the players they <em>do</em> work on, they damage the experience. It’s a nasty thing for a game to do to a player - especially in exchange for the player doing exactly what the game wanted them to do. And such a player is much less likely to recommend the game to others or show interest in sequels.</p>
<p>In our increasingly online and metrics-driven gaming landscape, it’s easy to see why developers and publishers would want to make use of engagement rewards. They increase valuable <a href="https://gameanalytics.com/blog/metrics-all-game-developers-should-know.html">easy-to-measure metrics</a> which often drive short-term revenue. But it’s hard to measure the cost paid in long-term fan investment and loyalty. It’s hard to get clear numbers on how a player feels about a game or a developer, or whether they’re talking about the game to their friends, or whether they’re a return customer for sequels or other games by the same developer. But just because these numbers aren’t easy to track doesn’t mean they don’t matter. A game that gets someone to play it every day for a month but then drives that player away may make more money from that player, but it’s not going to make as much from that player’s friends and the sequel won’t make money from them either.</p>
<p>Developers who directly reward engagement are acting on the same desperate short-sightedness as the kid with the candy, pumping up visible short-term numbers at the cost of invisible long-term numbers. Because the numbers are invisible, developers can’t see the downsides coming - and I can’t actually prove they happen or that they outweigh the rewards. But if I’m right, these developers are tarnishing their brands and weakening their bottom lines. And as a player, which game do you want to play? The one that uses experience-damaging handouts to manipulate your behavior and schedule, or the one that respects your time and self-determination and will leave you with better memories?</p>
<p>It’s time for lunch. Where do you want to sit?</p>
<aside class="extra"><p style="font-style:italic;margin-top:4em;">Want more? This article has <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/10/how-engagement-rewards-backfire/extra/">EXTRA CONTENT</a> available.</p></aside>
https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/08/punishment-learning-and-tension/2018-08-20T00:00:00-07:002018-08-20T00:00:00-07:00<h3 id="i">I.</h3>
<p>Long ago, I <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2009/11/test-skills-not-patience-challenge-punishment-and-learning/">wrote a post</a> about the different roles of <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/glossary/game-design/#elements-of-difficulty">challenge and punishment</a> in skill-based games and how they relate to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29">flow</a> and learning. My argument was that challenge should vary with player skill to maximize opportunities for flow while punishment should be flat-out minimized to prevent disruptions to learning. Doing things like kicking the player back to a distant checkpoint when they die inserts delays and distractions between attempts, making it much harder to learn. But there’s a significant difference between first learning a skill and <em>mastering</em> that skill, and this absolutely affects what kind of punishment is appropriate. I’ll explain, borrowing an example from commenters on that old post.</p>
<p>Imagine you are playing a new racing game. The tutorial teaches acceleration, braking, steering, and drifting, requiring you to perform each operation before advancing to the next. You hold the accelerate button, then the brake button, steer around some turns, and then try the drift but your timing is off and you fail to execute it. In this case, it would be counterproductive for the game to force you to start all the way over and pass the accelerate, brake, and steer tests again before giving you another chance to drift. The game is <em>teaching</em> the skill, not <em>testing</em> it. Failing to execute this skill should result in an immediate opportunity to try again. Additional punishment would just make it harder to learn, which is the exact opposite of the tutorial’s goal. A punishing tutorial is a <em>bad</em> tutorial.</p>
<p>But once you’re out of the tutorial and you start racing, the scenario is different. The game is done <em>teaching</em> new skills and starts <em>testing</em> them. You are no longer <em>learning</em> skills; you are <em>practicing</em> them. Your goals are larger in scope - not just “perform a drift” but “win this three-lap race.” And because the scope of punishment <em>defines</em> the scope of challenge, a challenge of this scope is not possible without real punishment. If losing the race results in just restarting, say, the final lap, the challenge becomes “win this lap” rather than “win this race.” In order to challenge you to perform well consistently enough to win an <em>entire</em> race, loss must cost you the <em>entire</em> race.</p>
<p>Scoping punishment to cover multiple or lengthy tests of skill effectively increases challenge by demanding greater consistency and endurance. This is true whether the skill tests are interconnected like the moments of a race or independent like a series of difficult jumps in a platformer - such as 2009’s <cite>‘Splosion Man</cite>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“In [<cite>‘Splosion Man</cite>’s] Hardcore mode the game is exactly the same game, testing exactly the same skills in exactly the same levels, the only differences are that all enemies kill you in a single hit . . . and there are no checkpoints at all, so every time you die you have to restart the whole level . . . .</p>
<p>[I]t is a lot more punishing, but it . . . becomes more challenging too. You don’t now have to get skilled enough at performing a jump until you can do it once, twice or three times in a row perfectly, now you have to make perhaps 50 perfect jumps in a row. . . . You have to get so skilled that ‘you can’t get it wrong’ not just skilled enough to ‘get it right once’."<br>
—Remy77077, <cite><a href="https://agoners.wordpress.com/2010/06/13/is-splosion-man-challenging-or-punishing/">Is ‘Splosion Man Challenging or Punishing?</a></cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p><figure class="right">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/08/punishment-learning-and-tension/Splosion-Man-1280x720_hu0a866e077615a7b8714694eee0d6c302_344897_300x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="'Splosion Man title screen" />
</figure>
The first time you play a <cite>‘Splosion Man</cite> level, you are there to learn. Checkpoints ensure you have the opportunity to practice new challenges without being forced to redo ones you’ve already learned. Just like in the hypothetical racing game tutorial, extra punishment would run counter to the goal of teaching you new skills.</p>
<p>But once you’ve cleared the game and unlocked Hardcore mode, you’ve learned all the challenges and skills. Hardcore mode presents an opportunity to <em>master</em> them. Just like with the aforementioned multiple-lap race, in order to test that you’re good enough to complete a level flawlessly, making a mistake has to cost you the entire level. The disruption to learning isn’t a problem when the game isn’t teaching something <em>new</em> and each retry is instead <em>practice</em> so you can attain and demonstrate the required degree of mastery.</p>
<p><em>Punishment that undoes progress makes sense for mastery challenges, not for learning challenges.</em></p>
<h3 id="ii">II.</h3>
<p>The different approaches to punishment make the challenge <em>feel</em> different as well. If punishment is scoped to an entire race or level, then winning one lap or clearing a few jumps doesn’t make you safe. Until you complete the race or the level, you aren’t finished and your progress can still be undone by a mistake. You can still fail. And thus, <em>tension</em> is still high.</p>
<p>Tension is a subjective thing and different people process it differently (and we’ll get to that), but for now let’s define tension as the emotional state caused by the possibility of failure. It’s a signal that you need to focus and do your best, because doing so will make a real difference. As such, tension requires uncertainty - if you know you will succeed or that you definitely can’t, there is no tension - and it’s at its highest when the odds of success are a coin flip. Tension also requires stakes - if there is no punishment for failure or reward for success, there’s no tension. Greater punishments or rewards thus increase tension (though due to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion">loss aversion</a>, the effect of punishment is often greater than that of equivalent reward).</p>
<p>Tension in games thus occurs during (and in the lead-up to) tests of skill, proportional to how closely the challenge level matches the player’s skill level (creating uncertainty) and to the scope of the associated punishment (creating stakes). Once an outcome is achieved - whether it’s success or failure - uncertainty vanishes, the player receives their punishment or reward, and the tension is relieved.</p>
<p>There is no single universally-correct level of tension, but if you’re looking to test your skills and get into a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29">flow state</a>, too much tension is exhausting and too little is boring. This is true for both the <em>magnitude</em> of the tension and its <em>duration,</em> so carefully curating the expected level of tension players will experience over time is an important facet of game design. Ideally, tension will rise and fall over time in a deliberate rhythm.</p>
<p>In a typical skill-based game, the ebb and flow of tension as a player progresses might look something like this:</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/08/punishment-learning-and-tension/normal-tension.png" alt="Tension generally rises over time but with small peaks and valleys. Every few peaks, there's an especially high one followed by an especially low valley." />
</figure>
<p>Individual challenges create tension peaks that deflate once the challenge is complete and the player has a safe moment to catch their breath. However, the challenge level increases over time as does the player’s investment, so the overall tension level gradually rises. Periodically there are particularly significant challenges (such as a boss fight) that take the tension extra high but then reduce it even further. The first challenges after one of these local climaxes are often easier than the last ones before it - this gives the player more of a chance to catch their breath after ratcheting the tension up so high. Plus, climaxes provide obvious break points where players might put the game down for the night or until the next weekend, so providing a chance for the player to reacquaint themselves with the game’s challenges afterward increases <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/glossary/game-design/#reapproachability">reapproachability</a>.</p>
<p>In my <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2009/11/test-skills-not-patience-challenge-punishment-and-learning/">old post from 2009</a>, my argument was something like: punishment should be scoped to a single peak of tension. In practical terms, this would mean that there should be a checkpoint after every challenge. The rejoinder, then, is that I had it backward - punishment <em>shapes</em> the peaks and <em>defines</em> what constitutes a single challenge. And while challenges should be kept tightly-scoped when teaching new skills, challenges of <em>mastery</em> can well have greater scopes.</p>
<p>Let’s go back to our <cite>‘Splosion Man</cite> example. Normally, levels contain checkpoints and only individual sections between checkpoints must be completed without failure - pass one section and fail in the next, and you only need repeat the latter section. Hardcore mode removes the checkpoints and the entire level must be completed without failure. Compare a hypothetical tension graph for the same level on Normal and on Hardcore:</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/08/punishment-learning-and-tension/splosion-man-tension.png" alt="On Normal, tension rises somewhat but the peaks and valleys keep the average tension relatively low. On Hardcore, the valleys don't go nearly as low so the tension level rises much higher by the end of the level." />
</figure>
<p>On Normal, each checkpoint provides a significant deflation of tension, as the potential punishment resets to zero every time you clear one. As a result, the tension only rises so high throughout the level. But on Hardcore, there’s much less deflation of tension. While there are still moments between individual jump challenges where the player can pause, relax, and catch their breath, the removal of checkpoints means a mistake can always destroy <em>all</em> progress in the level. This means that the potential punishment for failure continually increases the further the player progresses in the level, and thus so does the tension. Relief only comes once the entire level is completed, so tension rises quite high before that happens.</p>
<p>This is probably not what most first-time players want while they are still learning the game’s skills. But once a player has mastered the skills to the point where beating the level <em>with</em> checkpoints is a certainty, playing <em>without</em> them may be the only way to create enough uncertainty to raise tension to an enjoyable level.</p>
<p><em>Tension is a product of the both the relationship between skill and challenge level and the scope of punishment.</em></p>
<h3 id="iii">III.</h3>
<p>However, there’s an important question here: what happens on repeat attempts? What’s the effect on tension when punishment is scoped greater than an individual challenge and failure means repeating others at which you’ve already succeeded? The answer depends completely on the nature of the game’s challenges.</p>
<p>I <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/07/preparation-strategy-tactics-and-action-phases-of-challenge/">recently laid out</a> four broad “phases of challenge” that can show up in games: <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/glossary/game-design/#phases-of-challenge">preparation, strategy, tactics, and action</a>. In most cases, asking you to repeat a challenge you’ve already completed is asking for a redo of the <em>action</em> phase. After all, if you’ve succeeded at the challenge then you probably don’t need further preparation or adjustments to your strategy or tactics. You know <em>what</em> to do, it’s just a matter of doing it <em>again.</em></p>
<p>In an action game like <cite>‘Splosion Man</cite>, much of the challenge is <em>in</em> the action phase - executing ‘Splosion Man’s abilities at the right time to overcome obstacles and proceed. So doing it again - even if it’s just like before - still has challenge, still has uncertainty, and can still have interesting levels of tension. It’s still valid as a test of <em>mastery.</em></p>
<p>Compare this to, say, <cite>Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney</cite>. When cross-examining witnesses in the trial segments, you must carefully consider their testimony while keeping in mind the available evidence - and when you spot a contradiction, you must indicate which statement is disproved by which piece of evidence. Doing so correctly will advance the trial; doing so incorrectly will incur a penalty and require you to try again. Earn too many penalties and your client is found guilty - game over, restart that portion of the trial.</p>
<p>This adds stakes to the act of presenting evidence, and in theory increases the tension. But here’s the problem - the challenge of cross-examination is completely about <em>figuring out</em> what evidence to present when. Once you know, you know - so when you replay trial segments, there is zero uncertainty and thus zero tension.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/08/punishment-learning-and-tension/ace-attorney-tension.png" alt="The first playthrough of the trial segment has standard peaks and valleys of tension. The second playthrough is a flat line of low tension." />
</figure>
<p>You’re just being tested on a single piece of information - the right evidence/testimony combination - and you already know the previous ones. There’s no reason to repeat them, no practicing to be done. Like the hypothetical racing tutorial that forces you to redo acceleration, braking, and steering before letting you drift again, it’s a <em>learning</em> challenge that’s being punished as a <em>mastery</em> challenge.</p>
<p>Due to the repetition and lack of tension, replaying trial segments can mean several minutes of tedium - a price high enough that many players (myself included) are extremely reluctant to pay it. When a player is deep into a trial and a high-uncertainty cross-examination occurs, that’s supposed to be a <em>peak</em> of tension - but a player unwilling to risk the punishment will likely <a href="https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/1016346">consult a FAQ for the answer</a>. This completely removes the uncertainty and thus <em>still</em> eliminates tension, saving time but drastically reducing the satisfaction of success. Either way, punishment in games like <cite>Ace Attorney</cite> is not a tension regulator but a tension <em>destroyer.</em></p>
<p>To be clear, the difference isn’t just about action games versus non-action games. Punishment only makes sense when it provides a valid opportunity to practice mastery and maintains a good level of tension. Consider <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike">roguelikes</a> and score attack games - these are effectively always played on Hardcore, since failure requires a full restart. But even though these come in both action and turn-based varieties (<cite>Enter the Gungeon</cite> versus <cite>Dungeons of Dredmor</cite>, <cite>Tetris</cite> versus <cite>Bejeweled</cite>) this level of punishment makes sense across the board. Due to the random or procedural generation involved in such games, each playthrough is unique and presents fresh challenges to navigate while practicing general skills rather than a tedious retread of identical challenge-free content. Tension is thus preserved.</p>
<p>Alternatively, consider action games that use punishment to lump together challenges testing different skills. My go-to example for this is classic <cite>Mega Man</cite> games, where each stage features platforming and shooting challenges and ends in a boss fight with a specific pattern and weakness to learn - and if you run out of lives at the boss you must replay the entire stage. Like Hardcore mode in <cite>‘Splosion Man</cite>, this might make sense as a mastery challenge once you’ve learned all the stages and bosses, but the first time through when you are trying to learn the boss, it’s more like the broken racing tutorial or <cite>Ace Attorney</cite> punishing a learning challenge as though it were a mastery challenge. Every time you redo the stage leading up to the boss, skill level increases, uncertainty decreases, and tension decreases. The delay is disruptive to your ability to learn the boss’s patterns and weakness, increasing the uncertainty of that challenge but also making the punishment particularly tedious and increasing the stakes in an unpleasant way.</p>
<p>Tension is the key to proper scoping of punishment. It’s all well and good to say that punishment should be scoped to the particular challenge or skill being tested - but since the scope of the punishment defines the scope of the challenge and endurance and consistency are themselves skills, this doesn’t actually lead to clear advice in many cases. Instead, punishment should be scoped to keep tension at levels that are neither too high nor too low. And punishing a <em>learning</em> test like a <em>mastery</em> test not only inhibits learning but distorts the tension curve in the worst possible way, eliminating tension before the challenge and skyrocketing tension during it.</p>
<p><em>Punishing a learning challenge as though it were a mastery challenge replaces tension with frustration and tedium.</em></p>
<h3 id="iv">IV.</h3>
<p>Different players process tension very differently. I would love to see some studies here, because what I’ve seen suggests a few possibilities and I’m not sure exactly what’s happening. It may be that sensitivity to tension varies from person to person just as does sensitivity to physical pain, meaning that a given amount of uncertainty and stakes will create a boringly-low tension level for one person, a perfectly-engaging level for another, and an exhaustingly-stressful one for a third. It may also be that some people find that tension increases the satisfaction of success more than it increases the frustration of failure and others find the reverse. It could be that some people find learning a new skill more enjoyable than honing that skill and thus like to quickly move on to the next, while others don’t much enjoy new skills unless they can master them at a high level before moving on. Or it could be some combination of these. The effect appears to be that some players get more out of learning challenges and others get more out of mastery challenges - and therefore prefer different levels of punishment.</p>
<p>While we recognize that different people have different skill levels and therefore are best served by different levels of challenge, learning/mastery preferences and their causes are invisible. It’s very easy to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychologist%27s_fallacy">assume that your own experience is normal</a> and thus fail to realize that different players - even ones <em>with the same level of skill</em> - are best served by different levels of punishment. And so we end up with some players claiming that punishment is necessary to make challenge meaningful, while others complain about how frustrating it is.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[I]f you die in a game, you lose whatever time you put into the game from the last checkpoint or save spot. Maybe that’s 10 minutes, or maybe it’s 30 seconds. In exchange for that time, you presumably got a chance to practice your skills. You may do better on your next try. . . . I usually consider the loss of time due to my failure as a player as fair. It rarely even registers for me as a real-world cost to dying in a game. Yeah, I have to redo the last five minutes of this game, and if I hadn’t died, I could have spent that five minutes cleaning the house or watching TV. . . . But without failure, I wouldn’t learn and improve, and that cycle of failure -> learning -> improving -> success is such a fundamental part of so many video games that it barely registers as punishment."<br>
—Kirk Hamilton, <cite><a href="https://kotaku.com/five-ways-video-games-make-failure-matter-1827978018">Five Ways Video Games Make Failure Matter</a></cite></p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p>“If I’m playing Dark Souls and I can’t get the hang of the timing on a boss, then I end up dying and slogging through a bunch of trash mobs before I can try again. That will take a few minutes. By the time I get back to the point where I made the mistake, I’ll have lost track of what I did wrong. . . . This punishment is not enhancing my enjoyment of the game. It’s actually enraging. I become angry and frustrated and I resent every single moment wasted trying to fight my way back to where I left off.</p>
<p>For me (and I imagine a lot of people who dislike Dark Souls) the cycle of punishment doesn’t make the eventual victory ‘more rewarding’. It takes away the fun I would otherwise be having throwing myself at a challenge again and again until I master it. The thing that ruins the game for me is the same ingredient that makes the game so compelling for fans. You literally can’t please one group without ruining the game for the other. . . .</p>
<p>So I get why we so often end up in these absurdist arguments where a Dark Souls fan is explaining to you earnestly and with no hint of irony that you would enjoy the game if you just played it differently, or thought about it differently, or followed their specific build advice. Many people really do think I’m somehow ‘missing out’ by not playing this game."<br>
—Shamus Young, <cite><a href="https://shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=36902">Arkham City Part 3: A Difficult Discussion on Difficulty</a></cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I was guilty of this failure of empathy when I <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2009/11/test-skills-not-patience-challenge-punishment-and-learning/">first wrote</a> about punishment. It was so obvious to me that the stress of punishment far outweighed the satisfaction of eventual victory that the only reason designers kept including punishment and players kept defending it was that they <em>didn’t understand</em> it was the worst way to increase difficulty. But I see now that punishment legitimately has a <em>different effect</em> on different people, and to many it’s a satisfying way to raise the stakes high enough to create an interesting level of tension for a mastery challenge.</p>
<p>Some games - <cite>Dark Souls</cite>, <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/03/who-frustration-is-good-for/"><cite>Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy</cite></a>, the aforementioned roguelikes - wear their high punishment levels and frequent or extended mastery challenges as a badge of honor. Other games - <cite>The Sims</cite>, <cite>Animal Crossing</cite>, exploration/storytelling games (so-called “walking simulators”) - do away with failure modes entirely and thus omit mastery challenges completely. That’s great - if you know what to expect from a game, then you can easily self-select into your desired punishment levels and challenge type and avoid the games you’d find unpleasant. The trouble is the huge and poorly-defined space in between.</p>
<p>Most skill-based games don’t clearly advertise their punishment levels or strictly adhere to well-understood standards, making it hard for players to know ahead of time whether a game will actually suit their tastes or leave them disappointed. Worse, many games <em>start</em> with a low punishment level but then crank it up right alongside challenge as part of the difficulty curve. That’s certainly what <em>some</em> players want, but to others that means the game starts well but gradually becomes unplayable.</p>
<p><cite>Super Meat Boy</cite> punishes mistakes with an instant restart, which is very low punishment for the early, short, and easy stages but becomes brutally high punishment for later, longer, and fiendishly difficult stages. While I loved the <em>challenge</em> level in that game, the punishment grew too frustrating and disruptive when I was trying to learn to beat the later stages and I abandoned the game. Had I been able to keep punishment low, such as by adding checkpoints to later stages, I’m confident I would have finished it.</p>
<p>It would be easy for someone who prefers mastery challenges to misinterpret my behavior as meaning I simply found the game too hard, and unless I understood where that person was coming from it would be very difficult for us to have a productive conversation on the matter. But the truth is that due to the increasing scope of its punishment, <cite>Super Meat Boy</cite> was presenting me with mastery challenges when I was still trying to learn.</p>
