Endgames - Creating Goals in Sandboxes

It's a new year, and many of us resolve to accomplish some goals before it comes to a close. Me? I intend to blog more, among other things. Anyway, goals were sort of on my mind, and I was thinking about games that lacked a specific set of goals for the player.

Most games throughout history have a set of goals built into the rules. There are specific win conditions outlined when players start the game so they always know the goals they are pursuing. It could be argued these win conditions in the rules are a defining characteristic of "games" as opposed to "play." Rescue the princess, kill the boss, survive as long as possible to get a high score; these are all driving forces in games. They give the game purpose and encourage the player to continue. With the introduction of in-game achievements, there are also additional sub-goals that players can choose to pursue for additional challenge or bragging rights.

Are these win conditions or specific goals necessary for a successful game, though? The Sims is a game in which the player is never given any explicit goals, and yet it is the best selling PC game to date. Minecraft is another, more recent, example of a true "sandbox" type game that lacks any explicit goals for the player. It has sold over 900,000 copies despite just recently entering beta.

I've found it somewhat disturbing that some people don't "get" games like Minecraft. They don't see the point to it since there are no explicit goals. They call it a "toy" and not a "game." This seems to denote a lack of creativity on the part of the player.

I find games without set goals invigorating because they allow me to set my own goals and tell my own stories in them. In Minecraft, for example, I have enforced my own additional rules to set my own goals for the game. I play on Hard, in which dangerous monsters appear frequently at night, and I restart the game, deleting that particular world and all my progress there, if I happen to be killed. By adding these rules to those provided with the game, I have created a new game, one of survival. My first goal was to survive a night. With that accomplished, my new goal was to dig deep enough to mine diamond without dying. After the Halloween update, I gave myself the new goal of making it to the Nether world and back without dying. Once I met all these goals, I felt a sense of accomplishment even though the game gave me no recognition for them.

Construction in Minecraft has been compared to building with Lego blocks several times, and I think the analogy is apt on many levels. Lego blocks have very few inherent rules; in fact, the only real "rules" to Legos are the ways in which they can be physically attached. Most sets came with a booklet detailing steps to build the predefined structure (castle, pirate ship, etc.) in the set. I wonder now what the hell people did with their Legos once these structures were built? That set was "beaten," Achievement Unlocked. Were they simple placed on a shelf to be admired? I certainly hope not! What a waste that would be! Once the castle was built, the game began!

I often staged grand battles and told elaborate stories with my Legos. I made "games" with the "toys" provided to me with the Lego blocks by adding some rules, a bit of narrative. I worry sometimes that players have begun to see achievements and in-game goals as a crutch. These goals define the game experience, but they also limit it if the player is unwilling or, Heaven forbid, unable to explore beyond them.

Perhaps there is a happy medium. Perhaps the dedicated sandboxes of The Sims and Minecraft can woo some players with achievements. "Your Sim has advanced to the end of a career path! Congrats!" "You dug to the bottom of the map! Yippee!" It's not my cup of tea, but if it turns more players to sandbox games which still offer them the opportunity to create their own goals, it may be worth a shot.

Murder Simulators

My obsession with roguelikes (head on over to Wikipedia now if you aren't familiar with roguelikes) is pretty well known among my friends at Full Sail. In fact, my first post in this blog was about them, and I'll probably have another post singing their praises later (I still haven't played Shiren the Wanderer on the Wii, but it's on my list).

Given this, one of my friends (Hi, Josh!) sent me a link to an article about a roguelike in which you play a serial killer. After reading the article and watching the video, I had mixed feelings.

First and foremost, I reacted as a fan of roguelikes and as a designer. I was absolutely blown away by the demo! It looks like it's got a lot of depth, the tiles are minimalistic but readable, and the concept is interesting. I assume the psychological backgrounds and any status conditions will affect gameplay, the inventory system was robust but not complicated, and the ability to leave (and, again, I assume) remove evidence could create a lot of interesting gameplay situations.

However, this is a game that is impossible to analyze purely in a cold, dispassionate way. There's a lot going on here. The way it's presented in the demo and article, it's disturbing at best. "Offensive" or "disgusting" are probably more likely adjectives.

My second reaction to the game was that of worry. I was worried it was being specifically made to be controversial. A few elements in particular seemed needlessly inflammatory. The choice of Aphex Twin's "Come to Daddy" for the theme song seems odd as it sets an unfortunate tone for the game. Also, the preset characters using names of infamous serial killers is a bit baffling. There are those that will interpret this inclusion as a glorification of serial killers.

In the original thread in which the game was presented, the designer claims this is not his intention. He was inspired to create the game by the Dexter, the TV show about a serial killer with a heart of gold. He also mentions other possible directions to take the game, many of which are quite interesting. For example, the player could be cast as a mob hitman, or a vigilante cop, or a nonviolent cat-burglar. Unfortunately, the demo does not highlight these possibilities and portrays the player as a mere psychopath.

It's easy to make a game that's offensive and disgusting if that's your goal. It's easy to make ridiculous violence just for the sake of shock value. Making a game offensive and disgusting in order to create controversy and using that controversy as a marketing tool seems lazy. It's uninspired.

Making a game that is disturbing because it challenges the players' rationalizations of their actions is much more difficult. It will probably still be controversial, sure, but that's often a side effect of a good design that makes the player think.

This game toes the fine line between being ridiculously shocking and being merely disturbing. I am cautiously optimistic after reading the designer's original post that he's on the right track. I hope the creator of this game agrees with me that following in Postal 2's footsteps would be a waste of its potential.

