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There's a fantastic series on YouTube that examines some of these types of game and level design elements in a similarly academic way. The episode on Half-Life

by krebby 11y ago

There's a fantastic series on YouTube that examines some of these types of game and level design elements in a similarly academic way. The episode on Half-Life 2's Invisible Tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMggqenxuZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMggqenxuZc) is particularly well done.

barrkel 11y ago
One word: overdesigned. One of the reasons I disliked HL2 so much was because my experience of it was so controlled and funneled. I felt like the designers removed my agency, and tried to ensure that there was one right way to solve a problem, to the point of punishing me [1], or worse, main-routing[2] me when I sought an alternative route. [1] One location early on requires you to break into a tunnel to come up behind and flank a guard shooting down at you with a mounted gun behind a screen. The problem is that the fact that a flanking tunnel exists means that the designers had no reason to make him possible to hit; it is actually possible to kill him head on, but it's difficult, and you will almost certainly take a lot of damage in the process (the punishment). The tunnel is just too damn convenient though, and breaks the suspension of disbelief; it's too obviously designed in. [2] I invented the word main-routing to describe a situation where, when you're exploring shady nooks that you spot out of the corner of your eye, they look like they go somewhere interesting, so you go back to the main route to find out what the main stream does. But instead it dead-ends, and in fact that shady little corner you were exploring was the only way forward; what you thought was a secret shortcut was just the main route again, in a different guise. This is a double-whammy: not only does it break suspension of disbelief again, but it also punishes exploration. It teaches you that nooks are either dead ends that are pointless to explore, or that the main route will dead-end itself and you'll be forced to explore the nook. Either way, you have no choice in the matter, so you're better off sticking to the main route until it forces you to explore. I really did not enjoy HL2. It was a cripplingly disappointing experience, especially after having played Deus Ex, which greatly increased my expectations from a game. Going back to playing a mute scientist with an alleged PhD yet whose only mechanism of interacting with the world is violence was like going back to the 90s.
- ehmmm 11y ago
  Dead ends are there for a reason to create a sense of a larger world. They are usually blocked by some logical obstacle, and rarely actually lead to a short alternate area, but not an alternate path. Half-Life is linear by design, surely you must agree that a linear path that tries to create a bigger world is better than one without. Those paths perhaps broke the illusion for you, but at least there was some illusion and without the paths there would be none. I agree with the first paragraph, the first game was better since it didn't constantly trap you in rooms, where you had to wait for dialogue to play out, which were just glorified cut-scenes. For example, in the first game if a friendly character tried to convey some dialogue you could ignore/kill/avoid him, but in the second game you can only wait.
  - Narishma 11y ago
    There were plenty of situations in the first game where you had to wait for a character to finish his dialog and open a door or something so you can progress.
- m_mueller 11y ago
  This may be subjective but I found Episode 1/2 much more compelling. This you try those as well?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- kibwen 11y ago
  This is something to keep in mind when praising games that manage to teach in-game concepts without floating text or explicit instruction. Games with familiar mechanics benefit from cultural context. To use an example from the OP: running. Those of us who grew up with Super Mario Bros. will be immediately familiar with the mechanic of a "run button" that exists as a modifier key to the movement buttons, but without context this is a remarkably undiscoverable concept. This notion also penalizes games that don't introduce fundamental new mechanics over time, and instead give the player all their tools from the start of the game. Super Metroid gets away with using animal NPCs to occasionally demonstrate non-intuitive mechanics because they space these encounters out instead of front-loading them all into the player's face the moment they get off the ship. Contrast Dark Souls, which I've seen criticized because of its use of fourth-wall-breaking how-to-play-the-game text in its opening level. But, firstly, Dark Souls is not a game that particularly cares about holding your hand (to put it mildly), and secondly its basic mechanics are more complex than Super Metroid's (though its specific choice of controls is admittedly god-awful). This is a recognition of the idea that it is more fun to actually play the game and exercise the controls than to waste your time guessing at which unknown concepts happened to be mapped to which controller buttons.
  - Fr0styMatt8 11y ago
    I think you're absolutely right. This touches on the de-emphasis of game mechanics in modern games in favor of story-telling (see 'The Order' as an extreme example of this -- I'm not saying this to criticize the game, I actually really enjoyed it for what it was). I think games like Dark Souls strike a chord with people BECAUSE they have great mechanics that are fun in themselves without the need for story. For an EXTREME example of this, look at Flappy Bird. That game was pure mechanics. I'd also put Angry Birds in there as a game with very strong mechanics (with some framing elements). I think Doom is another game that did this wonderfully - to me at least, it plays very much like an arcade game. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I don't think it's the hand-holding per-se that presents a problem. I think what happens is that many games with very weak mechanics happen to have a lot of hand-holding, which leads us to blame the excessive hand-holding when it's just that the gamePLAY (emphasis on PLAY) was weak. That's why I think it works fine for Dark Souls to have fourth-wall breaking text telling you how to play. The mechanics are strong enough that even when you're told what to do, actually doing it is a fun and playful challenge. When I say 'play' what I specifically mean is - freedom to experiment within the game's mechanics to find a solution or defeat an obstacle. For that to work, the game has to provide enough mechanics and enough agency for the player to be able to explore them. When I use the word 'mechanics', I mean anything that can be interactively explored in the game. So, a game's level design can provide mechanics. The way items or weapons work might provide mechanics, etc. A game might have really boring levels but interesting enemies. It might have no enemies and a really interesting world (Myst, for example). A game can make up for a lack of agency in one area (eg- a racing game set on real-world tracks) by providing lots of agency in another area (an interesting AI system that gives the player lots of ways to manipulate the AI in order to win). The other factor with games like Dark Souls that does go back to hand-holding is that when you play them, you actually feel like you're becoming more skilled as playing the game, as opposed to just being really good at following instructions, or increasing some stat which basically amounts to the game artificially making things easier for you (I'm not saying this as a criticism, just as a point of difference to consider).