<p>Punishment levels aren’t normally chosen from an explicit menu. But Hardcode modes and other forms of <a href="http://yachtclubgames.com/2014/06/checkpoint-design/">optional checkpoints</a> as well as things like <a href="https://www.shacknews.com/article/99724/disney-afternoon-collection-restorer-explains-it-all">speedruns and boss rush modes</a> all provide ways to turn a game’s learning challenges into mastery challenges. The key is that they are under the player’s control. Most players would prefer to start with learning challenges, after which some will be done but some would like to proceed to mastery challenges. There’s no reason we can’t give all of these players what they’re looking for.</p>
<p>So. I no longer argue as I did in 2009 that we should have varying optional levels of challenge but only minimal punishment. Now I argue we should have separately varying optional levels of <em>both</em> challenge <em>and</em> punishment. Hard mode and Hardcore mode should <em>both</em> be a choice. Tying a game to a specific, uniform level of punishment would be like <cite>‘Splosion Man</cite> requiring everyone to always play on Hardcore or omitting the mode completely. The number of people who could enjoy the game and how much fun they could get out of it would both be lower.</p>
<p><em>To increase audience size and replayability, let the player choose between learning and mastery challenges by choosing their own punishment level.</em></p>
<aside class="extra"><p style="font-style:italic;margin-top:4em;">Want more? This article has <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/08/punishment-learning-and-tension/extra/">EXTRA CONTENT</a> available.</p></aside>
https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/07/phases-of-challenge/2018-07-23T00:00:00-07:002018-07-23T00:00:00-07:00<p>Many games are tests of skill. Players succeed or fail at the game’s goals based on their physical dexterity and reaction time, general knowledge and reasoning ability, understanding and internalization of the game’s own mechanics - anything a game can test. But much of that skill is applied <em>before</em> the moment of success or failure.</p>
<p>Victory in a chess match may come from physically moving your piece into a position that checkmates your opponent, but that isn’t the hard part. And the hard part of beating <cite>Doom</cite> isn’t the button press that fires the last shot on the final boss - it’s everything you did to <em>enable</em> that shot. These goals, and indeed most interesting goals in games, actually have multiple stages of challenge that funnel into each other.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/07/phases-of-challenge/phases.png" alt="PREPARATION STRATEGY TACTICS ACTION" />
</figure>
<p>Here’s my conception of the phases of challenge. This is a fairly abstract framework, since it’s intended to be generalizable to every skill-based game. To help pin it down a bit, let’s take a closer look at each phase and then discuss how they interrelate. Once that’s done, I’ll go into some implications these ideas have for game design.</p>
<h3 id="defining-the-phases">Defining the Phases</h3>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/07/phases-of-challenge/preparation.png" alt="PREPARATION" />
</figure>
<p><strong>Preparation</strong> is about getting ready to deal with the game’s challenges.</p>
<p>There are two types of preparation. <strong>Player preparation</strong> is about the player themselves improving their own skills. This may be through <strong>research</strong> to learn, understand, and internalize the game’s systems and iconography or through <strong>practice</strong> of the abilities it tests.</p>
<p>This kind of preparation can be done separately from any engagement with the game’s defined goals, and sometimes without directly playing the game at all. Because it affects only the player, the improvements here will follow that player between playthroughs and to other similar games, but will not benefit any other players using a shared account, save file, or equivalent.</p>
<p>By contrast, <strong>in-game preparation</strong> is about improving the ability of the player character (or equivalent) to deal with the game’s challenges. This is done through <strong>acquiring new options</strong> (getting new abilities, unlocking doors, etc.) or <strong>improving existing options</strong> (upgrading a weapon, boosting character stats, etc.). Different kinds of games have different approaches to this, but some are standard for certain genres. Common ones include progression through certain points in a game’s story (for example, rescue engineer to receive airship), accomplishing specific optional objectives (complete courier side missions to improve running speed), <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinding_(gaming)">grinding or farming</a> (gain experience levels to learn new spells), defeating other players (win PVP battles to earn armor), spending an in-game resource (buy potions with in-game gold), or spending real money (buy card packs with real-world money).</p>
<p>As this preparation occurs within the game’s universe, it requires interacting with the game in some manner. Additionally, the effect is internal to the game, so it won’t follow the player between playthroughs or to similar games unless specifically accounted for (see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Game_Plus">New Game Plus</a>, <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OldSaveBonus">Old Save Bonus</a>). However, it does transfer between players using a shared account, save file, or equivalent.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/07/phases-of-challenge/strategy.png" alt="STRATEGY" />
</figure>
<p>The next phase is <strong>strategy.</strong> This phase is about defining a framework for handling a game’s challenges.</p>
<p>There are two distinct but interrelated aspects of strategy. A <strong>plan</strong> is a multi-step process for overcoming a challenge, defined in advance. Depending on how predictable the challenge is, the plan can be rigid and deterministic (jump across these platforms, flip the switch, shoot the security drone, then walk through the exit) or can include reactions to hypothetical events (defend this room, turning to whichever door an enemy comes through and using an attack of the particular enemy’s elemental weakness - unless several enemies enter at once, in which case retreat to the safe room and heal up). Because a plan exists in the mind of the player, it can be changed on the fly in response to evolving circumstances.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a <strong>loadout</strong> is the specific set of options that will be usable when dealing with a challenge, chosen as a subset of all available options. This can take many forms such as a character build, an equipped set of gear and abilities, a battle party, or a card deck. Loadouts can be multi-leveled - for example, you may put together a battle party by selecting from many characters and then determine each character’s equipment and abilities. Loadouts exist within the game world, so opportunities to change them vary from game to game - but it’s often the case that changing loadouts is slow, requires spending in-game resources, or is only possible during downtime. In many cases, you are locked in to a particular loadout for the duration of whatever constitutes an individual test of its efficacy - for example, if it’s a combat-related loadout, it may be difficult or impossible to change the loadout during battle.</p>
<p>A plan and a loadout influence each other. If particularly useful options have become available, the player may define a loadout around them and then plan based on this loadout. Alternately, a player may first define a plan and then choose a loadout that enables this plan.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/07/phases-of-challenge/tactics.png" alt="TACTICS" />
</figure>
<p>The third phase is <strong>tactics.</strong> This phase is about making choices in response to specific situations.</p>
<p>There are two sides to this. <strong>Awareness</strong> is the understanding of the game’s current situation and all factors in play - the “game state.” In order to choose a response to a situation, you have to know what the situation actually is. Games can <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_information">vary</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_information">considerably</a> in how much of the game state is clear to the player. Information may be withheld completely (it’s unknown what the enemy units are doing behind the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_of_war#In_video_games">fog of war</a>), provided vaguely (the edges of the screen may become bloody to indicate you are wounded, but not indicate precisely how much health you have left), or given as a probability rather than a certainty (the shot you are considering taking has a 67% chance to land successfully). Whatever information is provided will be filtered through the game’s iconography (a boss might switch from a walking animation to a limping one to show that its health is somewhere below 25%). In some cases, it may require memory or reasoning on the part of the player (a countdown was started but is no longer visible; an ability was used that will have an effect in four turns).</p>
<p><strong>Decision</strong> is choosing which of the options in the current loadout to use in response to the current game state. (Use a stealth takedown on the unaware guard, have Pikachu use Thunderbolt, select the “sarcastic” dialog option, etc.) Naturally, this depends a great deal on awareness so that the correct game state is taken into account. Otherwise, the decision can backfire. (The guard actually is aware, Pikachu’s fighting a Ground-type, the person you’re talking to is hostile, etc.)</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/07/phases-of-challenge/action.png" alt="ACTION" />
</figure>
<p>The fourth and final phase is <strong>action.</strong> This is the process of transmitting a decision back into the game to update the game state. This is often the moment of truth - whatever skill is being tested by a particular challenge, this when the player either succeeds or fails. This is true even if most of the work was done in prior phases.</p>
<p>In some games, which I will broadly refer to as “action games”, this is expected to be part of the challenge and as such requires nontrivial amounts of physical capability (aiming a headshot at a moving target, hitting the right button sequence to execute a combo move). In non-action games, this is not expected to be part of the challenge and is merely its interface. As such, action in these games is designed to be trivial for able-bodied people (selecting an option from a menu, moving a chess piece, revealing a card).</p>
<p>While both kinds of games can benefit from accessibility accommodations that make action easier for people with disabilities, the situation is more complicated if the game is competitive. In action games, accessibility concessions are often seen as <em>disrupting</em> competitive balance while in other games they are seen as <em>restoring</em> it.</p>
<h3 id="how-the-phases-interact">How the Phases Interact</h3>
<p>I’ve presented the phases linearly. This is because they do tend to come in this order for a given challenge, with each phase constraining and flowing into the later ones.</p>
<p><strong>Preparation constrains strategy.</strong> Strategy is about defining a framework to make use of the advantages gained in preparation. In particular, player preparation constrains planning, as a plan can only make effective use of a game’s systems to the extent that the player understands those systems and possesses the required skills. (You can only plan to make use of enemy weaknesses if you know what they are and can aim for them.) Similarly, in-game preparation constrains loadouts, as a loadout can only include options that have become available within the game. (You can’t include an unrecruited character in your party, equip a weapon you haven’t yet bought, or include a card in your deck that you haven’t acquired.)</p>
<p><strong>Strategy constrains tactics.</strong> Tactics are about choosing how to respond to individual situations in ways consistent with the defined strategy. Loadout constrains what decisions are possible, as you can only choose from your usable options. (You can’t use your ice sword against the fire demon if you didn’t bring it with you.) Additionally, the <em>quality</em> of a decision is constrained by the plan, as a plan will not succeed if individual decisions do not advance it. (You <em>could</em> choose to shoot your ally instead of your enemy, but this won’t be helpful if your plan is to defeat your enemy and protect your ally.) The plan also defines what specific elements are essential for awareness - if the plan requires responding to certain events, you must notice when they happen or the plan will fail.</p>
<p><strong>Tactics constrains action.</strong> Action is about applying a tactical choice back into the game. The chosen option fully defines what action must be taken within the game’s systems. (Deciding to climb to a higher vantage point means you must apply the right inputs to accomplish that climb.)</p>
<p>But in practice, causality can flow in <em>both</em> directions. It’s possible to start with preparation, devise a strategy based on the gained advantages, make appropriate tactical choices and take the corresponding actions, but it can go the other way too. Perhaps you enjoy a particular action, such as firing a <a href="http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/on-daddy-take-downs">shotgun that shoots lightning</a>. You want to be able to frequently use it as an effective tactic, so you design a strategy around it and then do the required preparation to enable that strategy.</p>
<p>Additionally, in most games individual challenges feed into each other in one or more gameplay loops. The results and feedback from an action often go right back into tactical awareness. (If you killed the enemy you’re attacking, move on to the next; otherwise, stay on this one.) Preparation is also often essentially just repeated action. Each attempt constitutes practice, and the outcomes may constitute research. (You may get increasingly good at headshots, but then observe that a particular enemy type is actually better handled by attacking its limbs first.) In-game preparation requires action as well - sometimes one-shot (you picked up the red keycard and can now open red doors) and sometimes repeated (each battle you win gains you experience which raises your level and improves your attack and defense stats).</p>
<p>However, the time frames generally shrink as you move forward through the phases - both in terms of the time available to work within a phase and the duration of the effect of doing so. Preparation is often unconstrained and permanent. Strategy may take a few minutes and have effects lasting several minutes to multiple hours. Tactics may be on the scale of a minute or two, while actions might be immediate and have direct effects that only last a few seconds. The actual scales vary between challenges and between games.</p>
<p>Finally, it’s worth noting that different games (and different challenges within a game) distribute challenge differently between phases. For example, chess has no real concept of in-game preparation due to every match starting with the same state and the same pieces, while poker <em>does</em> have in-game preparation as the size of your stack influences what options are available - you can only bet or call with chips you actually have. We can refer to the distribution of difficulty across phases for a particular game or goal as its <strong>challenge profile</strong>.</p>
<h3 id="implications-for-design">Implications for Design</h3>
<p>I see several game design takeaways from this framework. Here they are.</p>
<h4 id="1-challenge-profiles-should-be-clear">1. Challenge profiles should be clear.</h4>
<p>Different people enjoy different challenge profiles to varying degrees. One person may enjoy preparation due to the feeling of continual improvement, another might consider it an obstacle that just delays wide-ranging strategic experimentation, a third might find that too slow and prefer the quick feedback of tactical decision-making, while a fourth might focus on the flow-inducing immediacy of action. And of course an individual’s tastes can change with their mood - a player might enjoy action games earlier in the day but then want to relax in the evening with some grind-heavy preparation.</p>
<p>As such, it’s useful for players to have a good idea in advance what phases of challenge will be important in a given game. This is one of the major benefits to genre labels, as many genres imply a particular range of challenge profiles. A player who dislikes action-based challenge would do well to avoid <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-person_shooter">first-person shooters</a>, while one who dislikes in-game preparation should avoid <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incremental_game">idle games</a>. Some genres even have a dominant phase right in the name, such as “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_strategy">real-time strategy</a>”, “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_role-playing_game">tactical RPG</a>”, or “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action-adventure_game">action adventure</a>.”</p>
<p><figure class="right">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/07/phases-of-challenge/until-dawn.jpg" alt="Until Dawn cover art" width="200" />
</figure>Games that don’t fit in well to established genres are thus at greater risk of having challenge profiles that surprise the player. For example, the difficult-to-categorize <cite>Until Dawn</cite> bills itself as a game of decisions. Its <a href="http://www.supermassivegames.com/games/until-dawn">official website</a> mentions <em>five times</em> that your choices will determine the story, and three of those mentions specifically say that your choices determine who lives and who dies. By contrast, the page mentions <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_time_event">quick-time events</a> <em>zero</em> times. But in practice, it turns out that <a href="https://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/10/until-dawn-is-much-shorter-when-youre-bad-at-quick-time-events/">your decisions don’t really matter if you can’t pass the QTEs</a>. This can make for a very frustrating experience for players with slower reaction times who came to play the promised game of decisions and weren’t looking for action-based challenge. Deciding what characters should do in the moment (an interesting tactical challenge) is superseded by QTEs (an uninteresting action challenge).</p>
<p>It’s also important for an individual challenge <em>within</em> a game to make its profile obvious. It’s commonly understood that games must provide clear feedback to the player on the results of their actions in order for the player to effectively learn and improve. But it’s very easy to make the mistake of providing action-level feedback to challenges that aren’t really <em>about</em> action. This is especially true because different challenge phases tend to operate on different time scales - it’s much easier to get immediate feedback for actions than for strategies, for example. But it’s absolutely worth mitigating this issue when possible. A player who doesn’t know what they’re doing wrong is not in a good position to learn to do better.</p>
<p>Suppose, for example, you are playing a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metroidvania">Metroidvania</a> and there is a ledge that you can <em>almost</em> jump to. You try the jump a couple of times and just barely miss each time. Does this mean you are timing your jump poorly and you need to improve your action? Does it mean jumping is not the way to get to this ledge and you need to choose a different tactic? Does it mean you aren’t supposed to go to the ledge at all and this is the incorrect strategy? Or does it mean you need to prepare first by finding a jump upgrade power? If the game provides no other cues, it can be quite hard to tell. You might waste time and frustrate yourself by retrying the jump several times to get the timing just right when that’s not the problem at all. If instead the platform were further out of reach and it was clear your jump was nowhere near enough to get to it, you’d be much more likely to quickly realize that’s not the right approach.</p>
<h4 id="2-optional-trade-offs-between-phases-allow-for-more-playstyles">2. Optional trade-offs between phases allow for more playstyles.</h4>
<p>If different people enjoy different challenge profiles, then having more high-difficulty phases of challenge in a given game will shrink a game’s potential audience. Players who don’t enjoy preparation, strategy, <em>and</em> tactics are unlikely to persist through a game that requires high amounts of all three.</p>
<p>But that’s only if the profile is inflexible and you genuinely need to work hard in each of the phases. If instead it’s possible to invest heavily in one phase to offset the requirement of another phase, that means the game supports multiple playstyles and the potential audience becomes larger - more players of different tastes will be able to play the game in a way that appeals to them.</p>
<p>I <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2009/11/awesome-by-proxy-addicted-to-fake-achievement/">once wrote</a> about the fact that many RPGs present battles as challenges that can be overcome <em>either</em> through strategy and tactics or through preparation - you can use your resources optimally, or you can grind levels and get enough resources that you can blatantly misuse them and still win. This means that those who enjoy the strategy and tactics challenge can experience it, while others can get around it.</p>
<p>Taking it further, this kind of flexibility enables people to concentrate difficulty into particular phases via <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SelfImposedChallenge">self-imposed challenges</a>. Players can eschew level-grinding preparation in RPGs and go hardcore on the strategy and tactics challenge via a <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LowLevelRun">low-level run</a>. Similarly, Metroidvania games often provide a lot of preparation in the form of upgrade pickups, but a player can instead concentrate the challenge into the action phase via a <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MinimalistRun">minimalist run</a>.</p>
<h4 id="3-punishment-should-be-scoped-to-the-phase-where-the-player-needs-to-improve">3. Punishment should be scoped to the phase where the player needs to improve.</h4>
<p><a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/glossary/game-design/#elements-of-difficulty">Punishment</a> is what happens when the player fails. For it to feel fair to the player and be useful for learning and improving skills, it should be scoped to the particular challenge the player has failed. (Defending this claim is beyond the scope of this article, but see <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2009/11/test-skills-not-patience-challenge-punishment-and-learning/">Test Skills, Not Patience: Challenge, Punishment, and Learning</a> for related thoughts.) If that’s the case, then that suggests that punishment should also be scoped to the specific phase or phases where the player failed.</p>
<p>Suppose you are playing an action RPG. You attempt to attack an enemy, but your sword swing misses due to bad timing. This is an action-level failure, and the punishment is kept at the action level - you deal no damage to the enemy but you can you freely try again. You attack again, and land the hit - but realize the enemy is actually blocking physical attacks and you need to use magic instead. This is a tactical-level failure, and the punishment is kept at the tactical level - you deal no damage to the enemy, but you can pay attention to the enemy’s stance and choose a different approach.</p>
<p>So you lob a fireball, but then realize that this enemy is resistant to fire damage. You poured all your skill points into fire magic, but enough enemies resist fire that you probably should have diversified into multiple elements. This is a strategy-level failure - is the punishment kept at the strategy level?</p>
<p><figure class="right">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/07/phases-of-challenge/respec.jpg" alt="Torchlight 2 respec potion" />
</figure>Only if the game allows you to “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_video_game_terms#Respecing">respec</a>” - in other words, only if you can refund and redistribute your skill points. If you can’t, then your punishment is actually on the preparation level - to fix the situation, you need to earn <em>more</em> skill points. Depending on the situation (How frequently are skill points awarded? Is it prohibitively difficult to deal with the current enemies with only fire magic? Can you get useful amounts of progress toward skill points by fighting lower-level enemies or enemies in a different location?) you may even have to start over with a brand new character to do this effectively, rendering moot all the in-game preparation you’ve done so far.</p>
<p>But if you <em>can</em> respec - that is, if you can refund and redistribute your earned skill points - then your punishment is indeed on the strategy level. You can redo your loadout to include some ice magic and be on your way. A respec mechanic makes in-game preparation exchangeable - you can change your investment, but you don’t get <em>more</em> to invest than you’ve already earned. As such, it doesn’t undermine preparation, but it does allow the player to experiment and learn on the strategy level without forcing them to also repeat large amounts of preparation.</p>
<p>If you want players to improve their skills in a certain phase, scope the punishment to that phase. It’s unfair and unproductive to punish them in phases where they have committed no errors.</p>
<h4 id="4-unpredictability-pushes-challenge-back-a-phase">4. Unpredictability pushes challenge back a phase.</h4>
<p>Suppose you are playing a first-person shooter in which your character has a highly-accurate pistol. In such a game, your ability to successfully shoot enemies - an action challenge - is down to your own skill at that very action. But suppose your character’s gun were less accurate, with some amount of random scattering of its shots away from where it’s aimed. There’s still action in the challenge, but your success is determined <em>less</em> by your skill at aiming and firing. Now <em>tactics</em> enter into the challenge more - you have to know when to fire, bringing the enemy close enough for the randomness not to matter much.</p>
<p>Alternately, consider <cite>Hearthstone</cite>, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectible_card_game">collectible card game</a> in which you build a deck from your owned cards and then use that deck in a match. Choosing which card to play on a given turn is a tactical challenge; however, you don’t necessarily know which cards you’ll have in hand at any given time. Your deck is shuffled before a match and in most cases you only draw one card per turn. This loads more of the challenge into the strategic level of building the deck - you have to account for the unpredictability and try to make a deck that can function regardless of the order in which you draw the cards.</p>