Unexpected Inspiration

Well, okay, so I haven't been writing daily, but I have stuck to my gaming fast. It has proven to be successful in getting me to find inspiration from other sources. I've been listening to podcasts, reading more about design, reading a lot of TV Tropes. That's all general stuff. I also watched an interesting documentary about Nazis and the occult, mainly as research for a game I'd been designing.

Today I ran across a magazine regarding upscale garden design. The photographs grabbed me immediately, but I had time to actually read it cover to cover. The articles explained the planning that went into the layout of the garden, the selection of what would be planted, the statues and stones placed for decoration. The synergistic interplay of all the elements got me thinking of parallels in level design. Many of the same principles could be used. Additionally, I've been doing a lot of research into horror lately. The juxtaposition of a beautiful, peaceful garden environment and something sinister struck me as interesting and worth looking into.

I realized too that magazines are a spectacular source for inspiration, especially ones with the high quality photos that this one had. As I mentioned, I've been doing a lot of reading lately, but the images in the magazine sparked my creativity much more than simply text. I'll have to start looking for more images and magazines to help with this process. Until then, I believe I'll start poking around in UDK or Source SDK and see what I can learn. I've always been very interested in level design specifically, as I think it offers the ability to make a lot of very subtle choices to influence the player's experience.

Other Plans

Short post tonight, as I have some pressing matters that will be occupying my time.

Some interesting stuff got announced this week. I'm very intrigued by the news that Clint Hocking is moving to LucasArts. Also, Valve may be creating a DotA game. And the new Bioshock trailer got released today. It has a ... different setting than the first two. We also get to look forward to the next Double Fine game, Costume Quest, a "Halloween-themed RPG!"

Okay, gotta go do other stuff. I'll write more tomorrow, promise!

Overwhelming Options

Today I got up, I went to work, I came home. I sat in front of my computer and caught up on my social sites and daily news sites. Then, I was at a bit of a loss at what to do next.

I had given up playing video games for the next month in an effort to force myself to do other things, but I hadn't really thought about what I'd be doing instead of gaming. I mean, I have general plans of what I'd like to accomplish, but the simple act of filling all my free time was a bit overwhelming.

I checked my Firefox bookmarks to see if anything else online looked interesting. I had gotten into the habit of bookmarking articles that looked interesting but were too long to digest at that moment. It was somewhat lazy, but at least I had a record of them to come back to when I had a chance.

I picked Ernest Adams' No Twinkie Database of bad game design choices to check out. I actually began to explore his site a little more, and found his list of quotes for designers to be inspirational. I also stumbled across a link to download an old design document template created by Chris Taylor, designer of Total Annihilation and (one of my personal favorites) Dungeon Siege. The template is exhaustive but easy to use with many comments from Taylor explaining the entries.

In all, not a bad haul for the first evening. This week I'll use the template to help flesh out some of the game ideas I've had bouncing around in my head for a while.

The ZGXP (Part 10 - Comics and Documents)

The past week was relatively calm for me at ZeeGee Games. Another of the Reader apps I've been working on went live. This one's Looking for Group, a webcomic loosely based on World of Warcraft. The final comic I had been working on should be released in the App Store sometime this week.

Other than that, the workload has been mostly writing and tidying up production documentation. I also wrote up a couple drafts of our new design procedures. Even better, I've started consulting on the design for our kid-friendly Flash virtual world My Tiny Planets. I hadn't been working on that project directly before so I've had a bit of catching up to do, but I'm eager to help expand and improve that game. I'll also be trying to wrap up the rest of the issues for Priest and start closing down that project.

Not a whole lot to report for now. I'll have another design related post (or perhaps a review, I haven't decided) up on Wednesday.

Limbo Fools Me Twice

So I played through Limbo this past weekend. Although the minimalistic style and abrupt, enigmatic ending are sure to get a lot of press, but it's a solid puzzle/platformer at its core. I'd highly recommend it to fans of Portal and Braid.

In this post I wanted to focus on the design choices made in one particular puzzle that struck me as noteworthy. As I'll be discussing my play experience there and how I got around it, I suppose this post contains mild spoilers. If you don't want to hear how to solve one of the many puzzles, be warned.

Relatively early in the game, I came across a huge press on the ceiling and an obvious button on the floor beneath it. I thought, "Okay, yeah, gotta jump over the button to avoid being smashed," and ran to do so. As soon as I got under the press, however, the floor before the button clicked and triggered the trap, smashing me into jelly. "Okay, that's weird." It was a subversion of common platformer gameplay, but I quickly surmised I'd have to jump onto the button and then hop over the rest of the floor.

It worked and I moved on until the same setup immediately followed. Without breaking stride, I leapt onto the button... which then triggered the trap and crushed me again. This one worked as initially expected.

I laughed out loud at how beautiful it was. My expectations had been dashed twice in quick succession. If the first trap had worked like it does 99.9% of the time in other platformers, I would have blown past it and been killed if the rules were inverted on the second. I probably would've been annoyed with the inexplicable change of rules too.

As it stood, however, I died twice. The first time I died because the trap was different from my prior gaming experiences. I died the second time because I had thrown out all of my previous experience due to a single anomaly. And I wasn't annoyed with either death. I was along for the ride. The game was carefully designed to take advantage of gamers' instincts and tweak them to keep things fresh and it did a great job of it in this case.

Games like Limbo (and Braid and Eversion) do a great job of taking the 2D platformers we grew up with and making them mature by manipulating the player's expectations of the gameplay. It doesn't take long for the player to be retrained, though. Eversion does a great job of turning a bright, cheerful 2D platformer into an absolutely terrifying "don't play this with the lights out" experience. However, once the player figures out the "scare" moments, they quickly become routine and (some) of the dread wears off. The double inversion of the trap's triggers in Limbo are a great example of keeping the player on their toes.