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The talk of luck and how sometimes games fake it to make it seems fairer to the player reminds me of how certain games tweak their mechanics to make things easi
by CM30 8y ago
The talk of luck and how sometimes games fake it to make it seems fairer to the player reminds me of how certain games tweak their mechanics to make things easier on the player or feel more cinematic.
For example, in Bioshock 1, the enemies will always miss their first shot, whereas Assassin's Creed and Doom have the last part of the health bar actually take more shots/attacks to deplete to make it feel like players are winning by the skin of their teeth.
There's a whole list of examples here:
https://twitter.com/gaohmee/status/903510060197744640 https://twitter.com/gaohmee/status/903510060197744640
- chronogram 8y agoI just read through the whole twitter thread. So many interesting things, even if I haven’t played all but one of the games mentioned. Thanks!
- ryandrake 8y agoI just read the whole thread too and this stuff all seems so... over-engineered. I mean, if 6 enemies shooting at the player is too hard, the solution should not be to have only two of them shooting and four running around aimlessly. The solution should be to have just two enemies. Isn’t that better than adding all of this complicated and potentially buggy “if this then that” logic all over the code? Don’t change the rules, or hit boxes, or speeds of enemies to try to nudge the player towards winning. If the content of your game is not fun, change the content, don’t change math and physics.
- failrate 8y agoDefeating 6 enemies feels cooler than defeating 2 enemies. It's similar in movies where the hero beats up a room full of goons who attack in groups no larger than 3.
- scoggs 8y agoI'm not positive but I think one of the first examples of a game accommodating players in a more extreme sense was in Crash Bandicoot during the famous boulder chase level where Crash was running toward the screen / player. If the game detected you were having trouble clearing the stage each subsequent replay would slow the boulder down a bit. The goal was to ensure the player wouldn't rage quit thus allowing for longer play sessions. If it's not the first it's at least one of the best early examples of this mechanic.
- projektir 8y agoCrash Bandicoot is one of the very few platformers that I can actually stand (got to 103% completion). It's just so very well designed to avoid annoying the player while retaining difficulty.
- Pocketknife 8y agoCrash Bandicoot has a highly entertaining development story as well. They straight up violated Sony's hardware rules, and Sony was so desperate, they let them. https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-bandicoot-part-1/ https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-ba...
- sdrothrock 8y agoI was curious about what rule they violated -- it comes up in part 5: "The first is Sony’s first viewing of Crash in person. Kelly Flock was the first Sony employee to see Crash live [ Andy NOTE: running, not on videotape ]. He was sent, I think, to see if our videotape was faked! Kelly is a smart guy, and a good game critic, but he had a lot more to worry about than just gameplay. For example, whether Crash was physically good for the hardware! Andy had given Kelly a rough idea of how we were getting so much detail through the system: spooling. Kelly asked Andy if he understood correctly that any move forward or backward in a level entailed loading in new data, a CD “hit.” Andy proudly stated that indeed it did. Kelly asked how many of these CD hits Andy thought a gamer that finished Crash would have. Andy did some thinking and off the top of his head said “Roughly 120,000.” Kelly became very silent for a moment and then quietly mumbled “the PlayStation CD drive is ‘rated’ for 70,000.” Kelly thought some more and said “let’s not mention that to anyone” and went back to get Sony on board with Crash."
- scoggs 8y agoThat entire Development Story is such a massive gem. Everyone interested in programming, game programming, and video game creation in general should fully dig into it: Making Crash Bandicoot ---------- As one of the co-creators of Crash Bandicoot, I have been (slowly) writing a long series of posts on the making of everyone’s favorite orange marsupial. You can find them all below, so enjoy. https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/video-games/making-crash/ https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/video-games/making-crash/
- rtsnt 8y agoSpoiler warning is missing here.