<p>Or consider Pokémon. Putting together a competitively-viable team is a strategic challenge. But once you’ve decided which ‘mons to include and caught one of each, you’re not done - Pokémon have some <a href="https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Individual_values">random</a> <a href="https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Nature">stats</a> that affect their capabilities. As a result, you have to do a lot more preparation to actually build your team (probably involving <a href="https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_breeding">breeding</a>).</p>
<p>If a player can’t predict or control the outcome of a particular phase of challenge, this pushes more of the challenge into the previous phase to compensate. This isn’t automatically a problem, but it’s definitely something to be aware of when designing a game and aiming for a particular challenge profile.</p>
<h4 id="5-reducing-one-challenge-phase-can-emphasize-another-challenge-phase">5. Reducing one challenge phase can emphasize another challenge phase.</h4>
<p>I mentioned above that reducing action challenge via accessibility accommodations can be seen as restoring competitive balance in non-action games. This is because - by definition - the action phase is not important in non-action games. If you were playing chess with someone who was unable to move their own pieces and used voice recognition software to make moves by saying things like “Knight to Rook Five,” you would likely still consider this a fair chess match. If instead you were playing <cite>Team Fortress 2</cite> against this person and they could take action by saying things like “Run to the capture point” and “Headshot the enemy scout,” this would feel less fair - the two of you aren’t really playing the same game because your opponent has a very different experience of the action phase.</p>
<p>If you were <em>both</em> using the voice-activated version, things would be fair again, but you still wouldn’t exactly be playing <cite>Team Fortress 2</cite>. You’d be playing a variant in which action is de-emphasized and strategy and tactics are emphasized - your strategic and tactical skills have an <em>increased</em> effect on your odds of victory. Thus, this version of <cite>Team Fortress 2</cite> will appeal more to players who enjoy strategy and tactics over action challenges.</p>
<p><figure class="right">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/07/phases-of-challenge/stephens-sausage-roll.jpg" alt="Stephen's Sausage Roll screenshot" />
</figure>As such, game designers may deliberately reduce challenge in one phase to concentrate it in other phases. This is often a good way to prevent things from becoming tedious by ensuring that what’s difficult about a game is also what’s interesting about it. For example, in his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dsQtBHk0eE&t=886">review of <cite>Stephen’s Sausage Roll</cite></a>, Joseph Anderson notes that the game’s unlimited undo feature allows you to solve puzzles <em>while</em> figuring them out through active experimentation, rather than thinking them through without acting and then being in the position of knowing what to do but still having to do it. In other words, uninteresting action challenge is drastically reduced in order to emphasize the far more interesting planning and tactics challenges.</p>
<p>But if this sort of refocusing comes as a change to an existing formula, such as in a patch or a sequel, it’s often controversial. Some number of players are likely to be invested in the prior challenge profile. Such a player is likely to see this change not as streamlining or fat-trimming, but dumbing down - especially if they are proud of their achievements in the now-diminished challenge phase. See for example the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151019040921/http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/05/attunements-and-why-they-must-never-return/">mixed response</a> to Blizzard <a href="http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Instance_attunement#In_Wrath_of_the_Lich_King">mostly removing instance attunements</a> from <cite>World of Warcraft</cite>, allowing players to participate in raids (strategy, tactics, and action challenges) without having to do specific lengthy quest chains first (preparation challenge). Some players celebrated the game removing a feature that “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151019040921/http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/05/attunements-and-why-they-must-never-return/">existed to keep you from doing what you wanted to do until you’d done what you didn’t</a>” while others lamented that this “<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/7c5jnq/a_personal_list_on_blizzards_possible_mistakes/dpnp5k1/">diminished the value of raiding, and diminished the value of guilds.</a>”</p>
<h4 id="wrapping-up">Wrapping Up</h4>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/07/phases-of-challenge/phases.png" alt="PREPARATION STRATEGY TACTICS ACTION" />
</figure>
<p>The challenge phases as I’ve defined them are just one way to categorize and think about challenge in games, but I think it’s a useful one and it’s already helped me have more productive conversations about game difficulty. The design implications listed above are mostly based on ideas that I’ve had half-formed for some time. This framework has finally allowed me to crystallize and express them.</p>
<p>Challenge is one of the most important topics in game design, yet it’s commonly misunderstood and oversimplified - we say a game is too hard or too easy when what’s really going on is far more complex and interesting. Proper understanding of the elements of challenge is crucial to designing games that use it well.</p>
<!--
<style>
.phases {
list-style-type: none;
margin: 0 auto 2.5em;
padding: 0 0 0 1.25em;
display: block;
max-width: 51em;
}
.phases li {
width: 9em;
height: 2.5em;
line-height: 2.5em;
position: relative;
display: inline-block;
margin: 1.25em 1.25em 0 0;
padding-left: 1.25em;
text-align: center;
color: white;
font-weight: bold;
}
.phases li.fade {
opacity: 0.2;
filter: alpha(opacity=20);
}
.phases li:after {
content: no-open-quote;
position: absolute;
left: 0;
bottom: 0;
width: 0;
height: 0;
border-left: 1.25em solid white;
border-top: 1.25em solid transparent;
border-bottom: 1.25em solid transparent;
}
.phases li:before {
content: no-open-quote;
position: absolute;
right: -1.25em;
bottom: 0;
width: 0;
height: 0;
border-left: 1.25em solid;
border-top: 1.25em solid transparent;
border-bottom: 1.25em solid transparent;
}
.phases li:nth-of-type(1) {
background: #528bc5;
}
.phases li:nth-of-type(1):before {
border-left-color: #528bc5;
}
.phases li:nth-of-type(2) {
background: #3bb44b;
}
.phases li:nth-of-type(2):before {
border-left-color: #3bb44b;
}
.phases li:nth-of-type(3) {
background: #ddb373;
}
.phases li:nth-of-type(3):before {
border-left-color: #ddb373;
}
.phases li:nth-of-type(4) {
background: #ee5555;
}
.phases li:nth-of-type(4):before {
border-left-color: #ee5555;
}
</style>
<ol class="phases">
<li>PREPARATION</li>
<li class="fade">STRATEGY</li>
<li class="fade">TACTICS</li>
<li class="fade">ACTION</li>
</ol>
-->
<aside class="extra"><p style="font-style:italic;margin-top:4em;">Want more? This article has <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/07/phases-of-challenge/extra/">EXTRA CONTENT</a> available.</p></aside>
https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/06/curating-steam-moral-complexity-versus-automatic-norms/2018-06-18T00:00:00-07:002018-06-18T00:00:00-07:00<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(software)">Steam</a>, owned by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation">Valve</a>, is the world’s biggest digital distributor of computer games. For years, it’s had frustratingly <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2014/12/16/7406713/hatred-returns-to-steam-greenlight-valve">inconsistent</a> <a href="https://kotaku.com/steam-is-getting-an-uncensored-sex-game-1728006494">and</a> <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2017/10/31/16570552/steam-adult-games-uncensored-patches">unpredictable</a> <a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/you-must-be-18-or-older-to-enter-banned-from-steam-over-pornographic-ascii-art/">rules</a> on what games could be sold on its platform. After the most recent <a href="https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-06-05-it-might-have-killed-our-business">kerfuffle</a>, Valve’s Erik Johnson published a post to the Steam blog titled “<a href="https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1666776116200553082">Who Gets To Be On The Steam Store?</a>”</p>
<p>It’s worth reading in its entirety, but here’s my summary: Deciding which games can be sold on Steam is a hard problem that Steam has struggled with for years. There’s a long list of controversial topics and kinds of content - and for each one, many people in Valve’s huge multinational audience feel strongly that it should be allowed on the store and many people feel strongly that it shouldn’t. Many of these topics are also controversial among Valve’s own employees. So rather than continue to struggle with the increasingly impossible goal of consistent curation, Valve is scaling back to block only games that are illegal or “straight up trolling” (later clarified somewhat to mean “<a href="https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/valve-clarifies-what-games-count-as-straight-up-trolling-sort-of">designed to do nothing but generate outrage and cause conflict</a>"). Valve’s efforts will instead go toward creating tools to allow people to control what content they see - customers will be able to block specific kinds of games from their own slice of Steam and creators will be able to avoid harassment if they release something controversial.</p>
<p>We’ll have to wait and see the filtering and anti-harassment tools to know whether this plan will succeed, but the reasoning and intent seem solid and likely to lead to a vast improvement over the current unpredictable mess. So I was shocked to see that the reaction from the game journalism community featured widespread rage and contempt.</p>
<p>There’s justifiable concern over the ambiguity of what constitutes “straight-up trolling”, pessimism about the promised tools, and fear that lack of moderation will allow toxicity to flourish. But there’s also a number of people accusing Valve of abandoning moral responsibility for not codifying and enforcing a single standard. These people write articles with titles like “<a href="https://steamed.kotaku.com/steams-irresponsible-hands-off-policy-is-proof-that-val-1826654709">Steam’s Irresponsible Hands-Off Policy Is Proof That Valve Still Hasn’t Learned Its Lesson</a>” and “<a href="https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/06/07/valves-abdication-of-responsibility-over-steam-is-the-worst-possible-solution/">Valve’s abdication of responsibility over Steam is the worst possible solution</a>,” rejecting the explanation provided in the blog post and seeing even the disagreement that exists within Valve as a moral failing.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Let us be clear: Valve has not made this choice because it thinks it is the ethically correct thing to do. It has made this choice because it does not want to think about ethics at all, and because it is afraid of making the difficult decisions that a company in its position must face. . . . Valve, however, by its own admission, can’t even resolve its own internal debates about the issue - which, by the way, shows a worrying lack of leadership and a weak company culture."<br>
—Oli Welsh, <cite><a href="https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-06-07-steams-content-policy-is-both-arrogant-and-cowardly">Steam’s content policy is both arrogant and cowardly</a></cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Initially I found this response confusing. I read Valve’s blog post as essentially saying, “Hey, this is actually a really complicated problem. You might find it obvious that one kind of game is evil and that another is perfectly fine, but other totally reasonable people find the reverse equally obvious. There is no one-size-fits-all solution when people disagree on what the obviously right thing to do is.” And some people seemed to answer this with, “C’mon, Valve, it’s easy - you just do the obviously right thing!”</p>
<p>Now, I don’t know what was going through each of these journalist’s minds when they apparently rejected moral complexity and argued Valve should take and apply a single principled stand (presumably the one that is obviously correct to <em>them</em>). But I know one thing that could easily cause this sort of reaction. It’s what economist Robin Hanson calls “automatic norms.”</p>
<p>Every group has <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_norm">norms</a> - mutually-understood rules that govern behavior. Sometimes they exist as unwritten etiquette, such as wearing a suit to a job interview in white-collar industries. Sometimes they are explicit rules, such as the ones against <a href="https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/account-and-community-restrictions/what-constitutes-vote-cheating-or">manipulating votes on Reddit</a>. Sometimes they are enshrined in law, such as bans on littering in multiple countries. They vary widely in importance, but in general violating a group norm will get you shunned or otherwise punished by the group’s members. Some norms are <em>so important</em> that even looking like you <em>might</em> be capable of violating them is enough to get you punished.</p>
<p>Robin Hanson <a href="https://www.overcomingbias.com/2017/12/automatic-norms.html">describes an illustrative experiment</a> from a <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.126.6275&rep=rep1&type=pdf">2000 paper from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology</a>. In this experiment, subjects were presented with a scenario in which a hospital director had to decide whether to save the life of a five-year-old child named Johnny. There were eight versions of the scenario, based on three variables. First, the other option available to the director besides saving Johnny was either to save a different child or to spend the million dollars the procedure would cost on other hospital needs such as equipment or salary improvements. Second, the director either found the decision easy or difficult. Third and finally, the director either chose to save Johnny or took the other option. Subjects were then asked how they felt about the director and whether he should be punished.</p>
<p>Protecting children is a vital norm in most groups, so it shouldn’t be surprising that in the cases where the director chose between Johnny and other ways to spend the money, subjects were much more likely to punish him if he chose not to save the child. But here’s the interesting part - in those same cases, regardless of how the director chose, he is punished more if the finds the decision difficult.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“However, when [the director chooses whether to spend the money on Johnny or elsewhere], he is punished much more if he treats this as a difficult choice. In fact, he is punished almost as much for saving Johnny after much thought as he is for not saving Johnny after little thought!"<br>
—Robin Hanson, <cite><a href="https://www.overcomingbias.com/2017/12/automatic-norms.html">Automatic Norms</a></cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>It could easily be the case that the director is aware of a way to spend the million dollars that is likely to save the lives of <em>multiple</em> children. But to many people, that doesn’t matter. If you have the opportunity to save the life of a child, you are supposed to do it, no questions asked. You aren’t supposed to pause to think about it. You aren’t supposed to admit the situation is complicated. You aren’t supposed to seek out alternate viewpoints. When a norm is sufficiently important to the group, you are supposed to enact it immediately, reflexively, and automatically. Any hesitation is a partial violation.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“These results suggest that when we face a choice, the categorization of some of the options as norm violating is supposed to come to us fast, and with little thought or doubt. Unless we notice that all of the options violate similarly important norms, we are supposed to be sure of which options to reject, without needing to consult with other people, and without needing to try to frame the choice in multiple ways, to see if the relevant norms are subject to framing effects. We are to presume that framing effects are unimportant, and that everyone agrees on the relevant norms and how they are to be applied."<br>
—Robin Hanson, <cite><a href="https://www.overcomingbias.com/2017/12/automatic-norms.html">Automatic Norms</a></cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>That last part is important. A norm that’s been internalized deeply enough to be automatic doesn’t <em>feel</em> like a group norm - it feels like <em>the obvious right thing.</em> It feels like it applies globally to everybody in every situation. When we see someone fail to follow it, or even imply that it’s worth <em>thinking</em> about instead of following automatically, we don’t take that to mean they see things differently or are acting on different but possibly equally-valid norms. Instead, as Hanson <a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2017/12/10-implications-of-automatic-norms.html">puts it</a>, we “feel justified in accusing others of bad motives when they seem to us to violate norms. It seems to us that either they intended to be guilty, or they were inexcusably sloppy or lacking in control of their passions. We usually don’t need to wonder how they framed the situation, what norms they applied, or how they interpreted those norms.”</p>
<p>For this to be a <em>correct</em> response to norm violations, we all need to have internalized the same norms. And for the small hunter-gatherer groups in our ancestral environment, this may well have been true. In such a society, the automatic application of important norms is a strong signal that you are a trustworthy member of the tribe. Hesitation suggests you haven’t properly internalized the tribe’s norms and are thus less trustworthy. But of course it doesn’t work that way in a globally-interconnected society.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[…W]e’d all need to learn from a lot of pretty similar examples in order to reasonably have much confidence that we were all applying the same norms the same way. . . . This was plausibly the case for most of our distant ancestors. . . . Today however, there are far more people, and more intermixed, who grow up in widely varying contexts and now face far larger spaces of possible actions and action contexts. . . . So it isn’t very plausible that we’ve all converged on how to reliably interpret most norms in most contexts. Thus today we must quite frequently make different judgements on whether actions violate norms. We may converge in judgement with our closest associates and gossip partners, at least on our most common topics of gossip. But for everyone else, if we consider the details of most of their behavior, we will find fault with a lot of it. As they would if they considered the details of our behavior. We are usually sure that we are innocent, but in fact that’s not how many others would categorize us."<br>
—Robin Hanson, <cite><a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2017/12/10-implications-of-automatic-norms.html">10 Implications of Automatic Norms</a></cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This paints a plausible picture of what’s happening with the responses to Valve’s blog post. Valve says that the question of what should be allowed on Steam is complex and difficult. People with relevant automatic norms - regardless of <em>what</em> those norms actually are and which games they suggest should be banned - see this as a deliberate and unethical violation of those norms. Valve says that their own employees feel strongly about what should be allowed on Valve, but are divided. People with relevant automatic norms interpret this as wishy-washiness and lack of moral fortitude. To them, arguments that views and backgrounds differ are irrelevant. The people who don’t immediately see things their way are negligent or downright evil.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Valve said it would clarify its stance on what sort of games it would allow on the storefront soon. It <a href="https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-06-06-valve-allow-everything-steam-store">followed through on that today</a> with a statement that–after a waffling preamble about how hard the problems are and how its own employees don’t agree on what to do–explained it wouldn’t really be doing anything. . . . All Valve understands is that it doesn’t want to make a choice and draw a line. It doesn’t want the responsibility of being the biggest platform for PC games on the planet; it just wants its 30%."<br>
—Brendan Sinclair, <cite><a href="https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-06-06-valves-new-content-policy-is-a-gutless-attempt-to-dodge-responsibility">Valve’s new content policy is a gutless attempt to dodge responsibility</a></cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Again, I don’t know for sure whether any of these journalists are thinking in this way. But I believe this way of thinking would result in commentary like that I’ve quoted above. And I think it’s a close-minded and frankly dangerous way of looking at things.</p>
<p>We live in a complex and interconnected world. Our leaders - commercial, social, political, and otherwise - make decisions that affect us on scales unimaginable to our tribal ancestors. The ability to recognize and carefully consider moral complexity is vital. We should <em>fear</em> those who find every moral question simple and easy. The ones who think there’s a single and obvious correct set of games that everyone in the world should have access to. The ones who wouldn’t hesitate to save Johnny today instead of asking whether we could save ten like Johnny tomorrow.</p>
<p>If you’re still not convinced, know this: There’s a class of game that I think is obviously evil. These games irresponsibly promote abhorrent worldviews and actions. While it’s impossible to calculate how much psychological and cultural damage they cause, I think there’s a good chance the world would be better off if they were banned. I never play these games and while I try to be tolerant there’s a part of me that can’t help but view anyone who enjoys them as morally suspect. I can tell you <em>all</em> of that without you having <em>any</em> idea what kind of game I’m talking about. Should you trust me to decide for you whether you should be allowed to purchase and play one of these games?</p>
<p>The games I’m talking about, by the way, are military shooters. Even when they don’t glorify military adventurism or present complex geopolitical issues as problems to be solved by shooting enough brown people, real-world war should never be viewed as a fun game to play. It sickens me on a deep level that these games have been so popular for so long. But I don’t say this often and I would never say these games shouldn’t be allowed to exist. I know that to a lot of people these games are obviously harmless, and there are also a lot of people who feel the same revulsion about games that I actively enjoy. I don’t think it would be correct to remove <cite>Call of Duty</cite> from Steam just because <em>I</em> find it obviously evil. After all, I want to play <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/series/senran-kagura/"><cite>Senran Kagura</cite></a> and <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/review/depression-quest/"><cite>Depression Quest</cite></a> and <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/review/gone-home/"><cite>Gone Home</cite></a> and there’s somebody out there who finds each of those obviously evil instead.</p>
<p>All Valve is saying is that none of us should be able to decide for all of us.</p>
<aside class="extra"><p style="font-style:italic;margin-top:4em;">Want more? This article has <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/06/curating-steam-moral-complexity-versus-automatic-norms/extra/">EXTRA CONTENT</a> available.</p></aside>
https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/player-choice-npc-consent/2018-05-21T00:00:00-07:002018-05-21T00:00:00-07:00<p>Last week, we discussed <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/that-which-is-not-forbidden-the-spectrum-of-allowance/">the spectrum of allowance</a> - a way to describe how allowed a given action is within a game, ranging from <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/that-which-is-not-forbidden-the-spectrum-of-allowance/#impossible">impossible</a> to <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/that-which-is-not-forbidden-the-spectrum-of-allowance/#required">required</a>. A key point is that the game’s designer places each action on the spectrum. Aside from bugs (which violate the designer’s intent) and hacks (which partially override the original design with another), in a game you can only do what the designer lets you. This is true <em>even when you have freedom of choice</em> - that freedom was <em>granted</em> by the designer.</p>
<p>Some games understand this well and play with it effectively - see for example <a href="https://www.stanleyparable.com/"><cite>The Stanley Parable</cite></a>, especially the <a href="http://thestanleyparable.wikia.com/wiki/Confusion_Ending">confusion ending</a> (warning: spoilers). But not all games that examine player choice understand the designer’s role.</p>
<p><cite><a href="http://thejourneyofme.yodog.fr/">The Journey Of Me</a></cite> is a free browser game. It’s a 2D platformer and it takes about fifteen minutes to play. I am now going to spoil the hell out of it, but honestly I don’t think you should be too worried about spoilers in this case.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/player-choice-npc-consent/journey-splash_hu29b5806b792f47f2ab7080e75d7d1721_314948_600x0_resize_catmullrom_2.png" alt="The Journey of Me title screen" />
</figure>
<p>The entire gimmick of <cite>The Journey Of Me</cite> is that the player character doesn’t want you to play it. He’s a prince happily sitting in his castle minding his own business when you force him outside onto an adventure he doesn’t want. Things get worse when you start killing innocent creatures that just happen to be in the way, and the prince berates you for being a monster. Over time the prince manages to take more and more control over himself, and finally he kills himself to be rid of you.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/player-choice-npc-consent/journey-mind_huf769bacb2696107e614a50740683b5cd_595234_600x0_resize_catmullrom_2.png" alt="GET OUT OF MY MIND!" />
</figure>