by krebby 11y ago

barrkel 11y ago

One word: overdesigned. One of the reasons I disliked HL2 so much was because my experience of it was so controlled and funneled. I felt like the designers removed my agency, and tried to ensure that there was one right way to solve a problem, to the point of punishing me [1], or worse, main-routing[2] me when I sought an alternative route. [1] One location early on requires you to break into a tunnel to come up behind and flank a guard shooting down at you with a mounted gun behind a screen. The problem is that the fact that a flanking tunnel exists means that the designers had no reason to make him possible to hit; it is actually possible to kill him head on, but it's difficult, and you will almost certainly take a lot of damage in the process (the punishment). The tunnel is just too damn convenient though, and breaks the suspension of disbelief; it's too obviously designed in. [2] I invented the word main-routing to describe a situation where, when you're exploring shady nooks that you spot out of the corner of your eye, they look like they go somewhere interesting, so you go back to the main route to find out what the main stream does. But instead it dead-ends, and in fact that shady little corner you were exploring was the only way forward; what you thought was a secret shortcut was just the main route again, in a different guise. This is a double-whammy: not only does it break suspension of disbelief again, but it also punishes exploration. It teaches you that nooks are either dead ends that are pointless to explore, or that the main route will dead-end itself and you'll be forced to explore the nook. Either way, you have no choice in the matter, so you're better off sticking to the main route until it forces you to explore. I really did not enjoy HL2. It was a cripplingly disappointing experience, especially after having played Deus Ex, which greatly increased my expectations from a game. Going back to playing a mute scientist with an alleged PhD yet whose only mechanism of interacting with the world is violence was like going back to the 90s.