<p>It’s sort of similar to <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2012/12/tropes-and-trolls-when-the-game-is-not-what-you-think-it-is/">other subversive games</a> previously discussed in this space, but it’s much less successful as a deconstruction. Rather than showing the effects of video game assumptions in a more realistic world to highlight their implicit, absurd, or even irresponsible nature, <cite>The Journey of Me</cite> attacks the player for following video game assumptions in what is <em>very obviously</em> a video game world. Act transitions are indicated with banners and signs, giant coins float in midair and can be collected by touching them, mindless creatures block your path and must be killed to proceed.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/player-choice-npc-consent/journey-act-i_hu6a5060284412ad3e5e9400e28243c188_1084901_600x0_resize_catmullrom_2.png" alt="The Journey of Me screenshot with Act I banner and floating coins" />
</figure>
<p>The <em>only</em> objections are voiced by the player character, and despite the fact that he clearly occupies a world designed to constrict him and the player to a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/glossary/game-design/#option-restriction">single path</a>, he says nothing about the designer and reserves all his hate and vitriol for the player. He refers to the player as “the sick prick who turned [him] into a psychopath” when the designer is the one who put him in a world where psychopathy is the only real option.</p>
<p>To be fair to the creators, <cite>The Journey of Me</cite> is a polished-up student project and <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/WebGames/comments/3dymjh/the_journey_of_me_the_adventure_of_a_hero_who/ctaz0bd/?st=jhc7ep4f&sh=d665424b">they recognize that it’s flawed</a>. But I’m not sure they <em>understand</em> the flaws. The game was originally intended to “provide the player with multiple choices and the corresponding hero’s reactions” but this was cut for a few reasons - however, what’s left is a game where “the hero is mad at the player & insulting him, and…the player can’t actually do anything about it…” When choice is taken away from the player, the game is no longer <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2009/11/play-me-a-story-part-two-what-makes-a-metanarrative/">about the player</a>, but <cite>The Journey of Me</cite> doesn’t acknowledge this. The player character’s dialog still assumes the player’s actions reveal something meaningful about them and the game’s subtitle is even “A GAME ABOUT YOU”!</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/player-choice-npc-consent/journey-murderer_hu2fe23a7011f8eed67a057d918b2e02af_392658_600x0_resize_catmullrom_2.png" alt="You turned me into a greedy murderer." />
</figure>
<p><cite>The Journey of Me</cite> is thus quite frustrating to play. It accuses the player of all sorts of terrible personality flaws for taking actions that are <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/that-which-is-not-forbidden-the-spectrum-of-allowance/#required">required</a> by the game’s design. The only way these actions could say <em>less</em> about the player is if the game were a movie instead.</p>
<p>This is an extreme example, but the underlying misunderstanding is common. It’s all too easy to treat gameplay as a dialog between the player and the game, when really it’s a dialog between the player and the <em>designer.</em> The dialog is <em>mediated</em> by the game - but only in the ways chosen <em>by</em> the designer. Players do not reveal themselves by choosing from an unlimited range of naturally-occurring optional actions - the designer determines the set of available actions and how <em>allowed</em> each action is. The further toward either end of the <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/that-which-is-not-forbidden-the-spectrum-of-allowance/">spectrum of allowance</a> any action is placed, the more aggressively the game encourages or discourages it, and the less free is the player’s choice whether to take that action - because the choice is increasingly made <em>by the designer.</em></p>
<p>Most of the time, this is all for the player’s benefit, constraining their available actions to what’s interesting and enjoyable. It’s normal and expected for a game’s world to be designed for the player. But what about when that world is inhabited by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-player_character">NPC</a>s whose own choices are also constrained by the game’s design?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“…one of my biggest concerns around creating a romance game is how to deal with consent when NPCs are programmed to say ‘yes’. . . . I feel there are meaningful solutions, but I’m definitely interested in hearing thoughts or examples on other ways to better model consent."<br>
—Lynnea Glasser, <a href="http://blog.maderealstories.com/2014/09/potential-future-romance-games-creatures.html"><cite>Potential Future Romance Games? (Creatures)</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lynnea Glasser wrote the above in a blog post about her game <a href="https://www.choiceofgames.com/creatures-such-as-we/"><cite>Creatures Such as We</cite></a>, which raises the question of whether dating games send the wrong message about consent. Although it does not provide a definitive answer of its own, <cite>Creatures Such as We</cite> does feature optional romance and thus forces the player to confront the issue to some degree.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The most thought provoking question Glasser presented in my play through was ‘Can non-playable characters give consent?’, which resulted in an almost gut wrenching feeling for me playing through the game. Was it wrong of me to want to engage with an NPC in a game that is designed to run like a dating simulator? Should a game, that is all about coming to the right response to get to the right ending be allowed to say ‘no’ to my wishes? Games of course are not people, but it’s interesting to consider, am I as the player entitled to getting the ending of my dreams, or is the game and in turn the game designer allowed some agency of choice as well?</p>
<p>Glasser gives no clear answers to the philosophical question she raises in gameplay, however I began to see the choices she allows you as the player becoming a sort of answer for players. As the game and narrative progresses, you can choose to continue engaging with the non-playable character you have established some romantic feelings for. Alternatively, you can choose draw back into your tour guide responsibilities and become cold to the romantic interest and the group around you. It’s as if you turning away from the romantic interest allows the non-playable character to say no, despite that response never being given to them."<br>
—Emily Pilat, <a href="http://elit.umwblogs.org/2015/01/25/get-meta-can-a-game-give-consent/"><cite>Get Meta: Can a Game Give Consent?</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>But backing away from romance doesn’t <em>allow</em> the NPC to say no - if anything, it <em>forces</em> them to. Whether the player chooses to pursue a romance or avoid it, the NPC has no say in the matter. The NPC cannot choose whether to reciprocate the player’s advances or whether to approach the player themselves. But <em>those</em> choices aren’t up to the player either - they were already made by Glasser. The player only chooses between the options that the game makes available, and the NPCs follow the corresponding prewritten script. The designer is still in charge.</p>
<p>Some games make an explicit attempt to model NPC consent. Robert Yang’s <cite><a href="http://radiatoryang.itch.io/hurt-me-plenty">Hurt Me Plenty</a></cite> is “a short game where you spank the heck out of a dude and learn about how BDSM communities attempt to formalize consent / caring”. But even here, consent is simplified and far looser than in real life. If you violate your partner’s trust, you can always regain it by simply waiting.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If you mistreat this AI agent, it will render itself inoperable and refuse to play with you for a period of time, ranging from 2-20 days. . . . The game should, ideally, refuse to play with you ever again, when you violate negotiated boundaries. As it stands now, it will always ‘forgive’ you after a while."<br>
—Robert Yang, <cite><a href="http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2014/12/notes-on-sex-consent-and-intimacy-in.html">Notes on sex, consent, and intimacy in games and tech</a></cite></p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/player-choice-npc-consent/hurtmeplenty-cooldown_hu40c62283fa271022f884ce38288cd5f8_83361_600x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Your partner is still recovering from the previous player's abuse and violation of boundaries." />
</figure>
<p>Of course, it’s not really feasible for a game to refuse to ever play again anyway. Saved data could be manipulated to clear the relevant flag or the game could simply be reinstalled. The game can appeal to your sense of guilt or shame, but it’s not a person. No one’s really been hurt and the game can’t take out a restraining order or press charges.</p>
<p>This is an important point. The <em>entire purpose</em> of consent in real life - the reason it <em>matters at all</em> - is the real person on the other side of the interaction. A real mind with real desires and fears as well as actual moral and legal standing. NPCs have none of these - but the designer has them all. And as the person who lays down the rules of the universe in which the game characters live, the <em>designer’s</em> consent completely overrides that of the NPCs. Yang chose to allow players to violate their partner’s consent in <cite>Hurt Me Plenty</cite>. He didn’t have to. The action could have been <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/that-which-is-not-forbidden-the-spectrum-of-allowance/#prevented">prevented completely</a> or <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/that-which-is-not-forbidden-the-spectrum-of-allowance/#ignored">rendered ineffective</a>; instead it is merely <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/that-which-is-not-forbidden-the-spectrum-of-allowance/#punished">punished</a>. The player is still allowed to do it, regardless of what the NPCs themselves would prefer - and this was a choice made by Yang. The designer is <em>still</em> in charge.</p>
<p>To be clear, there wasn’t anything <em>immoral</em> about Yang’s choice. He chose not to protect the NPCs, but there isn’t really anything there to protect. They aren’t people. The value of getting the player to consider the consequences of their actions outweighs the damage done to the NPCs by those actions - <em>because no damage was actually done.</em></p>
<p>But surely the same logic should then apply to the player? It’s not immoral for the <em>player</em> to hurt the NPCs either, because <em>nobody actually gets hurt.</em> It comes down to the same problem that exists with <cite>The Journey of Me</cite>: either the player is innocent, or the player is <em>complicit</em> but the designer is the <em>real</em> monster.</p>
<p>Okay, so if predefined paths and binary responses are the designer overriding the NPC’s consent, what if we systematize further? What if we give characters fleshed-out personalities and preferences, and let their feelings for the player character change naturalistically based on the player’s choices?</p>
<p>Arguably, this is <em>even worse.</em> The more systematized a character is, the more the player is encouraged to treat the NPC as a system to be gamed rather than a person.</p>
<p><a href="https://rpgmaker.net/games/2068/"><cite>Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer</cite></a> is a game where you play as a serial killer who tortures victims in a trap-laden dungeon. Setting up the dungeon plays like a tower defense puzzle, but first you have to find your victims, which is handled differently. By the game creator’s own <a href="https://rpgmaker.net/games/2068/">description</a>, this gameplay “is similar to a Dating Sim, in which you have to approach strangers on the street and seduce them to go home with you, mainly using dialog choices.” You’re presented with a paragraph describing your target and must work out how to win their trust.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/player-choice-npc-consent/dungeon-home.jpg" alt="Come home with me." />
</figure>
<p>The end goal may be horrifying, but the way you get there is fundamentally the same thing you do in any game with an affection system. You don’t act in a way authentic to yourself or to your character. You do and say what’s necessary to get what you want. <cite>Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer</cite> lays it bare by attaching the process to a heinous and evil outcome, but it’s the same process in other games even if you’re just trying to make friends with your party members.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<cite>Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer</cite> has some of the most compassionate dialogue options of any game I’ve played, perversely appropriate for the psychopathic protagonist. This is a game in which you lure innocent strangers to your basement to be tortured to death, but it’s also a damning critique of how video games use dialogue to represent relationships. . . . <a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/11/30/wot-i-think-beautiful-escape-dungeoneer/">Kieron Gillen described</a> the conversations systems best in <cite>Beautiful Escape</cite> and dating sims in general as ‘about hiding the self to gain what you want, and that’s all these games boil down to,’ which is a literal symptom of sociopathy.</p>
<p><cite>Beautiful Escape</cite> treats conversations like an interpersonal quiz show. . . . Is this, then, any different from <cite>Dragon Age Origins</cite>, in which the damage bonus or special quest or sex scene is your reward? It’s not just that the reward is cynical, it’s the method of obtaining it. …[P]arty members are supposed to be the player’s friends and allies, and friendship is supposed to come with honesty and empathy.</p>
<p>Yet conversations in this game encourage players to say whatever will (literally) score them the most points with their in-game friends. Even if players are motivated by nothing more than a genuine interest in the character, the game system still rewards manipulative dialogue (at best, when it isn’t a random guessing game). That’s not how friendship is supposed to work. Friends fight and argue and make up. Friends disagree with each other. Friends aren’t supposed to keep score. They’re supposed to say what they feel, not what they think their friend wants to hear."<br>
—Andrew Vanden Bossche, <a href="https://www.gamedeveloper.com/console/analysis-game-dialogue-as-a-recipe-for-sociopathy"><cite>Analysis: Game Dialogue As A Recipe for Sociopathy</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This doesn’t just apply to dialog choices. Attempts to <em>model</em> consent are doomed to fail <em>by definition.</em> A model is a set of manageable rules with minimal external consequences. A game can <em>obscure</em> the rules, hiding affection levels and not making it obvious when a decision has an impact on how NPCs see you, but as long as a player can look on <a href="http://www.gamefaqs.com/">GameFAQs</a> or engage in <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SaveScumming">save scumming</a>, the game can still be played as a sociopathy simulator. It’s a social <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley">uncanny valley</a> effect - the more realistically the relationship and interactions are portrayed, the more the player’s actions resemble those of a sociopath in the real world. After all, sociopathy is essentially treating others as though they are inhuman with no moral value of their own and exist for your own benefit - and for NPCs, <em>that’s actually true.</em></p>
<p>The more scripted, prewritten, or constrained a game’s world is, the more the voice of the designer overrides the voice of NPC and player alike, and the less freedom either has. But the more systematized the world is, the more free the <em>player</em> is to manipulate that world and the NPCs as they desire. The NPCs never hold the power, because they are not people - but by the exact same token, it doesn’t <em>matter</em> that they have no power. As long as we’re talking about single-player and no other people are involved, you aren’t hurting anyone no matter <em>how</em> you play.</p>
<p>It can be tempting to extrapolate from fiction to reality and conclude that a player who treats NPCs poorly or a designer who lets them is automatically a bad person. But this is simply not true. Just as it’s <a href="https://gizmodo.com/science-finds-once-again-that-violent-video-games-dont-1823811169">completely possible to play violent games and remain non-violent</a>, it’s completely possible to trample all over the consent or desires of NPCs and still be someone who treats <em>actual people</em> with kindness and respect.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[W]hether it is wrong to sadistically mistreat inanimate objects or video game characters or stuffed animals or whatever depends tremendously on you as an individual.</p>
<p>There are people who that kind of behavior is unhealthy for. There are people who find that inhabiting an unkind version of themselves, imagining an inanimate object as capable of suffering and then inflicting harm on it for fun, isn’t great for them, and leaves them less the person they want to be, and exacerbates tendencies that aren’t helpful to them in their interaction with other, real people. I assume that the people who are asserting it is inherently wrong to mistreat objects are people who have this experience, and they’re probably not wrong about what’s healthy for them, they’re just overgeneralizing. . . .</p>
<p>And if you play a tyrannical monster in video games, or strand your Sims in the swimming pool because it’s fun to watch them drown, or beat up pieces of plastic while imagining they’re your terrible ex, […] or otherwise love to do things that are normally terrible because they harm people, but that, in this case, <em>involve no people</em> -</p>
<p>- well, I think it’s really important to trust yourself. The question ‘is this harming <em>me?</em> is this making me less someone I want to be?’ is an important question, but only you can answer it, and you shouldn’t answer it from broad pronouncements that certain categories of activity are definitely in the ‘Wrong’ category. And if it’s not harming you, and it’s fun, then it’s actively a good and moral thing to do, because your happiness is good and your fun is good and the only moral wrongs are harms to beings, and you are the only being in this story.</p>
<p>And if it is harming you - then stop, but please keep in mind that the harm was a product of your specific interaction with this specific activity, and that what was unhealthy and unvirtuous for you is guaranteed to be healthy, virtuous, value-affirming and fun for lots of other people."<br>
—<a href="https://theunitofcaring.tumblr.com/post/173708309931/okay-the-sexbot-discourse-jadagul">The Unit of Caring post from 8 May 2018</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Games are fiction. They take place in invented worlds. The designer decides all the terms of the player’s interaction with the game and its characters - but by the same token, no actual harm can occur within them. There’s nothing <em>inherently</em> wrong with pretending to slay imaginary dragons, date imaginary people, or even <em>torture and murder</em> imaginary victims (though personally I prefer to skip that last one).</p>
<p>As is always the case, the key is to be mindful of what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and the effect it has on you. But you can only answer this for yourself. <em>This</em> decision is one the designer <em>can’t</em> make for you.</p>
<aside class="extra"><p style="font-style:italic;margin-top:4em;">Want more? This article has <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/player-choice-npc-consent/extra/">EXTRA CONTENT</a> available.</p></aside>
https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/spectrum-of-allowance/2018-05-14T00:00:00-07:002018-05-14T00:00:00-07:00<p>When <cite>Grand Theft Auto III</cite> came out, it introduced a new interaction to the series: players could now solicit prostitutes and then kill them to get their money back.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“To engage with prostitutes in the game, all the player had to do was pull up to certain scantily clad women, who would enter the vehicle in exchange for a sum of money. . . . Disturbingly, players found they could reclaim their cash by simply killing the prostitute with their car after she’d exited."<br>
—Samantha Leichtamer, <a href="https://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-5-most-shocking-grand-theft-auto-moments"><cite>The 5 Most Shocking Grand Theft Auto Moments</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This capability persisted in later games in the series and gave rise to a lot of discussion. Much of the commentary was careful to point out that murdering prostitutes <a href="https://www.lifewire.com/gta-series-most-controversial-moments-812433#list-marker_1-0-4">is</a> <a href="https://www.salon.com/2008/05/03/gta_2/">not</a> <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2008/04/the-surprising-narrative-richness-of-grand-theft-auto-iv.html">required</a> at any point. But of course <cite>Grand Theft Auto</cite> games are exactly that: games. You don’t <em>have</em> to play them at all. And they’re known as games where a lot of the fun comes from messing around in the sandbox, going on murder sprees that are also thoroughly unrequired. So is there a meaningful distinction to be made here?</p>
<p>I think there is. Merely pointing out that you <em>can</em> do something in a game is incomplete. It treats it as a binary, with the action either allowed or disallowed. But game design is much more subtle than that. There’s a wide range of <em>how</em> allowed an action can be.</p>
<style>
span.spectrum {
display: block;
position: relative;
width: 100%;
height: 0;
margin-top: 6em;
margin-bottom: 3em;
border-bottom: 3px dotted #333;
}
span.point {
display: inline-block;
width: 0;
height: 0;
border: .6em solid #333;
border-radius: .6em;
position: absolute;
top: -.6em;
}
span.point_1 { left: 0; border-color: #C0392B; }
span.point_2 { left: 11%; border-color: #D35400; }
span.point_3 { left: 22%; border-color: #F39C12; }
span.point_4 { left: 33%; border-color: #F1C40F; }
span.point_5 { left: 44%; border-color: #2ECC71; }
span.point_6 { right: 44%; border-color: #27AE60; }
span.point_7 { right: 33%; border-color: #16A085; }
span.point_8 { right: 22%; border-color: #3498DB; }
span.point_9 { right: 11%; border-color: #8E44AD; }
span.point_A { right: 0; border-color: #9B59B6; }
span.spectrum span.point span.label {
border-color: inherit;
border-style: solid;
position: absolute;
bottom: .6em;
padding-bottom: 1em;
font-weight: bold;
text-transform: uppercase;
}
span.spectrum span.point span.left {
border-width: 0 0 0 3px;
left: -2px;
padding-left: .3em;
}
span.spectrum span.point span.right {
border-width: 0 3px 0 0;
right: -2px;
padding-right: .3em;
}
span.full {
margin-bottom: 5.5em;
}
span.full span.point:nth-of-type(odd) span.label {
bottom: .6em;
top: auto;
padding-bottom: 1em;
padding-top: 0;
}
span.full span.point:nth-of-type(even) span.label {
bottom: auto;
top: .6em;
padding-bottom: 0;
padding-top: 1em;
}
span.full span.point_6 span.label {
padding-top: 2.5em !important;
}
span.full span.point_5 span.label {
padding-bottom: 2.5em !important;
}
</style>
<h3 id="the-spectrum-of-allowance">The Spectrum of Allowance</h3>
<span class="full spectrum">
<span class="point point_1"><span class="label left">Impossible</span></span>
<span class="point point_2"><span class="label left">Prevented</span></span>
<span class="point point_3"><span class="label left">Ignored</span></span>
<span class="point point_4"><span class="label left">Emergent</span></span>
<span class="point point_5"><span class="label left">Punished</span></span>
<span class="point point_6"><span class="label right">Acknowledged</span></span>
<span class="point point_7"><span class="label right">Enabled</span></span>
<span class="point point_8"><span class="label right">Rewarded</span></span>
<span class="point point_9"><span class="label right">Core</span></span>
<span class="point point_A"><span class="label right">Required</span></span>
</span>
<p>Here’s the spectrum as I see it. On the far left are actions which are completely disallowed. The degree to which the action is legitimized or encouraged by the design itself increases to the right, until on the far right we find actions which are full-on mandatory.</p>
<p>Let’s take a closer look at each section of the spectrum.</p>
<p><span class="spectrum"><span class="point point_1"><span class="label left" id="impossible">Impossible</span></span></span></p>
<p><em>The action is outside of the game’s design scope.</em></p>
<p>Most actions are out of scope for most games, as any individual design must necessarily define a small portion of the space of all possible designs. In many cases, this is a good thing. It allows games to be more thematically unified and enjoyable, and most impossible actions go totally unnoticed. It’s probably for the best that you can’t attack the villagers in <cite>Animal Crossing</cite> or challenge opposing team members to chess matches in <cite>Overwatch</cite>, for example.</p>
<p>In other cases, impossible actions can feel like glaring omissions. This is especially likely if the actions were considered for inclusion but cut for budget or schedule reasons or simply rejected as a design choice. Many players wanted to be able to trade items in <cite>Destiny</cite>, for example, but there is no way to do so. Alternately, impossible actions can be a form of railroading - it frustrated many players that there is no option to avoid working with Cerberus in <cite>Mass Effect 2</cite>.</p>
<p><span class="spectrum"><span class="point point_2"><span class="label left" id="prevented">Prevented</span></span></span></p>
<p><em>The action is actively disallowed by the game.</em></p>
<p>In these cases, the action is within the game’s scope and you would be able to perform it if the game didn’t specifically account for it. But for whatever reason, the designers have chosen to forbid it. This is often done to enhance a game’s thematic coherence or to avoid particularly abhorrent possibilities. For example, <cite>Crazy Taxi</cite> prevents you from running over pedestrians, as they will always dodge if the taxi gets too close. Violence to children is very commonly prevented - for example, in <cite>World of Warcraft</cite> you can attack most opposite-faction NPCs, but children can’t be targeted or damaged.</p>
<p><span class="spectrum"><span class="point point_3"><span class="label left" id="ignored">Ignored</span></span></span></p>
<p><em>The action has no effect within the game’s universe.</em></p>
<p>The action <em>can</em> be performed, but the game doesn’t react to it in any way - the state of the world is just as if you hadn’t done the action at all. This often happens naturally in any sort of social interaction due to the limitations of NPC AI - for example, in basically every action game ever you can walk up to an NPC and start jumping up and down in front of them and they won’t react to your bizarre behavior in the slightest. But it can also happen in physical interactions - for example, in <cite>Duck Hunt</cite> you can shoot the dog however many times you want, but it won’t stop laughing at you for missing the ducks.</p>
<p>This is often a good way to handle actions that are absurd in-universe. It may seem realistic and immersive to have NPCs comment on your bizarre behavior, but in many cases bizarre behavior is the unintentional result of struggling with limitations of the interface or simply remembering which button does what. If the game ignores these behaviors, so can the player; if the game reacts to them, it actually damages immersion by separating player intent and character action. (See Dara O’Briain’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWQXzGTzM1g">classic bit about <cite>Metal Gear Solid</cite></a> for a send-up of this idea.)</p>
<p>Note also that this is the <cite>best way</cite> to discourage players from taking particular actions. An ignored action is an uninteresting one. As Jenova Chen put it when <a href="http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2010/10/all-about-the-journey.html">discussing design lessons from <cite>Journey</cite></a>, “If you want to teach players not to do something, you don’t need to smack them. You need to give them zero feedback.”</p>
<p><span class="spectrum"><span class="point point_4"><span class="label left" id="emergent">Emergent</span></span></span></p>
<p><em>The action is a natural extension or interaction of other mechanics, and the game responds to it in a way consistent with the normal handling of those mechanics.</em></p>
<p>The more “systemic” a game is - the more its interactions are the result of rules rather than scripted events - the more emergent behavior is possible even if not explicitly designed for. For example, in <cite>The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild</cite>, metal equipment conducts electricity. This can result in you getting struck by lightning if you’re wearing metal armor and waving a sword around in a storm. But since unarmed enemies will pick up weapons, this also means you can toss a weapon to an enemy and trick <em>them</em> into getting hit by lightning instead. And since some puzzles involve completing electrical circuits, you can skip them by laying down a path of metal weapons to conduct the electricity across the gap instead.</p>
<p>Note that an action being emergent doesn’t necessarily mean the designers were unaware of it - just that it didn’t have to be explicitly designed for or coded in. Once the designers are aware of such an action, choosing to leave it untouched instead of adjusting it to be prevented or ignored is an active design decision that implies tacit approval.</p>
<p>For example, in <cite>The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim</cite>, you only get in trouble for crimes if there is a witness, and lines of sight are blocked by solid objects. Shortly after the game’s release, it was discovered that you could block a shopkeeper’s vision by placing a bucket over their head and then steal everything from their shop without getting caught. Whether to make a change here was an open question for the developers.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It was like day two, and we went, what? Do we fix that? Our lead programmer is pissed and wants to fix it, and I said I’m not sure we should. That’s one of those where maybe we leave it in."<br>
—Game Director Todd Howard, as quoted in <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2011/12/11/skyrim-to-have-multiple-dlc-releases-powerful-buckets/"><cite>Skyrim to have multiple DLC releases, powerful buckets</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The way a game’s player base reacts to an emergent action can also change the way the designers see it. In <cite>Super Smash Bros. Melee</cite>, certain physics interactions meant that if you knew the right maneuver, you could slide rapidly along the ground while performing attacks that normally require standing still - a technique that has been dubbed “<a href="https://www.ssbwiki.com/wavedash">wavedashing</a>”. Creator Masahiro Sakurai noticed this capability during development, but he didn’t expect it to have much impact on gameplay so he left it in. Once the competitive community discovered it, however, it became all but required at the tournament level. Sakurai disliked the limits this placed on playstyles and the way it magnified the gulf between new and experienced players, so in subsequent games the physics have changed and wavedashing is impossible.</p>
<p><span class="spectrum"><span class="point point_5"><span class="label left" id="punished">Punished</span></span></span></p>
<p><em>When the action is taken, the game responds in a way that mechanically discourages the action.</em></p>
<p>Performing the action makes the game’s goals or win-state harder or impossible to achieve. In extreme cases, it’s an instant failure state, such as for killing too many civilians in <cite>Assassin’s Creed</cite> games or shooting certain friendlies in <cite>Call of Duty</cite> games. In other cases, it handicaps the player in some way. For example, in <cite>The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening</cite>, stealing from the shop will get you renamed “THIEF” and cause the shopkeeper to kill you if you return to the scene of the crime.</p>
<p>Note that punished actions are <em>more</em> permitted than ignored ones. Actions that cause no consequences don’t feel like they really happened. Responding to an action - even in a negative way - legitimizes the action by making it something you can meaningfully do in the game’s world in a way that is clearly deliberate by the designers.</p>
<p>For example, a personal anecdote: In <cite>Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force</cite>, you can’t kill your squadmates but if you shoot them they will complain. When I realized this, I got curious and kept shooting them. Eventually, they shot back and killed me - and when I experienced that, I felt awful. It was a bad thing and it actually happened and I was the one who did it. By comparison, in <cite>Mass Effect</cite>, shooting your squadmates has no effect at all. When I realized this, it barely even registered and I just moved on with the game.</p>
<p>Sufficiently extreme or unusual punishment can also function as an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_egg_(media)">Easter egg</a>. <cite>Maniac Mansion</cite> famously lets you kill a hamster in the microwave and show the remains to the hamster’s owner who kills you in revenge. Many <cite>Zelda</cite> games have chicken-like animals called <a href="http://zelda.wikia.com/wiki/Cucco">Cuccos</a> which are normally docile, but if you attack them they summon a deadly flock that swarms you unless you can get away in time. Both of these are in-jokes in their respective fandoms and have been reused, referenced, or modified in subsequent games.</p>
<p>Even mundane punishment can be used for an extra challenge:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Black Desert [Online] allows you to opt-out of PvP. However, <strong>players can still attack you, even if you’re flagged as not willing to participate in PvP.</strong> . . . [T]he penalty is that [the attacking player] will get negative karma. . . . This is, of course, a monumentally stupid system if your actual goal is to protect players who don’t want to PvP. Aggressive and challenge-seeking players will naturally want to know about what the ‘challenge’ of negative karma looks like, which means you’ve just created an <strong>incentive</strong> for griefers to kill players who have explicitly said they don’t want to participate in this dumbass open-world deathmatch. Some players enjoy the added challenge of running around with negative karma and being attacked by town guards. . . . [T]he developers made this convoluted system where the game allows you to do something and then tries to punish you for it, thus sanctioning that action as a valid form of gameplay."<br>
—Shamus Young, <a href="http://shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=42574"><cite>Black Desert Online #4: The Final Straw</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’m going to harp on this a little bit more: punishing an action sanctions it as a valid form of gameplay. It turns it into a <em>deal</em> - if the player does X, the game will do Y. The player can weigh the tradeoffs and decide if it’s an exchange they want to make.</p>
<p>It’s the same principle behind the infamous <a href="https://www.npr.org/2008/03/31/89233955/dan-ariely-takes-on-irrational-economic-impulses">day care late pickup fine backfire</a>. A day care center attempted to encourage parents to be on time by imposing a fine on late pickups - which resulted in an <em>increase</em> in late pickups. The fine turned lateness from a violation of a social norm into a valid purchasable option and parents frequently found it worth the cost.</p>
<p>If you don’t want players doing something and you can’t prevent the action itself, prevent its effects by ignoring it. Don’t punish it. This isn’t often an option in the real world - the day care workers couldn’t simply refuse to let parents' lateness waste their own time - but it is in games' designed worlds.</p>
<p><span class="spectrum"><span class="point point_6"><span class="label right" id="acknowledged">Acknowledged</span></span></span></p>
<p><em>The action is a natural extension or interaction of other mechanics, and the game responds to it in a special and unique way with no mechanical effect.</em></p>
<p>Acknowledged actions are similar to emergent ones, but since the game actually responds it’s clear their inclusion is deliberate. The action is thus implicitly approved without even the mechanical penalties of punished actions. This is true whether the tone of the acknowledgment is positive, negative, or neutral. For example, in <cite>Deus Ex</cite>, it’s possible to enter your office’s opposite-gender restroom. If you do so, your boss chides you for it later. And in <cite>Wii Sports</cite>, it’s possible to roll the bowling ball backward - which causes the assembled crowd of Miis to jump and shout in surprise. This kind of unique reaction is often considered an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_egg_(media)">Easter egg</a> and the curious player is likely to seek it out.</p>
<p>Even without any mechanical reward, just giving the player a unique response indicating their action was noticed is an incentive. The <cite>Warcraft</cite> and <cite>Starcraft</cite> games acknowledge repeated clicks on friendly units by having the units start complaining, and I certainly recall obsessively clicking on each type of unit to find out what it had to say. Acknowledgment can also be a way to reward actions that are unnecessary but quite difficult to perform - <cite>Metroid Fusion</cite> acknowledges a difficult sequence break by displaying a unique message praising your skills and wondering how many players will see it.</p>
<p><span class="spectrum"><span class="point point_7"><span class="label right" id="enabled">Enabled</span></span></span></p>
<p><em>The action serves no mechanical purpose but is explicitly allowed for by the game.</em></p>
<p>These actions are not emergent results of other mechanics, but had to be specifically and deliberately added to the game’s design. For example, <cite>Assassin’s Creed III</cite> allows you to pet dogs and other animals you come across, which has no effect besides the animation of doing so.</p>
<p>Common use cases include social interaction (emotes in <cite>World of Warcraft</cite>, taunts in <cite>Team Fortress 2</cite>) or player expression (photo modes in games like <cite>inFamous: Second Son</cite> or <cite>Super Mario Odyssey</cite>). Enabled actions can also add extra realism - a surprisingly high number of games include pointlessly interactive bathroom fixtures.</p>
<p><span class="spectrum"><span class="point point_8"><span class="label right" id="rewarded">Rewarded</span></span></span></p>
<p><em>When the action is taken, the game responds in a way that mechanically encourages the action.</em></p>
<p>Performing the action makes the game’s goals or win-state easier to achieve. For example, in <cite>Ratchet & Clank</cite> games, destroying environmental objects such as light fixtures and display screens rewards you with bolts, the in-game currency for buying weapons and ammo - though generally fewer than you’d get by killing enemies instead.</p>
<p>This is a very clear-cut way to encourage particular behaviors without making them necessary. It can also be used to allow flexibility in how a player approaches a game. In <cite>Saints Row</cite> games, a wide variety of actions are rewarded with “respect” (called “XP” in later games). These include highly-structured activities like completing side challenges and finding collectibles and less-structured ones like combat and driving stunts. Respect is then used to unlock story missions in the early games and upgrades in the later ones. This means you can choose between any of the respect-rewarding actions and still progress in the game, so players with varied playstyles are more likely to be able to play in the way they enjoy.</p>
<p><span class="spectrum"><span class="point point_9"><span class="label right" id="core">Core</span></span></span></p>
<p><em>The action is one of the central mechanics of the game.</em></p>
<p>The action is featured prominently in the game. It’s taught to players early and gets mentioned when the game is described in conversation or marketing. For example, jumping on Goombas in <cite>Super Mario Brothers</cite> or picking up new abilities in <cite>Metroid</cite>.</p>
<p>In these cases, the game is designed <em>around</em> the action. You aren’t just encouraged to perform it - you’re expected to. Playing the game without doing so is a self-imposed challenge for the hardcore - for example, “pacifist runs” are kill-free playthroughs of games where combat is a core mechanic.</p>
<p><span class="spectrum"><span class="point point_A"><span class="label right" id="required">Required</span></span></span></p>
<p><em>You cannot complete or proceed in the game without performing the action.</em></p>
<p>The action <em>must</em> be completed in order to progress in or beat the game. This can be a repeated mechanic, such as interrogating people in <cite>L.A. Noire</cite>, or an isolated instance of <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/glossary/game-design/#option-restriction">option restriction</a> such as entering the lighthouse at the beginning of <cite>Bioshock</cite>.</p>
<p>Required actions are the flip side of impossible ones - an action being required means that avoiding that action is impossible and vice versa. As such, required actions can also railroad the player - in the beginning of <cite>Fahrenheit</cite>, you must leave the diner in order to avoid failure and proceed to the next scene of the game.</p>
<hr>
<p>Having all this defined should make it easier to speak clearly about <cite>Grand Theft Auto</cite>’s murder-based prostitution refunds. (Leaving aside for the moment any judgments about the appropriateness of the design, the moral culpability of the designers, or the social value of <cite>Grand Theft Auto</cite> in general.) Soliciting prostitutes is a <em>rewarded</em> action, since it restores health. Killing people in general is a <em>core</em> action, since it’s one of the most common and centrally-positioned interactions in the game. Money-tracking was specifically coded in and enabled, but since the only way this manifests to the player is that they can get back spent money by killing the person they gave it to, that makes killing them also a <em>rewarded</em> action that restores money.</p>
<p>Combining all of these, getting your money back by killing a prostitute is an <em>emergent</em> action. On an allowance level, it’s the same as buying food from a vendor (which also costs money and restores health) and then killing the vendor to get your money back. There’s no reason to think it was specifically designed into the game as opposed to just being one of many implications of the interactions of other mechanics. That’s the point people made when discussing it. But while it’s plausible that the ability was unintended in <cite>Grand Theft Auto III</cite>, the developers are certainly aware of it after the controversy it generated. Leaving it in later games rather than preventing it is clearly deliberate. They <em>want</em> the player to be able to do it.</p>
https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/close-reading-of-qube-directors-cut/2018-05-07T00:00:00-07:002018-05-07T00:00:00-07:00<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/close-reading-of-qube-directors-cut/QUBE_Poster1_hu2dc96f2f31f6406074d8d2dff9a4f265_437098_600x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Q.U.B.E. poster" />
</figure>
<h4 id="spoiler-warning-for-citeqube-directors-cuthttpswwwtoxicgamescoukqubedirectorscutcite-and-citeportalhttpsstoresteampoweredcomapp400portalcite">Spoiler warning for <cite><a href="https://www.toxicgames.co.uk/qubedirectorscut">Q.U.B.E: Director’s Cut</a></cite> and <cite><a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/400/Portal/">Portal</a></cite>.</h4>
<p>The most subversive story I’ve seen lately was in a game that launched without one.</p>
<p><cite>Q.U.B.E.</cite> is a first-person physics puzzler with obvious <cite>Portal</cite> influences that first came out in December 2011. Reviewers praised its puzzle mechanics but complained that it lacked a story. The player character simply wakes up in a strange room and walks forward solving puzzles until they are done.</p>
<p>In May 2014, <cite><a href="https://www.toxicgames.co.uk/qubedirectorscut">Q.U.B.E: Director’s Cut</a></cite> was released. This version made <a href="http://www.giantbomb.com/q-u-b-e-directors-cut/3030-42875/">several changes</a> including improvements to graphical effects and pacing of the puzzles. The biggest change was the addition of a story told via radio transmission voiceovers delivered expertly by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1271019/">Rachel Robinson</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1140344/">Rupert Evans</a>.</p>
<p>The impression I get from looking at reviews and anything else I can find written about the game online is that most folks moved on after the original version. Review outlets published perfunctory updates saying that yup, the game is still a fun puzzler, and yes, now it has a plot tacked on as well. Almost no one seemed to have anything deeper to say than that.</p>
<p>Well, I do. The story in <cite>Q.U.B.E: Director’s Cut</cite> surprised me a great deal. It’s well-crafted and expresses a clear and uplifting message that serves as a fascinating response to other prominent games. So I think it’s worth a closer look.</p>
<p>I won’t be spoiling any of the puzzles, but I will spoil the full story. I’m going to give an overall plot summary, discuss the context in which the game was released (spoiling some significant plot elements of <cite>Portal</cite> along the way), and then dive into a detailed story analysis including a lot of the dialog. This is a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/review/q.u.b.e-directors-cut/">good game</a> and if you’re interested in physics puzzlers and intrigue plots I absolutely recommend you check it out - ideally before reading any further. It’s <a href="https://www.toxicgames.co.uk/qubedirectorscut#buy-qube-directors-cut">fairly cheap on several platforms</a> and just a few hours long. The same applies to <cite><a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/400/Portal/">Portal</a></cite>.</p>
<h3 id="the-plot-summary">The Plot Summary</h3>
<p>Okay, here’s the plot summary. The player character wakes up in a strange room and hears a radio transmission from a woman called Nowak. She tells the player character that he (and the character specifically is a ‘he’ - we’ll get into that in the story analysis) is an astronaut on a space mission but the journey has caused amnesia. He’s in a giant structure - the Qube - hurtling through space toward Earth. If it hits, it’ll wipe out all life on the planet. So he’s got to stop it by solving its puzzles.</p>
<p>Radio transmissions from Earth can’t reach the Qube’s interior, but Nowak’s on the International Space Station and her orbit will take her in and out of communication range. As the player character moves forward solving puzzles, Nowak occasionally establishes a connection and speaks some more before eventually moving out of range. She implores the player character to have faith and keep moving forward so that he might save the whole world. However, in between these transmissions another voice establishes contact - a man who identifies himself only by the number Nine-One-Nine. He claims that Nowak is lying - the Qube isn’t in space; it’s an underground testing facility where the player character will be experimented on and then abandoned or killed. The hero story is a lie to encourage cooperation and the player character should not believe it.</p>
<p>As the player character progresses through the puzzle rooms, Nowak and Nine-One-Nine periodically add flavor and raise the stakes. Nowak assures him that he is damaging the Qube; Nine-One-Nine assures him it’s a lie. No conclusive proof either way is on offer. Finally the player character reaches what Nowak claims is a launch bay, and she tells him he must get in one of the escape shuttles because the Qube is coming apart completely. Nine-One-Nine claims it’s a trap and that the “escape shuttle” will head right into an incinerator.</p>
<p>When the player character gets in, the shuttle launches and emerges into space - Nowak was telling the truth. Free of the Qube, the player character can now receive transmissions from Earth and is contacted by his wife and then the President. Nine-One-Nine is revealed as another astronaut who was lost and presumed dead several years earlier and has been driven mad by isolation in deep space, but now that he’s been found he can be rescued and brought home. The President thanks the player character for persevering despite any doubts and says that’s how greatness is accomplished - by “having faith in the possibility of good.”</p>
<p>So, that’s the game. It’s a happy ending, but to understand its significance it’s important to know the context in which it was created. This story seems to be a direct response to common tropes of the time - and specifically to <cite>Portal</cite>.</p>
<h3 id="the-context-post-citeportalcite-depression">The Context: Post-<cite>Portal</cite> Depression</h3>
<p><figure class="right">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/close-reading-of-qube-directors-cut/portal_hue4488c99b5a6ba8a3bd5ee82a571e8aa_429742_200x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Portal cover art" />
</figure>
<cite>Portal</cite> is a massively successful, popular, and influential game released in 2007. In 2009, I picked it as the <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2009/12/five-games-to-increase-your-gamer-literacy/#number-one-citeportalcite">number one game to increase your gamer literacy</a>. It’s a first-person sci-fi physics-based puzzle game with a silent protagonist who wakes up in a stark and sterile environment comprising a series of modular test chambers. <cite>Q.U.B.E.</cite> was… <em>also</em> that, making comparisons inevitable. And to many reviewers, <cite>Q.U.B.E.</cite> stacked up unfavorably due to lacking things <cite>Portal</cite> had: characters and a story.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“One of the complaints that many reviewers seemed to share about Toxic Games' debut first person puzzler, <strong>Q.U.B.E.</strong>, was that it lacked the character and personality of Portal but shared a similar environment. . . . [Narrative designer] Sam [Mottershaw] told us that he was quite frustrated at the fact that a lot of reviewers said that the game lacked something, mostly because they had been spoiled by the wonderful character interaction and narrative of Portal which features the highly memorable GLaDOS, of course."<br>
—Chris Priestman, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120130040157/http://www.indiegamemag.com/original-story-for-q-u-b-e-was-pulled-at-last-minute-featured-glados-like-voice-over/"><cite>Original Story For ‘Q.U.B.E.’ Was Pulled At Last Minute, Featured GLaDOS-Like Voice Over</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ironically, <cite>Q.U.B.E.</cite> originally <em>was</em> slated to have a story, and just like <cite>Portal</cite> it was to feature a female AI speaking to the player character.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[Mottershaw designed] a whole narrative thread to <strong>Q.U.B.E.</strong> which was pulled from the game so that it could be released before Christmas. . . . The main remaining [piece] is right at the start of the game when the walls close in on the player to give a sense of hostility and claustrophobia. These kinds of effects and continuing themes were originally included throughout the entirety of <strong>Q.U.B.E.</strong>, most notably with the input of a female AI character voiced by Emily Love – a friend of the development team."<br>
—Chris Priestman, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120130040157/http://www.indiegamemag.com/original-story-for-q-u-b-e-was-pulled-at-last-minute-featured-glados-like-voice-over/"><cite>Original Story For ‘Q.U.B.E.’ Was Pulled At Last Minute, Featured GLaDOS-Like Voice Over</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>When Toxic Games went back to add a story for the Director’s Cut, they abandoned Mottershaw’s plan and took a different tack - probably a wise choice given all the <cite>Portal</cite> comparisons that had already been made. Here’s the explanation found on the game’s <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20161114062326/http://qube-game.com/press-page/">press page</a> and <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/239430/QUBE_Directors_Cut/">Steam page</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“To reboot the narrative, Toxic Games brought in industry veteran Rob Yescombe, writer on franchises including CRYSIS, ALIEN: ISOLATION, STAR WARS and PS4’s upcoming RIME; winner of Best Thriller Screenplay at the Creative World Awards, and the screenwriting Award of Excellence at the Canada International Film Festival.</p>
<p>‘The Director’s Cut is a single-location thriller,’ says Yescombe. ‘It’s about figuring out what the Qube is, and why you’re inside it. You’re told you are an astronaut inside some kind of alien structure hurtling towards Earth, but it’s also about something deeper than that.'”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At first blush, Yescombe appears to have - like Mottershaw before him - aped <cite>Portal</cite>’s narrative hooks. Both <cite>Portal</cite> and Yescombe’s story feature a disembodied female voice (respectively, GLaDOS and Nowak) directing the player character to move forward and solve puzzles for a promised reward (respectively, cake and saving the world). Mounting evidence suggests this is a lie masking malicious intent, but each game’s structure gives the player no real choice but to proceed anyway.</p>
<p>Halfway through <cite>Portal</cite>, GLaDOS finally betrays the player character and leads her into an incinerator. Yescombe’s story foreshadows that Nowak will do the same (we’ll get into the specifics when we reach those parts in the story analysis) to take advantage of the obvious <cite>Portal</cite> parallels and set up an <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheUntwist">untwist</a> by ultimately revealing Nowak to have been honest and benevolent all along.</p>