ehmmm 11y ago
Dead ends are there for a reason to create a sense of a larger world. They are usually blocked by some logical obstacle, and rarely actually lead to a short alternate area, but not an alternate path. Half-Life is linear by design, surely you must agree that a linear path that tries to create a bigger world is better than one without. Those paths perhaps broke the illusion for you, but at least there was some illusion and without the paths there would be none. I agree with the first paragraph, the first game was better since it didn't constantly trap you in rooms, where you had to wait for dialogue to play out, which were just glorified cut-scenes. For example, in the first game if a friendly character tried to convey some dialogue you could ignore/kill/avoid him, but in the second game you can only wait.
- Narishma 11y ago
  There were plenty of situations in the first game where you had to wait for a character to finish his dialog and open a door or something so you can progress.
m_mueller 11y ago
This may be subjective but I found Episode 1/2 much more compelling. This you try those as well?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

kibwen 11y ago
This is something to keep in mind when praising games that manage to teach in-game concepts without floating text or explicit instruction. Games with familiar mechanics benefit from cultural context. To use an example from the OP: running. Those of us who grew up with Super Mario Bros. will be immediately familiar with the mechanic of a "run button" that exists as a modifier key to the movement buttons, but without context this is a remarkably undiscoverable concept. This notion also penalizes games that don't introduce fundamental new mechanics over time, and instead give the player all their tools from the start of the game. Super Metroid gets away with using animal NPCs to occasionally demonstrate non-intuitive mechanics because they space these encounters out instead of front-loading them all into the player's face the moment they get off the ship. Contrast Dark Souls, which I've seen criticized because of its use of fourth-wall-breaking how-to-play-the-game text in its opening level. But, firstly, Dark Souls is not a game that particularly cares about holding your hand (to put it mildly), and secondly its basic mechanics are more complex than Super Metroid's (though its specific choice of controls is admittedly god-awful). This is a recognition of the idea that it is more fun to actually play the game and exercise the controls than to waste your time guessing at which unknown concepts happened to be mapped to which controller buttons.
- Fr0styMatt8 11y ago
  I think you're absolutely right. This touches on the de-emphasis of game mechanics in modern games in favor of story-telling (see 'The Order' as an extreme example of this -- I'm not saying this to criticize the game, I actually really enjoyed it for what it was). I think games like Dark Souls strike a chord with people BECAUSE they have great mechanics that are fun in themselves without the need for story. For an EXTREME example of this, look at Flappy Bird. That game was pure mechanics. I'd also put Angry Birds in there as a game with very strong mechanics (with some framing elements). I think Doom is another game that did this wonderfully - to me at least, it plays very much like an arcade game. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I don't think it's the hand-holding per-se that presents a problem. I think what happens is that many games with very weak mechanics happen to have a lot of hand-holding, which leads us to blame the excessive hand-holding when it's just that the gamePLAY (emphasis on PLAY) was weak. That's why I think it works fine for Dark Souls to have fourth-wall breaking text telling you how to play. The mechanics are strong enough that even when you're told what to do, actually doing it is a fun and playful challenge. When I say 'play' what I specifically mean is - freedom to experiment within the game's mechanics to find a solution or defeat an obstacle. For that to work, the game has to provide enough mechanics and enough agency for the player to be able to explore them. When I use the word 'mechanics', I mean anything that can be interactively explored in the game. So, a game's level design can provide mechanics. The way items or weapons work might provide mechanics, etc. A game might have really boring levels but interesting enemies. It might have no enemies and a really interesting world (Myst, for example). A game can make up for a lack of agency in one area (eg- a racing game set on real-world tracks) by providing lots of agency in another area (an interesting AI system that gives the player lots of ways to manipulate the AI in order to win). The other factor with games like Dark Souls that does go back to hand-holding is that when you play them, you actually feel like you're becoming more skilled as playing the game, as opposed to just being really good at following instructions, or increasing some stat which basically amounts to the game artificially making things easier for you (I'm not saying this as a criticism, just as a point of difference to consider).