<p>Why do this? Here’s the explanation attributed to Yescombe, also from the game’s <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20161114062326/http://qube-game.com/press-page/">press page</a> and <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/239430/QUBE_Directors_Cut/">Steam page</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We are conditioned to expect death and doom. We’re resigned to it. At its heart, this story is about that state of mind and how it effects the way we view our experiences, in games and in life. The Director’s Cut will feel either heroic or unnerving, depending on your own personal trust issues.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><cite>Portal</cite> is one of several prominent games from this era which feature mission givers or apparent allies who betray the player character or otherwise spend a lot of time forcing the player down unwise paths toward destruction. (To avoid unnecessary spoilers, I’m not going to name any other specific examples, but you can find several very big games released between 2007 and 2014 sprinkled through <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MissionControlIsOffItsMeds">this list</a>.) While <cite>Portal</cite> plays the twist for dark comedy, other games use it as a <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Deconstruction">deconstruction</a> of <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/glossary/game-design/#option-restriction">option restriction</a> or a criticism of players’ willingness to commit virtual murder and mayhem just because their game tells them to.</p>
<p><cite>Q.U.B.E: Director’s Cut</cite> rejects this fatalism and instead presents a story where you actually <em>can</em> be the hero, where there <em>is</em> real hope, and where the people who seem to be trying to help you are actually trying to help you. It leads you to expect or fear the same old deconstruction - magnifying the impact and relief when it turns out to be a <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Reconstruction">reconstruction</a> instead. And as Yescombe notes, there are implications that extend well past the realm of games and into real life.</p>
<p>The difference between the opposing worldviews - the assumption of “death and doom” (as Yescombe puts it) versus “faith in the possibility of good” (as he has Nowak put it) - is the core of <cite>Q.U.B.E: Director’s Cut</cite>’s story. Just about every line of dialog from start to finish builds up to it. So now I’m going to dive in to a full story analysis, starting at the very beginning.</p>
<h3 id="story-analysis-the-opening-scene">Story Analysis: The Opening Scene</h3>
<p>The game begins with the player character regaining consciousness. A radio transmission of a woman’s voice can be heard.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“And what if it didn’t kill him? With all due respect, your best guess is still just a guess. We need to have faith in the possibility of good. Wait, hold on - his oxygen consumption is going up. I think he’s alive. He’s conscious.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There’s a surprising amount packed in to these first few sentences, though it’d be difficult for a first time player to catch it all. There’s too much the player is piecing together for it to be clear what’s significant. They are taking in the unfamiliar setting and the strange gloves their character is wearing. They don’t know who this woman is, who she’s talking to, or who she’s talking about. We’ll come back to these lines in a moment once there’s a bit more context.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/close-reading-of-qube-directors-cut/gloves_hudbbcd52044fecbbcd82806f63177effe_83473_600x0_resize_catmullrom_2.png" alt="In a strange room wearing strange gloves." />
</figure>
<p>The woman then addresses the player character directly and clarifies a few things. She tells him that he’s been unconscious for fifteen days and it was feared that he was dead, but that his “life suit” kept him alive. Unfortunately, she can’t link into his camera or receive from his radio, so he can’t communicate back and she can’t tell what he’s doing - she can’t even be sure he’s hearing her, or how badly he’s been affected by his journey.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If you’re feeling confused or disoriented, you should know that deep space travel can do you pretty serious psychological damage… especially to your memory. Even a few hours out there in the dark can cause permanent problems. I’m gonna be honest with you - Mission Control are concerned you might have no idea who you are or why you’re in there. If that’s true, I have some difficult facts for you.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Technically, it’s never made clear whether the player character actually does suffer from amnesia. He’s a silent protagonist and never does anything that confirms or rules out the possibility. But I think the intended reading is that he is indeed amnesiac, as this puts him in the same situation as the player and thus makes him easier to empathize with. Player and character both only know what they’ve seen and heard since waking up.</p>
<p>The voice claims that the player character is “a very long way” from Earth, inside a mysterious structure that’s headed through space and will crash into the Earth in just a few hours, and that this will wipe out all life on the planet. His job is to “decipher and dismantle” the structure before that happens and save the world.</p>
<p>She then identifies herself as Commander Nowak, an astronaut on the International Space Station and the only human in transmission range, at least when the station is at the right portion of its orbit. Shortly thereafter, her signal starts breaking up.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Just stay calm and keep your head straight until I get back into range. Okay, this is it: I’m orbiting out of range now. I’ll be back soon. Just remember what I’ve told you… and <em>believe it</em>.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, that was a lot. What a first-time player is likely to take away from it is the infodump that contextualizes the player’s actions - they’re an amnesiac astronaut on a mysterious spaceship, they need to solve puzzles to save the world, and they’ll occasionally hear from Nowak along the way. But along with that come some implications that say a lot about Nowak’s personality and her role in the story.</p>
<p>The player character was sent alone into space to stop the Qube and save the world but has been unconscious for over two weeks and now there are only a few hours left. Mission Control has apparently given up, but Nowak hasn’t. Nowak’s still trying to reach the player character because he might <em>not</em> be dead and there’s still a chance to save the world. And if he is alive, he may not know what’s happening, and if so he’ll need her guidance. And it turns out that he <em>is</em> alive, and <em>does</em> need her guidance, and she <em>does</em> reach him in time. If she’d stopped trying, the world would have ended when it didn’t need to.</p>
<p>Right from the beginning, Nowak is established as the voice of pragmatic optimism. She doesn’t give up just because the odds are against her. She has “faith in the possibility of good” - she does things because they <em>might</em> succeed. We’re going to come back to this a lot in her future dialog - just about every time she contacts the player character, she mentions faith or that she’s keeping her “fingers crossed.”</p>
<p>It’s also worth noting that Nowak’s first lines explicitly gender the player character as male. This may seem like a strange choice in a first-person game with a silent protagonist and no mirrors. The only visible part of the player character’s body is covered by gloves and the dialog could easily have been rewritten to avoid the use of gendered pronouns - why prevent non-male players from projecting themselves into the game? There is a reason for this, but it comes later. For now I’m just acknowledging that this may seem strange to the first-time player.</p>
<p>Finally, Nowak’s speech ends with an exhortation for the player character to “believe it.” While it is crucial to the survival of Earth that the player character does accept his mission, from a storytelling perspective it’s a slightly odd thing to say here. At this point, the player has no reason <em>not</em> to believe Nowak. The premise she has set up is completely plausible for a video game and the player has no alternative explanation for the strange situation their character is in. I suspect that for a number of players, disbelieving Nowak hadn’t even occurred to them until she urged them not to. Nowak is the character who argues for faith, but “faith in the possibility of good” doesn’t necessarily translate to “believe everything said by the first stranger you meet.” So I suspect this line was actually intended to sow doubt - at this point there’s still no story but Nowak’s, but it’ll be easier to accept ambiguity later if the player doesn’t completely buy what they’re being told now. And this ambiguity is periodically reinforced by Nowak’s frequent use of the phrase “fingers crossed” - which can mean <em>either</em> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossed_fingers">a wish for luck or the telling of a lie</a>.</p>
<h3 id="story-analysis-moving-forward-and-laying-a-foundation">Story Analysis: Moving Forward and Laying a Foundation</h3>
<p>Nowak’s exposition ends and the player character is left alone. Whether or not they believe her, there’s nothing to do but move forward and solve puzzles. This remains true throughout the game in a very straightforward example of <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/glossary/game-design/#option-restriction">option restriction</a>. If the player doesn’t want to quit and they want anything interesting to happen, their only choice is to progress along the game’s linear path.</p>
<p>After a few puzzle rooms, another radio signal kicks in. It’s a man’s voice this time, but the audio is very broken up and the only part that can be clearly made out is “nine one nine.” The transmission ends without explanation, and since the player character’s microphone isn’t working he can’t ask Nowak about it when she calls again after a few more puzzles. Here’s how she greets the player character in that transmission:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Hello? Can you hear me? Huh, no point in saying that, is there. <em>(sighing)</em> Okay. I’m gonna have faith.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Now that the player has their bearings, they’re a little more likely to pick up on what this says about Nowak. She’s in a situation where she doesn’t and in fact <em>can’t</em> know whether her efforts are having any effect at all. If the player character can’t hear her, it doesn’t matter whether she speaks. But if he can, then it’s very important that she does speak, to keep him going on his mission. So faith in the possibility of good requires her to assume she’s being heard and speak accordingly.</p>
<p>Nowak goes on to say that Mission Control is concerned because they don’t know whether the player character has lost his memory. Knowing this was a possibility, he apparently wrote a letter to himself about his life before going on the mission, since one method for treating amnesiac patients is to remind them of important events they’ve experienced. Nowak reads out some highlights from the letter - he lives in Colorado Springs but got married in Iceland and has no children - before orbiting back out of range, leaving the player alone with the puzzles.</p>
<p>I mentioned before that it might have seemed strange that the game commits to a male player character. This moment is when that starts to pay off. I suspect the use of male pronouns at the very beginning was mostly so that it wouldn’t be jarring in this later scene to learn some more specifics. Now that those details are being revealed, it becomes clear that the player character is intended to be a defined person with a full history. This reinforces that the game is set in a world that does have an objective truth, not one that’s ambiguous or created by the player. The player doesn’t yet have all the pieces of that truth, but they are out there and they do matter. Later, this foundation will enable the player to wonder who’s telling the truth between Nowak and Nine-One-Nine - it’s an implicit promise that it’s worth considering and weighing the evidence because there’s a consistent reality underneath.</p>
<p>After another indecipherable transmission from Nine-One-Nine, Nowak reads the player character more from the letter. But this time it’s not just biographic information. This time it’s something deeply personal and emotional.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“So, I want you to know, I’m only reading this because you wrote it to yourself. <em>(deep breath)</em> It was three PM on a Sunday. You were upstairs at home. A teenage boy broke into your house. He thought you were away on vacation. You went downstairs with your gun. You shot him in your living room. Only he wasn’t trying to rob you. He was passing by and saw a fire in your kitchen. He broke in to try and put it out. He was young and stupid and probably should have thought of a better solution. But you assumed the worst. You assumed the very worst and you shot him. He was paralyzed from the neck down. He died seven years later, alone, at night, in Penrose-St. Francis Hospital… I’m orbiting out. I hope that helped you. Fingers crossed.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s a dark story, and it’s easy to see how someone who’d lived it would identify it as one of their most intense and significant memories. So it’s believable that the player character would have chosen this story to try to combat their potential amnesia. But there’s more going on here - the story is a cautionary tale about assuming the worst and hurting people who are trying to help you. The moral is very clearly <em>not to do that.</em></p>
<p>It’s worth emphasizing here that the virtue Nowak embodies and encourages is “faith in the possibility of good” - not faith in the <em>certainty</em> of good. It’s not <em>blind</em> optimism - if Nowak were sure everything would work out, she wouldn’t bother with the letter. Instead, Nowak has faith that it <em>can</em> work out if she does what’s necessary. Her philosophy of <em>pragmatic</em> optimism allows her to face reality but ensures she will never let an important opportunity pass by or give up unnecessarily.</p>
<p>Similarly, the lesson of the intruder story isn’t that you should leave your gun behind. The intruder easily <em>could</em> be hostile, in which case the gun could be quite helpful. The lesson is that you shouldn’t <em>fire</em> your gun before making sure that’s the right thing to do. To protect the possibility of good, you must <em>prepare</em> for the worst but not <em>assume</em> it.</p>
<p>When the player character realized he had an intruder, he had a choice. He could have believed it was possible that the intruder was not a violent burglar, in which case shooting him before asking questions would be a terrible thing to do. He would have held off long enough to ascertain the truth and nobody would have been hurt. Or he could have rejected that possibility and assumed the worst, in which case shooting immediately is the right thing to do. This is what he did, and it ruined the life of an innocent.</p>
<p>The stakes are much higher now. The boy was trying to help save a house, and lack of faith doomed him. Nowak is trying to help save the <em>world</em>, and this time lack of faith would doom the whole planet.</p>
<h3 id="story-analysis-introducing-the-contrarian">Story Analysis: Introducing the Contrarian</h3>
<p>Now that Nowak’s philosophy is well established, it’s time for it to be challenged. After some more puzzle-solving, Nine-One-Nine comes back on and this time you can actually make out what he says.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You, listen! I know you can hear me down there. She’s lying to you. She’s a liar! You’re not where they say you are! They’ll leave you alone to die in the dark.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The transmission ends, and the player character is deposited in the game’s darkest area. It’s impossibly dark - there are a few lights on the walls and the cubes you can interact with are lit up, but everything else is utterly black, as though all the other surfaces absorb light rather than reflecting it.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/close-reading-of-qube-directors-cut/dark_hud807e58b9bbf403cebb11cc73ea00dc6_141072_600x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Alone in the dark." />
</figure>
<p>It’s a very stark contrast, appropriate enough for Nine-One-Nine’s sudden claim that everything the player has been told so far is a lie. In fact, it’s a little <em>too</em> on the nose - but deliberately so, I believe. Here are the reactions to this moment in the two Let’s Plays I used as dialog references:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“So she’s a liar - are we doing that again? Come on. I quite liked when games weren’t about lying."<br>
—<a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEP1LCx1deSTAiOorKMmWRg">Anistuffs - The Indian Let’s Player</a>, <cite><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIwPIYt5-Co&t=367">Let’s Play Q.U.B.E. Director’s Cut - Part 5 of 16 - That Blooming Bloom</a></cite></p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p>“Oh man, I knew it. It <em>is</em> like Portal."<br>
—<a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCew21uKRQHjR8vlEeY_hpPg">Quaint Hydra</a>, <cite><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kYQultsomI&t=201">Q.U.B.E. Directors Cut [Part 2]: Truth, What Is The Truth</a></cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I think this is exactly what Yescombe wants the reaction to be. The savvy player has probably already wondered whether Nowak is to be believed, especially after the small out-of-place clues like her early exhortation to believe her story and then the mysterious transmissions with a different voice. Now that Nine-One-Nine has managed to explicitly say that Nowak is lying, he also says the player character will be left alone in the dark at the exact moment the player character finds themselves alone in the dark.</p>
<p>It’s an unsubtle way to add weight to Nine-One-Nine’s claim, and I think that’s the point. Players may be skeptical that the game would be so lazily written as to straight-up copy <cite>Portal</cite>, but if it’s willing to use such a ham-fisted visual metaphor, maybe it really is that lazy. The savvy player is thus being loaded with the expectation that Nowak will betray them, in order to magnify the relief that will come when the game ends and it’s revealed as a <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoubleSubversion">double subversion</a> that only pretends to set up that tired twist.</p>
<p>After a few puzzles, Nowak establishes contact again. The player can’t confront her and she hasn’t heard Nine-One-Nine herself, as he only transmits when Nowak is out of range. But now everything she says is colored by the doubt Nine-One-Nine has planted. Nowak hasn’t really backed up any of her claims and much of what the player thought they knew came only from her. In this transmission, she mostly just restates her key claims which gives the player a chance to reevaluate them: you can stop the Qube by solving its puzzles, Nowak is on the ISS and the only one who can reach you (and by implication, you are in outer space), and being “alone in the dark” is psychologically damaging. The one new piece of information is why Nowak understands how hard it is being alone in space - she’s alone too.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I know it’s tough, being alone out there. I’ve been alone here on the International Space Station for… over a month. Going around and around and around the earth. And after a while, it messes with your head. The truth is, if you leave a person alone in the dark long enough, they’ll lose themselves.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s more sympathetic and humanizing than what you’d expect to hear from a fake ally who’s just been revealed, but the player is likely to regard it with suspicion after Nine-One-Nine’s claim. It’s unclear at this point whether it’s genuine vulnerability or a falsehood designed to create sympathy and trust, but it adds some dimension to her character that will be explored later on.</p>
<p>Eventually the player character emerges from the darkness back into a normally-lit area. After a burst of static, Nine-One-Nine has his longest transmission yet.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I don’t have much power left. I’ve been listening from inside my box. They say you’re out in space - you’re not. You’re underground. They’ve buried you alive down there so they can test you. They’re going to test you and test you until you rot into dust. And they do something to your memory. They did it to mine. They don’t want you to remember who you are because if you don’t know what’s happening you’ll have faith that it will end, you’ll have faith that someone will let you out of the dark, but they won’t. You have to rip that faith out of your skull and replace it with truth. Or you’ll die down there.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nine-One-Nine has finally presented an alternate explanation for what’s going on, and - leaning even further into the comparison and expectations that already exist in the player’s mind - his claims are straight out of <cite>Portal</cite>. The only addition is the amnesia which he claims was deliberately inflicted on you so that you wouldn’t know the truth. This still doesn’t prove the player character actually has amnesia, but lends more weight to the reading that he does. This way, after all, the character would be facing the same crucial question as the player: who is telling the truth? Whose version of reality is correct?</p>
<h3 id="story-analysis-the-ideological-conflict">Story Analysis: The Ideological Conflict</h3>
<p>Interspersed between more puzzles, the player hears from Nowak again and then Nine-One-Nine. Now that the player understands both of their claims, the conflict between them has become the focus of the story. As such, their dialog plays up that conflict even though Nowak still doesn’t know Nine-One-Nine is talking to you. Nowak tells you that the Qube is starting to come apart and that you’re getting close enough to Earth to arrange a linkup to Mission Control so you can talk to your wife. Nine-One-Nine says this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I haven’t got much power left, so open your ears. Doubt is like a tiny plant trying to push its way torwards the light. But as soon as she sees it poking out of the dirt, she pours on more soothing words to kill it. You’re making the Qube fall apart, you’re going to get to talk to your wife, you’re gonna get out! You’re gonna go home. You’re going to save the whole Earth. That’s her poison. And you’re drinking it! If you want it to stop, you have to stop it.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If Nowak’s philosophy is pragmatic optimism, Nine-One-Nine’s is rebellious pessimism. It’s not just skepticism - he doesn’t invite you to evaluate Nowak’s claims, but to reject them outright lest they kill your precious doubt. Faith in the possibility of good is a tool used by your captors, and unless you abandon it you’ll never escape their trap.</p>
<p>Although he urges you not to <em>believe</em> Nowak, Nine-One-Nine doesn’t propose an alternate course of <em>action</em>. The implication is certainly that he doesn’t think you should be obediently solving puzzles, but what else <em>can</em> you do? There are no apparent escapes - the only way to move is forward, through the puzzles. The <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/glossary/game-design/#option-restriction">option restriction</a> is still very much in effect. So despite the uncertainty, most players are likely to keep solving puzzles and moving forward. This means the player is free to <em>wonder</em> who’s telling the truth without having to <em>decide.</em> This lets them remain curious and engaged with the mystery instead of just waiting to find out whether they are right or wrong in their chosen answer.</p>
<p>Before long, the player character reaches a doorway much like several they’ve passed through before, but this time there’s a malfunction. The floor drops like an elevator with a snapped cable and the player plummets with it down, down, down, finally coming to a crashing halt somewhere deep in the Qube. There’s a lot of rubble and exposed cables where the walls are damaged or collapsed.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/close-reading-of-qube-directors-cut/damage_hu207efc75ec1b5476367ecb85b8b9a9b7_115215_600x0_resize_catmullrom_2.png" alt="A damaged section of the Qube." />
</figure>
<p>As they regain their balance, a radio transmission cuts in. It’s Nowak, who opens by saying “I have faith you can hear me.” She goes on to claim that the Qube is coming apart even more than before and the linkup with your wife should happen soon. That’s all the news she has, but she decides to tell you more than just news.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“But I figure talking to you is therapeutic. Especially for me, actually. What I said before - about how being alone out here can mess with you… it’s messed with me too. I can’t talk to Mission Control about it or they’d cut me short. I figure - with your radio out, you can keep a secret. <em>(deep sigh)</em> Fifteen days ago, I was on a spacewalk on the outside of the station. I was replacing one of the old communication antennas. The sun was disappearing over the western edge of the Earth behind me. And it gets so quiet out there, so dark. Sometimes you can’t be sure you’re there at all. I finish the job, I start to move away… and, uh… and I hear this voice. Only, it’s my voice. Not in my mouth, not in my head, but outside, next to my ear. It’s the only way I can explain it. And the voice, it said… it said… <em>(labored breath)</em> ‘God is dead.’ <em>(coughing, sniffling)</em> And it scared the hell out of me. <em>(sniffle)</em> I grabbed my tether and pulled myself back into the airlock and shut the door. <em>(sigh)</em> I know it’s just my brain keeping itself busy. <em>(sniffle)</em> And that’s why we do isolation tests before we go out - but, Christ. I’m orbiting out of range. I’m sorry. Keep going. Please keep going.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s the payoff of Nowak’s earlier hint of vulnerability. She tells you her secret, the event that shook her hard and that she hasn’t been able to share with anyone else. It doesn’t seem like something a captor would say to motivate a prisoner to solve puzzles and it’s hard not to be convinced by its apparently sincere emotional depth. In a way, it’s the strongest piece of evidence yet that Nowak is actually telling you the truth.</p>
<p>But it’s a lot more than that. “God is dead” is a chilling thing to hear from a disembodied voice alone in space, but it’s also a perfect encapsulation of the dilemma at the core of the game’s conflict. To explain why, we’re going to have to take a moment to talk about Nietzsche.</p>
<h3 id="sidebar-god-is-dead">Sidebar: God is Dead</h3>
<p><figure class="right">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/close-reading-of-qube-directors-cut/Nietzsche187a_hucd6071e04bef847d24dde11cb275aef1_647359_250x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Friedrich Nietzsche" />
</figure>
Nineteenth-century German philosopher <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche">Friedrich Nietzsche</a> was not the first to refer to the death of God, but he is the most popularly-associated with the concept. The quote “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_is_dead">God is dead</a>” unavoidably reads as a Nietzsche reference, and if we want to fully understand a story that invokes this phrase we should understand what it meant to the man himself. I am far from being a Nietzsche scholar, so the following is going to be greatly simplified and condensed, but it should suffice for our needs.</p>
<p>For Nietzsche, “God is dead” was a social statement, not a religious one. It wasn’t about the literal death of a deity, but rather an observation on the waning influence of the Christian church in post-Enlightenment Europe. God was “dead” in that the lives of individuals and the progress of society were increasingly understood to be directed by natural processes rather than divine destiny. But in a culture that had been built with the church at its center, this meant many important questions no longer had easy answers. How should people live, if they no longer have the word of God to follow? Without divine decree, how can we know what’s right or wrong? <em>Is there any such thing?</em></p>
<p>“God is dead” is shorthand for a society-level existential crisis. An entire people had the foundations of their morality and worldview ripped out from under them, and it was not at all obvious how to rebuild. One option was to remain in denial, accepting the prominence of scientific knowledge while pretending this didn’t remove all justification for traditional frameworks of ethics and values. This could be quite tempting, as dismissing those frameworks would open the door to nihilism - the conclusion that our existence and experiences are fundamentally meaningless.</p>
<p>But in Nietzsche’s analysis, if humanity was strong enough it could rise to the incredible opportunity of building a <em>new</em> foundation to life - a truer and stronger one that would allow us to reach far greater heights. Nietzsche saw this as a necessary step in the evolution of a culture: we must face the realization that there’s <em>nothing out there</em> and decide how to react. Do we close our eyes and cling to outdated views of universal good and evil? Or do we confront the emptiness and do the hard work of building our own value system anew?</p>
<p>Nowak and Nine-One-Nine have both had their “God is dead” moments and they reacted differently. <cite>Q.U.B.E: Director’s Cut</cite> is the story of the conflict between their philosophies as expressed through their attempts to persuade the player character to follow their way of thinking.</p>
<p>Nine-One-Nine’s moment came seven years ago. As we later find out, he’s an astronaut whose shuttle malfunctioned and lost contact with Earth. While we never learn the details, I think this is intended to be read as an unpredictable tragedy, no more complicated than it sounds. Nine-One-Nine suffered a terrible fate and found himself alone in the dark through no fault of his own and not due to any greater plan. A bad thing happened to a good person, and it <em>didn’t mean anything.</em></p>
<p>We don’t know how Nine-One-Nine reacted to this at first, but by the time of the game he’s found a way to internalize it. Unfortunately, he hasn’t been able to confront and overcome the nihilistic implications of his experience. Instead, he clings to outdated and inaccurate moral interpretations. For the universe to still be a place where things happen for a reason, Nine-One-Nine’s fate must have been due to a planned and deliberate act - an <em>evil</em> act. He isn’t just a victim of circumstance - he’s a prisoner, and that means he has captors. This view may well have kept him alive by justifying his suffering and giving him someone to fight - but it means that when he hears Nowak give an incompatible explanation, he assumes she’s one of his captors and is ready to fight <em>her.</em> If the player listened to him and stopped solving puzzles, not only would Nine-One-Nine’s failure to confront and overcome nihilism have destroyed his only chance to finally be rescued, but it actually would have <em>doomed the entire world.</em></p>
<p>Nowak’s moment came fifteen days ago. The Qube was just a couple weeks away from wiping out all human life. The world’s last hope was an astronaut sent out to the Qube alone in a desperate attempt to stop it. And he’d just lost consciousness and possibly died.</p>
<p>Unlike Nine-One-Nine, Nowak knew what this meant: nothing. It was her own voice that told her that God was dead. It terrified her, but she confronted and overcame it. Because she knew God was dead, she knew that there was no divinely ordained reason for the mission to fail and the world to end. It wasn’t happening on purpose or as part of some grand design. Mission Control gave up and accepted their fate, but Nowak knew there was no such thing as a fate to accept. She kept faith in the possibility of good and continued to do whatever she could, transmitting to the player character in case he could hear her, and as a result the world was saved.</p>
<p>Nietzsche and Yescombe both teach us: you can’t fight the dark if you accept it as part of the plan. You can’t save the world without killing God.</p>
<h3 id="story-analysis-confrontation">Story Analysis: Confrontation</h3>
<p>Okay, back to the game. Having fallen into a damaged portion of the Qube, the player character finds a path forward through the wreckage solving several puzzles that involve manipulating live wires to restore power to cubes so they can be used to proceed - and after that, breaking holes in walls to create new paths. Eventually, Nine-One-Nine speaks again.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Listen to me. The whole thing is bullshit. I can see on your camera - look around you. You really think this is an alien craft? The colors, symbols - they’re all human! They’re all things you can understand and solve. It’s all part of it. And you think the Qube is really falling to pieces? The hanging wires, the holes in the wall - none of them lead you anywhere they don’t want you to go.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s Nine-One-Nine’s most damning argument, and it’s immediately reinforced by a huge arrow sign pointing you through a hole in a damaged wall. It’s a clear reminder that every part of the Qube’s design, including the apparent damage, is completely intentional and completely readable. This makes a lot more sense if it’s a series of human-designed test chambers - which was the setting in <cite>Portal</cite> - than a genuine alien craft.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/close-reading-of-qube-directors-cut/arrow_hu8ec7ee6dd2ed1bbbf9ebb18bae68787c_163160_600x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="An arrow pointing through a collapsed wall." />
</figure>
<p>Players - especially savvy ones who have internalized the language of video games - may not have consciously considered the way they’ve been shepherded along so far. It’s just part of the assumption of game and level design that the player will be steered toward content and progression. Calling attention to it in this way works as an in-universe argument against Nowak, but also - like the sudden arrival in the dark area before - as a signal to the player. This time, it suggests that deconstruction is afoot and their standard assumptions are not safe. But this, too, has been <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2012/12/tropes-and-trolls-when-the-game-is-not-what-you-think-it-is/">done before</a>, so it’s likely to further persuade the player that a familiar twist is coming.</p>
<p>The game does eventually reveal that you actually <em>are</em> in an alien craft, but does not counter or justify Nine-One-Nine’s point. Maybe there’s an explanation in <a href="https://www.toxicgames.co.uk/qube2/"><cite>Q.U.B.E. 2</cite></a>, but there isn’t one here. The consistent readability of the Qube, the fact that there’s always one path forward, and the fact that you destroy it by solving puzzles are left as an open mystery, and to the player they may seem to just be consequences of the fact that you are playing a video game. Nine-One-Nine’s point can thus come across as a bit of a <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging">lampshade hanging</a>, which is unfortunate as it implies that the creators didn’t find a good way to fully integrate story and game design. But in the moment, it’s still a well-placed escalation of the argument between Nowak and Nine-One-Nine - her last transmission about her “God is dead” moment was her most convincing one yet, and now Nine-One-Nine has given his.</p>
<p>But he still doesn’t offer an alternative besides telling you to “lose your faith.” That’s not a course of action. Nine-One-Nine’s philosophy is fundamentally empty. Because it refuses to acknowledge its own emptiness, it cannot overcome it. If Nowak’s telling the truth, then it’s very important that the player character do as she says. If Nine-One-Nine is telling the truth, then it <em>doesn’t matter</em> what the player character does.</p>
<p>So, the player keeps going. And after several more puzzles, Nowak speaks. She tells the player character that (as Nine-One-Nine predicted) the promised linkup with his wife won’t be happening. She also mentions that she’s noticed some “interference on [his] signal frequency” but it’s probably nothing - the player, of course, is likely to recognize that it’s Nine-One-Nine. After a few more puzzles, he’s back - but this time, Nowak’s in range and can hear him. Now that they’ve each made their strongest arguments, it’s time for them to clash directly.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>NINE-ONE-NINE: “You heard it in her voice, didn’t you? Her lies catching in her throat. Did you really believe that the fate of the planet depends on you solving puzzles in a box? They lie to give you just enough hope to keep you where they want you: alone, in the dark. Just you, and the voices in your head.”</p>
<p>NOWAK: “Hello? Who is this? Who are you and how are you on this frequency? Sir, this is a private government channel. I don’t know how you’re broadcasting out here but what you’re doing is illegal. What is your name?”</p>
<p>NINE-ONE-NINE: “You people scrubbed my name out of my head! All I am is a number you gave me. Nine one nine. And you can pretend all you want but now he knows the truth - no faith, just facts!”</p>
<p>NOWAK: “Hello? Hello? Listen to me: I have no idea who that person is. Whatever he’s been saying to you, you need to ignore it. If he contacts you again, just blank it out. I’ll contact Mission Control and find out what the hell is going on. I’m orbiting out of range, but remember: your mission is everything. The entire world is depending on you.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They’ve each reiterated their core claims, but no new evidence is on offer. There is still no option but to proceed through a new area of the Qube which is less damaged but more surreal with corridors that pulse and rotate. It’s another visual metaphor for the player’s condition - tension is ramping up and there’s no solid foundation for knowing what to believe.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/close-reading-of-qube-directors-cut/twisted_huac34250e5e9222fdff90df6de0a0eda8_283522_600x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="A twisted hallway." />
</figure>
<p>After a handful of puzzles, Nowak is back in range, and tells you who Nine-One-Nine is.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Mission Control say that seven years ago, they had a space shuttle malfunction and fall out of orbit. The shuttle’s name was nine one nine. They lost contact, it drifted out into deep space, and everyone assumed the astronaut on board was dead. It’s possible that his suit kept him alive. . . . The astronaut’s name was Jonathan Burns. And if he is Jonathan Burns, he’s been alone in the dark for a very, very long time.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Naturally, Nine-One-Nine denies this, proffering his own explanation.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“She’s lying! <em>(sniff)</em> That’s how people lie: with lots of little details. They tell you about a date, a time, a name - it makes it seem real, but it’s not real. . . . The name they told you, Jonathan Burns - it’s not a name, it’s a threat. You’re Jonathan, and they’re going to burn you! Jesus Christ, they’re going to make you walk right into the incinerator!”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As happened before with the dark area and the arrow sign, the environment punctuates Nine-One-Nine’s message in a literal way: the player character reaches a new area where there are actually small fires burning in some of the damaged spots.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/close-reading-of-qube-directors-cut/fires_huc542714f919fb38da543487e1f25ac48_257880_600x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Small fires in damaged areas." />
</figure>
<p>As before, this seems engineered to remind the player of <cite>Portal</cite>. In that game, GLaDOS intended to trick the player character into a fiery death, and only quick thinking and a clever application of the portal gun allow her to escape. After all the other parallels so far, and with another helping of deliberately unsubtle foreshadowing, it’s easy to believe Nowak may be about to attempt the same thing.</p>
<h3 id="story-analysis-suicide-or-salvation">Story Analysis: Suicide or Salvation</h3>
<p>Shortly thereafter, the player enters a large chamber that has a few objects that <em>might</em> be escape shuttles. They’re roughly van-sized with human-sized doors and are on slanted tracks leading down somewhere the player can’t see.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/close-reading-of-qube-directors-cut/shuttles_hu2ddba1fdc6ea16e8fd8e0088e1b70972_415595_600x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="They might be shuttles." />
</figure>
<p>When approached, the doors open to reveal lights, machinery, and what appears to be a control console. Nowak urges the player character to get in and escape the collapsing Qube while Nine-One-Nine urges him not to.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>NOWAK: “Oh god - you need get out of there right now! The whole thing is co- the whole thing is coming apart! There’s an escape shuttle dead ahead - get in and go!”</p>
<p>NINE-ONE-NINE: “No! It’s not a shuttle! It’s a coffin! And they want you to launch yourself into the incinerator! You knew the second you woke up here - I know you knew it! Her fingers are crossed behind her back!”</p>
<p>NOWAK: “Go! Don’t listen to him; he’s crazy, he’s lying, I don’t know; get in the shuttle!”</p>
<p>NINE-ONE-NINE: “They’re trying to jam my signal - don’t listen to her!”</p>
<p>NOWAK: “Please, I-I don’t want you to die!”</p>
<p>NINE-ONE-NINE: “That’s the only thing they want!”</p>
<p>NOWAK: “I’m moving out of range - please, go!”</p>
<p>NINE-ONE-NINE: “Do you think it’s a coincidence there are no windows to prove you’re in outer space? They already buried you; don’t kill yourself for them too!”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s the moment when the player is finally called upon to choose who to believe. But the deck is still stacked. If Nowak is telling the truth, then the player character needs to get in the shuttle or he’ll die. If Nine-One-Nine’s telling the truth, the player character is likely dead no matter <em>what</em> he does, and Nine-One-Nine still hasn’t provided an alternative. It’s possible to cut off their shouting match as early as Nine-One-Nine’s first objection by just getting in the shuttle, but even if the player just stands around waiting, nothing really happens. There’s smoke and fire and audible explosions in the distance that shake the area, but that’s it until the player character gets into the shuttle. In the end, the player has no choice but to do as Nowak says.</p>
<p>Upon entering the shuttle, the final cutscene starts. The player character sits at the controls and presses the launch button.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>NOWAK: “Keep going - you’re a hero! The President is on the line waiting to talk to you!”</p>
<p>NINE-ONE-NINE: “The President’s not down there! No one’s down there! No - no! What the hell are you doing? Stop it! Get out! For God’s sake, get out!”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The shuttle races down a tunnel, faster and faster, as Nowak and Nine-One-Nine keep shouting.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>NOWAK: “We’re all waiting for you, everyone’s waiting for you! The whole planet, your wife’s there - your entire life is waiting for you at the end!”</p>
<p>NINE-ONE-NINE: “This <em>is</em> the end! They’re gonna burn you alive - you can still stop it, rip out the wires! Smash out the buttons! Please, don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me. Don’t leave.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The shuttle emerges into space, Nine-One-Nine’s final plaintive request not to be left alone again hanging in the air. Scattered Qube fragments can be seen, and beyond them - Earth.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/05/close-reading-of-qube-directors-cut/earth_hu21401022f3fc568136c459786ab4c959_188325_600x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="The Earth and scattered Qube fragments." />
</figure>
<p>The player is allowed a few moments to soak it in, and as the shuttle slowly turns to reveal the entire Qube coming apart, new voices are heard - from Earth.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>MISSION CONTROL: “This is Mission Control. Damn, it’s good to see you. <em>(cheers and applause in background)</em> We have someone special on the line for you.”</p>
<p>WIFE: “It’s me. Oh my gosh; you’re okay! I knew you you would do it, I-I knew you would, but… <em>(sigh)</em> Just come home now, okay? Please, just come home. Here’s something I-I never thought I’d say: the President wants to talk to you.”</p>
<p>MISSION CONTROL: “Go ahead, sir.”</p>
<p>PRESIDENT: “Well, ‘thank you’ just doesn’t quite cut it, does it? You haven’t just saved the lives of every person on this planet; you found a life we thought was lost forever: Captain Jonathan Burns of Shuttle Nine One Nine. And Captain Burns - now we know you’re out there, we will not rest until we bring you home, no matter what. I assure you - you are found. As for you, you may have had your doubts through all this but you persevered. In life, we don’t get proof until it’s done. That’s how humanity achieves great things. By having faith in the possibility of good.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Roll credits.</p>
<h3 id="beyond-the-story-a-happy-ending">Beyond the Story: A Happy Ending</h3>
<p>At the moment when I saw the Earth and the stars, I was relieved. Very, very relieved. I was <em>surprised</em> how relieved I was. And I wasn’t the only one.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It’s not just the novelty of a triumphant ending – They’re not as common as I’d like but they’re certainly not rare – nor is it the novelty of being surprised, as I’ve been slapped in the face with any amount of random baloney in my life. It’s more the combination: being pleasantly surprised by a happy ending.</p>
<p>Pleasant surprises are, shall we say, uncommon. . . . So at the end of <cite>Q.U.B.E.</cite> I realized I had been holding my breath waiting for the other shoe that would surely drop on my head. . . . There was no shoe. …I was astonished, bewildered and elated in turn. Here was this elaborate puzzle game, steeped in science-fiction tropes, and they ended it hopefully, even happily? Is that even allowed?</p>
<p>Well, yes, as it turns out. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes you can spend hours dreading something, only to find out that your dread was misplaced. . . . It’s nice, on occasion, to have the good presented to you on a plate instead of having to go digging for it. It’s a reminder that, even in the imagination of a science fiction writer, sometimes things can work out just fine."<br>
—Greg Decker, <a href="https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/1300788"><cite>The Twist</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Every part of the story of <cite>Q.U.B.E: Director’s Cut</cite> builds to this moment. All of Nowak’s and Nine-One-Nine’s dialog, the drop into darkness, the arrow sign on the wall, the fires, forcing you into the escape shuttle before you can be sure that’s what it is, Nowak and Nine-One-Nine shouting against each other until the very last moment of uncertainty. Everything is set up to create apprehension that you’re being lead into a trap - especially if you’ve played <cite>Portal</cite> or other games that do the same thing - and crescendo it to maximum right before the reveal.</p>
<p>So when the reveal is that Nowak is trustworthy and it’s <em>not</em> a trap - and by implication, that you’ve just saved your own life and the entire world - the impact can be intense.</p>
<p><cite>Q.U.B.E: Director’s Cut</cite> does force players into a particular ending, but instead of a dark, pointless, and cynical one, it’s a triumphant, uplifting, and optimistic one. Other games require the player to do as their supposed ally says and then burn them for it whether or not they see through the deception, and it’s always frustrating to be berated for the unavoidable actions of your character. <cite>Q.U.B.E: Director’s Cut</cite> requires the player to do as their supposed ally says and then rewards them for it. The player might have believed Nine-One-Nine, but if so they never really had the chance to act on it. The player isn’t supposed to feel bad that they didn’t trust Nowak - they player is supposed to feel good that they had faith in the possibility of good. And so the game ends with the President delivering the moral of the story with those same words that Nowak used at the very beginning.</p>
<p>But I think there’s still a bit more going on here. This story isn’t <em>just</em> a reaction to <cite>Portal</cite>. It’s not <em>just</em> about having a game surprise you with a happy ending. Recall what Yescombe <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20161114062326/http://qube-game.com/press-page/">said about it</a> (emphasis mine):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We are conditioned to expect death and doom. We’re resigned to it. At its heart, this story is about that state of mind and how it effects the way we view our experiences, <strong>in games and in life.</strong>”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Most of us haven’t been trapped alone in space for seven years, but have had bad things happen to us that we didn’t deserve. Most of us aren’t at risk of disrupting a mission to save the planet, but do interact with people who are trying to be more constructive and productive than we are. We can react like Nine-One-Nine - concluding that our misfortune is the result of evil people or organizations working against us and discouraging others from participating in their system. Or we can react like Nowak - concluding that the universe has only the worth we put into it, believing that good is possible but by no means guaranteed, and working hard to bring it about.</p>
<p>Nine-One-Nine’s philosophy is just a rejection - it doesn’t provide any way to <em>fix</em> problems or make the world better. The game shows this by not providing any sort of alternative option if the player believes him. What is such a player supposed to do? Just… stop playing? Stop moving forward, stop solving puzzles, sit outside the escape shuttle forever? How pointless and uninteresting.</p>
<p>But despite the fact that Nine-One-Nine has spent the entire game trying to prevent the player character from saving Earth, the game goes out of its way to make sure you know he’s not a villain and that he gets a happy ending too. The President emphasizes that Nine-One-Nine isn’t alone anymore and that he will finally get to come home. He gets rescued <em>in spite of</em> his philosophy. Someone with the same ideas of good and evil as Nine-One-Nine would read <em>him</em> as evil and deserving of punishment. But in the end, there’s no such thing as evil. We aren’t meant to hate Nine-One-Nine. He’s been through hell and who knows what we would have done under the same circumstances?</p>
<p>The Nine-One-Nines in our lives deserve to be saved just as much as the Nowaks, but we need Nowak’s philosophy in order to do it. It’s a more difficult way to look at the world than Nine-One-Nine’s, but far more rewarding. It acknowledges the darkness and assumes responsibility for improving it. And while the game’s final reveal shows that Nowak was right about you being in space, it also shows that she was right about <em>how to live.</em> Cynicism is empty and self-defeating. Faith in the possibility of good is the only thing that can save us.</p>
<p>It’s the only way we can save each other.</p>
<h3 id="postscript-interview-with-rob-yescombe">Postscript: Interview with Rob Yescombe</h3>
<p>I reached out to Rob Yescombe while working on this essay and he graciously provided some additional context around key story elements and choices. Here’s what I asked him and how he responded:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>DOCPROF: How much freedom did you have when putting the story together for the Director’s Cut? Was it clear in advance that your tools would mostly be limited to voiceover? How did the constraints affect the story you could tell?</strong></p>
<p>YESCOMBE: In the reviews for the original <cite>Q.U.B.E.</cite>, one of the most common criticisms was the lack of a story. So when it came time to port it to console, the team wanted to add one – and very kindly asked me to do it. The problem was they had no scope to add any new content besides extending a few corridors. For me then, the challenge was to figure out a way to tell a story that felt like it belonged in a finished game that was never intended to have one – and do the entire thing with just audio, because that was the cheapest method.</p>
<p>So whilst the team gave me creative freedom, the actual practical constraints were extraordinarily tight. We couldn’t afford a big cast, so I concluded a “two hander” thriller would be the best story structure to use.</p>
<p><strong>DOCPROF: It’s very easy to read the story as a response to <cite>Portal</cite>, deliberately leading players to expect a similar plot and then surprising them with a happy ending. Was this your intent? Were there any other specific games or stories you had in mind?</strong></p>
<p>YESCOMBE: Exactly right – another criticism in reviews for the original <cite>Q.U.B.E.</cite> was that the game looked so much like <cite>Portal</cite>. I realised this similarity set a very particular expectation for any story I might write for the Director’s Cut. So rather than running away from that, I decided to use people’s knowledge of <cite>Portal</cite> as plot device; to address the original criticism by turning it into a twist in the story.</p>
<p><strong>DOCPROF: “Faith in the possibility of good” is one of the first things the player hears and the very last thing said to them. It seems to be a very deliberate wording - what is the origin of this phrase? Why did you decide to use it instead of just saying “hope” or similar?</strong></p>
<p>YESCOMBE: That phrase is the message of the story: don’t assume the worst. It could be stated in a more familiar way, but a line of dialogue that is a little off-kilter is easier for people to retain over the course of a whole game. I grew up watching David Mamet – the master of the off-kilter line. So this was perhaps my hack attempt at that.</p>
<p><strong>DOCPROF: Nine-One-Nine makes the point that there’s no reason an alien spacecraft should be human-readable and present a path of puzzles that destroy it when solved, which may be his strongest evidence that Nowak is lying. I didn’t find an explanation for this in-game - did you have one in mind?</strong></p>
<p>YESCOMBE: There’s a great line Richard Hatem wrote in <cite>The Mothman Prophecies</cite>: “These entities are more advanced than us, so why don’t they just come right out and tell us what’s on their mind? Well, you’re more advanced than a cockroach, but have you ever tried explaining yourself to one?” The assumption that we can ask the heavens a question and be capable of understanding the answer is mankind’s most profound arrogance.</p>
<p><strong>DOCPROF: What lead you to “God is dead” for Nowak’s hallucination? You’re quoted as saying the Director’s Cut story is about being “conditioned to expect death and doom” - were you already considering this through a Nietzschean frame, or did that come up while writing the story?</strong></p>
<p>YESCOMBE: Because conflict is the heart of drama, good things in stories have to find a way to go badly. Through games, movies, books and TV that formula has slowly conditioned us to expect the worst when things look good. The voice Nowak hears is her own. It’s her own doubt in something she deems to be good. Her state of mind, like Nine-One-Nine, reflects the inner monologue of the player.</p>
<p><strong>DOCPROF: Are there any specific individuals or groups, real or fictional, that Nowak or Nine-One-Nine were inspired by?</strong></p>
<p>YESCOMBE: No. They’re both just structural devices to deliver the narrative – and behind the mystery of who’s telling you the truth, the story is really about how you, the player, feel about stories. Some players were very surprised by the ending, and others weren’t surprised at all, which is a direct result of how much personal faith they may or may not have in the possibility of a good outcome.</p>
</blockquote>
https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/04/games-criticism-and-the-beginners-guide/2018-04-30T00:00:00-07:002018-04-30T00:00:00-07:00<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/04/games-criticism-and-the-beginners-guide/the-beginners-guide.jpg" alt="The Beginner's Guide" />
</figure>
<h4 id="spoiler-warning-for-citethe-beginners-guidecitehttpsthebeginnersguide">Spoiler warning for <a href="https://thebeginnersgui.de/"><cite>The Beginner’s Guide</cite></a>.</h4>
<p><cite>The Beginner’s Guide</cite> is a short (ninety minutes or so) narrative game by <cite>The Stanley Parable</cite> creator Davey Wreden. I <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/review/the-beginners-guide/">like it a lot</a> and recommend it to folks interested in how we create and talk about games. If you’re intrigued by the game but haven’t played it yet, you might want to do so before reading further. The game has generated a lot of analysis and discussion - my personal favorite being Ian Danskin’s video essay <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N6y6LEwsKc"><cite>The Artist is Absent: Davey Wreden and The Beginner’s Guide</cite></a> - but there’s a trend among some critics that I find troubling and want to dig into.</p>
<p>In short - I think <cite>The Beginner’s Guide</cite> has spooked some reviewers. A number of people seem to think that just discussing the game means you’re falling into its trap. I don’t think that’s true, but to explain why we need to talk about how the game earned that reaction in the first place.</p>
<p>A quick note before we dig in - the game’s main character is named “Davey Wreden” and is voiced by the actual Davey Wreden, but by the end of the game it’s clear that the story it tells is not literally true. The game blurs the line between fiction and reality - Davey identifies himself to the player in the game’s opening and even gives out his email address - but to <em>discuss</em> the game productively it’s useful for them to be clearly separated. So for clarity, I’m going to refer to the character that exists within the world of the game as Game!Davey.</p>
<p><cite>The Beginner’s Guide</cite> is structured as a guided tour of several games created by an amateur developer named Coda. Coda has stopped making games, so Game!Davey wants to share Coda’s work to encourage him to get back into game development. Game!Davey guides the player through each of Coda’s games, ruminating on design choices and what they say about Coda as a person, until it’s revealed that he’s been misleading the player the whole time. He’s made changes to Coda’s games so that they would better fit his narrative and used this manufactured evidence to share false insights into Coda. And Coda has specifically asked Game!Davey not to share or alter his games. But Game!Davey hasn’t been able to stop himself, because he craves the validation that he’s only been able to find by sharing Coda’s work and lying about it to make it more interesting. He makes this clear in some late-game narration where he stops addressing the player and addresses Coda instead:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I don’t think I ever told you this, but when I took your work and I was showing it to people, it actually felt… It felt as though I were responsible for something important and valuable.</p>
<p>And the people who played them, they treated me like I was important! They really listened and cared about what I had to say. Even though I was showing your work, it was… I felt good about myself. Finally. For a moment, while I had that, I liked myself. . . .</p>
<p>If I apologize to you truly and deeply, will you start making games again? Please, I need to feel okay with myself again, and I always felt okay as long as I had your work to see myself in. . . . Please start making games again, please help me, please give me some of whatever it is that makes you complete, I want whatever that wholeness that you just summoned out of nothing and put into your work, you were complete in some way that I never was."<br>
—Game!Davey, <cite>The Beginner’s Guide</cite> (as transcribed <a href="http://the-beginners-guide.wikia.com/wiki/Tower">in the fan wiki</a>)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Game!Davey is a deeply flawed person whose insecurities lead him to act in dishonest, hurtful, boundary-violating ways - all in the guise of telling people about some interesting games. While most of us would never do what Game!Davey does, it’s easy to read the game as an attack on certain kinds of criticism and discussion of games.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<cite>The Beginner’s Guide</cite> is a game that does game criticism work, and it actively questions the role of the critical player as someone who can lay out the meaning of a work for the larger field of players. The top Reddit comment that tells you the “real” story of a game? Implicated. Ideology-uncovering critical pieces? Implicated. Explainer videos that elide details to make a larger point about an entire franchise? The worse kinds of readers. And Wreden-the-narrator/-the-creator is suggesting that we might need to let works speak for themselves. Sometimes objects are not conduits into a rich inner life of a creator. Sometimes a game is not a barometer, or at least not as much of an on-the-surface one as many readings and readers would suggest."<br>
—Cameron Kunzelman, <a href="https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/10/the-beginners-guide-review-good-evening.html"><cite>The Beginner’s Guide Review: Good Evening</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p>“<cite>The Beginner’s Guide</cite> is a game that likes to make you question not just what it means, but whether you’ve been looking for meaning in games in the wrong way altogether. . . . Maybe we’re supposed to conclude that it doesn’t matter, that by digging for the “truth” about Wreden and Coda as either players or critics, we transform ourselves into the same sort of point-missing voyeur “Wreden” reveals himself to be by the end. Or maybe we’re supposed to conclude that saying too much about a game is a way of pinning down the butterfly of art with the needle of analysis, and that something is inevitably violated, or diminished, or lost when we do it. Maybe I’m doing exactly what the game is criticizing simply by asking the question."<br>
—Laura Hudson, <a href="https://boingboing.net/2015/10/02/the-beginners-guide-is-a-gam.html"><cite>The Beginner’s Guide is a game that doesn’t want to be written about</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p>“For a critic to discuss <cite>The Beginner’s Guide</cite>, he must describe his experience of the game. To do this, however, he must pick a side in its central debate: describing a reaction to a game necessarily centers the player (or <em>a</em> player) in the discussion. It’s a clever trap. If you like the game, you can just tell people to buy it. If you don’t, well, then you have to talk about your experience, and then aren’t you emulating the game’s villain?</p>
<p>I have read a few reviews where critics try to bail out of the dilemma by discussing their own personal stories rather than touch on the game directly, but that’s just a variant of the same mistake. They’re taking <cite>The Beginner’s Guide</cite> and making it <em>all about them."</em><br>
—Sparky Clarkson, <a href="https://gamecritics.com/sparky-clarkson/the-beginners-guide-review/"><cite>The Beginner’s Guide Review</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s easy enough to avoid Game!Davey’s most blatant crimes, and I suspect most critics know this. All you have to do is recognize what you do know (the content of a game, the nature of your experience playing it) and what you do not know (the thoughts and feelings of its creator, the nature of their experience creating it) and not misrepresent anything. This is the core of most analysis I’ve seen about the game. Yet even knowing that they would never stoop to Game!Davey’s level, some critics find the idea of discussing the game at <em>all</em> to be fraught. I believe this is because there’s another layer here beneath Game!Davey’s avoidable trespasses which may be harder to see the shape of and thus harder to be confident you can avoid. That layer isn’t <em>what</em> Game!Davey did, but <em>why</em> he did it.</p>
<p>Game!Davey’s motivations are an exaggeration of what many real people actually feel. Even if you know you’d never alter someone’s games and share them without permission, it’s easy to find yourself questioning whether the reason you discuss the work of others is because you are an insecure person seeking validation by association. And in that case, it may be tempting to keep your mouth shut entirely.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“…the game does feel rather hostile to critics and pretty defensive of developers. . . . Like, how am I as a critic supposed to respond to my job being described like this? Especially since moments later [Game!Davey]’s having a breakdown because his entire ego is built on top of his ability to tell people how smart games are?"<br>
—Chris Franklin, <a href="http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/?p=837"><cite>Errant Signal - The Beginner’s Guide (Spoilers)</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>So how <em>should</em> you respond? How do you figure out what to say to an accusation like this?</p>
<p>Whether you’re a professional critic or just somebody who likes to talk about games, the first step is understanding just what it is you’re being accused of. It’s a universal behavior I’ve talked about a <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/tags/topic-signaling/">few times</a> - it’s called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory">signaling</a> and I’m guilty of it too. In short - we engage in many actions not for their intrinsic value (or at least not <em>only</em> for that value) but because of what <em>signals</em> they allow us to send about ourselves, though we <a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/09/politics-isnt-a.html">usually claim otherwise</a>. (For more on this concept, see <a href="http://elephantinthebrain.com/"><cite>The Elephant in the Brain</cite></a> by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson.)</p>
<p>One common signaling tactic is to identify someone high-status (at least within the subculture that you care about) and associate yourself with them. There are a lot of ways to do this, but recommendations are one of them. If I show you a game you haven’t heard of, you’ll associate it with me. If you like the game and find yourself respecting the creator, some of that respect will rub off on me, and you’ll think of me as someone with refined taste who is worth listening to. It doesn’t even matter whether I actually <em>like</em> the game or the creator - if I correctly predict that <em>you</em> will, I win points by sharing it with you.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We all want to affiliate with high status people, but since status is about common distant perceptions of quality, we often care more about what distant observers would think about our associates than about how we privately evaluate them."<br>
—Robin Hanson, <a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/06/why-signals-are-shallow.html"><cite>Why Signals Are Shallow</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is what Game!Davey is guilty of. His favorite thing about Coda’s games is that he can feel important by showing them to people - and from this perspective, it doesn’t even matter that he’s showing them dishonestly.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I just felt so strongly that if I could have connected with [Coda], that if I could have somehow made his work my own, that I would finally be once-and-for-all happy. I needed to see myself in someone else. I needed to be someone other than me. . . .</p>
<p>And then [Coda] stopped, and I didn’t have anything left to show people. And I just had to be with myself. And as soon as that happened there was no feeling at all. Nothing. Less than nothing. What does that mean?"<br>
—Game!Davey, <cite>The Beginner’s Guide</cite> (as transcribed <a href="http://the-beginners-guide.wikia.com/wiki/Tower">in the fan wiki</a>)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And of course, I’m guilty of it too. We all do it, whether we <a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/04/motivation.html">realize it or not</a>. I’m writing about <cite>The Beginner’s Guide</cite> because it’s a thoughtful and intelligent game and I want you to think of me as being thoughtful and intelligent. The fact that I <em>admit</em> that doesn’t change it - if anything, it makes it worse! Now I’m just <a href="https://simplicable.com/new/signaling-vs-countersignaling">countersignaling</a> - showing off by pointedly <em>not</em> showing off. But if I know I’m signaling in my writing, does that mean I should <em>stop?</em></p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/04/games-criticism-and-the-beginners-guide/stop-signal.png" alt="A police officer signaling for a stop" />
<figcaption>
<p>It's a stop signal. Get it?
</p>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If we stopped doing things just because they were signaling methods, we’d quickly find ourselves unable to interact with other humans at all. And what’s more, we’d be depriving each other of value. As long as my signals aren’t outright dishonest like Game!Davey’s, they only help me if they help you too. If I legitimately am thoughtful and intelligent and able to bring you content you enjoy, it’s good for <em>both</em> of us for me to signal that, because then you’ll pay attention to me and keep getting content you enjoy.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Critics and reviewers [are now] active guides and tastemakers to an entire ecosystem of games big and small, with each critic cultivating their own audience with their own tastes."<br>
—Chris Franklin, <a href="http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/?p=640"><cite>SWT: Criticism and Curation</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The problem with Game!Davey is not that he gains validation by showing someone else’s work. It’s that he is <em>so desperate</em> for that validation that he crosses several other lines along the way. He mangles Coda’s games so that he can lie about Coda’s thoughts and emotions and repeatedly violates Coda’s boundaries by publicly sharing games that were intended to remain private. If you aren’t crossing these lines, then there’s nothing wrong with talking about games. And if you’re <em>reliant</em> on the validation that you can gain this way, that’s its own separate problem.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“People who rely on external validation are compensating for a lack, a hole in their own lives. They <em>have</em> to consistently seek the approval of others because with out it… well, they don’t really have <em>anything.</em> There’s no sense of self to maintain them, no inner core of worth. . . . Relying on external validation is, ultimately, a recipe for misery. Without an internal source of worth, you are ultimately ensuring your own unhappiness; no matter how much you may achieve it simply won’t ever be enough."<br>
—Harris O’Malley, <a href="http://www.doctornerdlove.com/validation/"><cite>Where Do You Get Your Validation?</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Game!Davey serves as a stark warning of how external validation-seeking can go wrong, through the lens of games criticism. It’s not surprising this has spooked some critics. But we must be careful not to overreact. There’s no need to panic and stop talking about games to each other. There’s real value here we don’t want to destroy. That includes the criticism and curation, but also the validation itself!</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It’s important to remember that external validation is not a bad thing by definition. Caring about what others think is a part of social intelligence and part of how we operate in society after all. . . . Someone who is <em>solely</em> internally validated isn’t an inherently better person, they’re a narcissist."<br>
—Harris O’Malley, <a href="http://www.doctornerdlove.com/validation/"><cite>Where Do You Get Your Validation?</cite></a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The solution here, as it so often is, is to find the right balance - and to do that, you need to know where you stand. It’s okay to share some awesome art with your friend, even if it’s likely to increase their opinion of you. It’s okay to write about the work of others, even if this raises your status. And it’s okay to try to make things people will like, even if this means you make decisions based on the opinions of others. But you should be honest with yourself about your reasons. That’s the only way to understand why you do what you do.</p>
<p>For my part - I wrote this post in order to sort through why I was so frustrated by some critics reacting to <cite>The Beginner’s Guide</cite> as though it somehow had different rules for what you could say about it than every other piece of art. I wrote it to reassure people that it’s still okay to analyze and discuss games. But I also wrote it so you’d know I’m smart. And I’m okay with that.</p>
https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/03/who-frustration-is-good-for/2018-03-26T00:31:00-07:002018-03-26T00:31:00-07:00<p><a href="http://www.foddy.net/2017/09/getting-over-it/"><cite>Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy</cite></a> went fairly viral so you may already be well familiar with it. If so, feel free to skip down past both pictures; I’m going to spend the intervening paragraphs explaining what the game is and how it works.</p>
<figure class="center">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/03/who-frustration-is-good-for/getting-over-it.jpg" alt="Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy" />
</figure>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennett_Foddy">Bennett Foddy</a> is a connoisseur of frustration. His first hit game, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWOP"><cite>QWOP</cite></a>, took the simple act of running and made it nearly impossible by wrapping it in a seemingly-straightforward four-button control scheme with each button dedicated to a thigh or calf muscle. He’s made a few other games along similar lines, but his latest work, <cite>Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy</cite>, takes things to a new level.</p>
<p>The objective of <cite>Getting Over It</cite> is to scale a mountain. This task is harder than it may sound - Diogenes, the player character, can’t directly use his limbs. He can’t walk because he’s stuck in a cauldron for no clear reason, and his hands are permanently gripping a sledgehammer. The player moves the mouse to position the hammer, limited by Diogenes’s reach, to grip onto overhangs and pull Diogenes up, or to push against surfaces to propel Diognenes in the opposite direction.</p>
<p>It’s a control scheme that’s easy to understand but very hard to master. The player must take care to avoid rocketing themselves in unintended directions - and because they are trying to climb a mountain, gravity is constantly against them. Careless movements can easily send the player all the way back to the game’s beginning even after hours of careful progress. This is expected to happen to most players several times. This is actually the point of the game.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Why did I make this? This horrible hike up an impossible mountain. I could have made something you would have liked. A game that was empowering, that would save your progress and inch you steadily forward. Since success is delicious, that would have been wise. Instead, I must confess, this isn’t nice. It tastes of bitterness. It’s capricious; it sets setbacks for the ambitious. It lacks lenience; it’s bracing and inhumane. But not everyone’s the same. I created this game for a certain kind of person. To hurt them."<br>
—Bennett Foddy, <cite><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzjuQ3K72u4">Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy Trailer</a></cite></p>
</blockquote>
<p><cite>Getting Over It</cite> is a reaction to games that are intended to be easy to consume. It’s a meditation on the cultural role of experiences that demand nothing of their audience, as well as the sort of person who rejects such experiences. <cite>Getting Over It</cite> is not designed to be lazily strolled through and forgotten. It blocks the player’s path and demands they work to overcome it. It requires the player to invest blood, sweat, and tears - nothing less will do.</p>
<figure class="center">
<a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/03/who-frustration-is-good-for/getting-over-it-screenshot.jpg">
<img src="https://pixelpoppers.com/2018/03/who-frustration-is-good-for/getting-over-it-screenshot_hu0cb1c423e360d243ce0497ae5e6d3242_824040_400x0_resize_q75_catmullrom.jpg" alt="Getting Over It screenshot" />
</a>
</figure>
<p>Foddy <a href="http://www.foddy.net/2017/09/getting-over-it/">says</a> he “created this game for a certain kind of person, to hurt them.” This isn’t malicious - it’s for people who <em>enjoy</em> being hurt in this very specific way. Foddy himself certainly appears to be one of these people - check out his blog post <a href="http://www.foddy.net/2017/01/eleven-flavors-of-frustration/">celebrating eleven distinct varieties of frustration</a>.</p>
<p>Most of us are not this way. But aside from the masochists (and the <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2017/12/8/16748164/getting-over-it-stream-twitch-youtube-funny">streamers</a>) I think there’s another audience who could get something out of this game. An audience I used to be a part of.</p>
<p>One of my most popular essays is <a href="https://pixelpoppers.com/2009/11/awesome-by-proxy-addicted-to-fake-achievement/">Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement</a>. It tells the story of how I realized I’d been abusing RPGs for easy fake achievement. When I came to a challenge I couldn’t overcome, I would just grind levels until it wasn’t a challenge anymore. I relied on this crutch because I had lost the ability to stick with things that were actually hard. At the first sign of frustration, of difficulty that required actual self-improvement or development of skills, I gave up. My intelligence had allowed me to coast through school, but the “real world” beyond - where it wasn’t enough to just show that you were smart, but where you needed to actually accomplish things - terrified me. I didn’t see how I was going to be able to find and keep a reasonable job. All that I could see happening was that I’d be outed as a worthless human being.</p>
<p>The solution, I decided, was to practice tackling challenges for the sake of it, to build a habit of perseverance. And while I’d been using one kind of game as a way to avoid exactly that, it occurred to me that other kinds of games actually provided a perfect training ground. After all, the challenge itself was arbitrary, but it had to be low stakes, genuinely difficult, require extended practice, and have very clear success and failure modes.</p>
<p>So I decided to get all the emblems in <cite>Sonic Adventure DX</cite>. For most people, this would have been a waste of time. Anyone with baseline manual dexterity <em>could</em> pull it off, but why put in the time for something so irrelevant? For me, it was worth doing because I <em>didn’t know</em> whether I <em>could</em> do it. I had the dexterity, but I wasn’t sure I was <em>tenacious</em> enough to stick with it through repeated failure. I needed to demonstrate that I was <em>psychologically capable of perseverance.</em> So once I’d put in the hours and the practice and earned all the emblems, I felt hope. I saw a way to dig myself out and build myself up. And I started to believe that I could actually do it.</p>
<p>Maybe if <cite>Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy</cite> had been around back then, I would have played that instead. I see it as a waste of time now, but that says more about me than it does about the game. I don’t have to get over it with Bennett Foddy because I already got over it with Sonic the Hedgehog.</p>
<p>Foddy is focused on the frustration - that’s what fascinates him. What’s far more interesting to me is the ability to rise above frustration. The value of <cite>Getting Over It</cite> is to prove you can. To prove you can throw yourself at failure, over and over and over again, until you succeed. Because that’s how everything worth doing gets done.</p>
<p>I’m not going to play <cite>Getting Over It</cite>. I’m not telling you to, either. Maybe, like me, you don’t see a point to it. But maybe you do see a point. Maybe you like the idea of conquering it - of being someone who <em>can</em> conquer it - but aren’t sure that you are that person. If so - I’m telling you that I think you are that person. I believe you can do it.</p>
<p>Foddy says he made this game to hurt people. I think it can heal people too.</p>