How Game Designers Protect Players From Themselves | Game Maker's Toolkit

@Matt Davis, I've noticed virtually every Zelda game has this "repetitive scene" problem. Breath of the Wild has it even worse for the scenes when you enter and exit the 120 shrines. Wind Waker has this problem when you speak to the 49 Fish Men to create your sea chart, and every time you pull some treasure out of the sea which is going to be 50 rupees but they have to be super dramatic about it every time. Skyward Sword constantly re-explains treasures to you if you've saved and quit since last time you picked one up, and then there's all the times Fi repeats what an NPC just said to you. At a point, you realize exactly how tedious these repeated scenes are going to be, and how many hours you'll spend in them.

Kalu

Great video. One of the few things I disliked about Zelda: BOTW was the Korok seeds, which I think fall into this category. As you're exploring, you'll notice them nearby very frequently, and it would feel stupid just to walk past without collecting them. But the actual task you have to complete (with some cool exceptions) and the little cutscene afterwards is obvious, tedious and repetitive. I also feel like this might be a good way to approach the debate about whether combat in games should be skippable / whether players should be able to skip to any part of a game. Clearly the designers of most games believe that players will have the best experience by playing everything, in the intended order - but this won't be the case for quite everybody. Maybe it should just be about providing the right incentives.

Thanks for sharing that Tomasz - that’s interesting that it took so long to come in, as the skill shot system feels like such a core and essential part of Bullstorm

Game Maker's Toolkit

I've been re-playing Zelda games recently and I've noticed something about why I disliked games like Wind Waker. In the games I played as a kid, the best way to play was to avoid progressing the plot until you had exhaustively searched every other nook and cranny available to you. However, as games got larger worlds, exploring everything got more tedious. Though you'll be in your best shape in Wind Waker if you always go explore, it's a much more fun game if you just do what they tell you to all the time and save your exploration for when you have to find the Triforce pieces at the end. It's been difficult for me to transition to these games where you are actually supposed to advance the plot rather than avoiding it. But perhaps that's how newer players play?

Kalu

Seeing how you used a clip from Bulletstorm, a game I worked on, I feel obliged to comment. What you are talking about in the beginning was exactly one of the core design problems of the game that plagued it almost all the way throughout the production. After some failed starts we quite quickly realized the core gameplay of kicking and pulling enemies around and shooting at them in flight or pushing them into environmental hazards was cool and that's what we were looking for. Unfortunately whenever we got someone new to play the game, they were always starting by playing it like a Modern Warfare clone - they would keep their distance and keep carefully shooting with the basic rifle. It took a lot of nagging "move closer", "kick them" etc. before they "got" the game and started enjoying it. A lot of stuff was tried to get players to play it right, but not a lot worked. We've finally settled on the game judging your kills for style and awarding points for that, however this only created another problem "what are those points for?". This was solved finally by using those points to trade for weapons and ammo, but this has been done really late in the development process and this caused a bunch of other problems - among them if player didn't perform those trick kills, they wouldn't get the cool weapons and ammo, which would probably make them play even more conservatively. So at least I was never really happy with that part of the solution.

So I feel like the common failure mode here is incoherent design, using the definition from <a href="https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JamesMargaris/20160204/263103/On_Incoherent_Game_Systems.php" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JamesMargaris/20160204/263103/On_Incoherent_Game_Systems.php</a> of mechanics that conflict in what player behavior they encourage. That's what'll happen if you slap on a mechanic to encourage a specific player behavior without looking at why players are behaving that way. For the XCOM example, players were being cautious because that's what's encouraged by features like permadeath. Slapping turn limits on top of that now creates incoherent design, with one mechanic pressuring players to be careful and another pressuring them to be quick. I would find that incredibly frustrating as a player. The Mark of the Ninja example seems like a much better approach - the richness of the combat was encouraging direct engagement, but instead of adding something on top that punishes you for doing what the game encourages you to do, they took away what was encouraging the problematic behavior. No incoherent design, no frustration.

Doctor Professor

Great video! Made me think of one of the older Need for Speed games (Underground or Underground 2 maybe?) that rewarded you for "avoided accidents" with nitrous refills. And in Duskers you could go for a very patient and methodical approach, but if you spend too long on a vessel, asteroids or radiation leaks can make things unpleasant for you, and your drones' equipment might fail if you use them too much (which also encourages yout to mix up the kinds of gear you use, varying your playstyle a bit).

Parachuting Turtle

You are at your best when you explore an idea and dissect it. Very interesting video, although I would have liked more examples. I think that this is a topic that deserves another chapter, may be talking about subtle mechanics to nudge the player. I hate timers and scores that rate the player, by the way.

Manuel Alcoba

Yeah, I felt the same about Pikmin's time limit. The whole game I was worried I wouldn't make it, and I feel bad for players who might have gotten all the way to the end only to fail. This is why most games with time limits have a sort of "Time Extended" mechanic where checkpoints give you more time, which makes sure you're on track and not destined for failure. I really like the sense of urgency in Star Fox 2. It doesn't rely on a timer, but rather the march of enemies toward Corneria and its damage meter. Mark also talked about a time limit benefitting The Swindle. Personally, I will always play a game in the way that makes it feel like I'm doing a good job at it. In some games that means meticulously checking every nook and cranny for secret stuff and avoiding progressing on the quest. This ruins some games that actually expect you to try to progress, such as Wind Waker where most of the islands on the great sea are inaccessible until you get your endgame items, so the best policy is to do what the game says and hurry off to your next objective, even though Zelda games have taught me that the optimal strategy is to explore and gather all possible equipment before continuing with the plot. Breath of the Wild fixes this problem wonderfully by giving out all the main items at the start so the whole world is accessible the first time you encounter it, save for combat encounters you don't have strong enough weapons to complete. For XCOM they could have fixed their problem by giving out medals for completing the mission in less turns. They could even add variations in the story depending on how long you took to show the consequences of playing slow and give an alternate ending to players who get all gold medal times. Star Fox 64 is a game that really encouraged a specific kind of gameplay. You can get medals on every stage by defeating the enemies in groups to maximize your score multiplier.

Kalu

Loved this! Interesting topic. Make me think of Pikmin and Pikmin 2 and the difference the time limit made to the game. I didn’t enjoy it hanging over me in the first game, but the sequel felt aimless, with no real urgency.

Oh hey, this is going to be very interesting :V

You seem to be able to think of topics I want to see discussed better than I can myself. Can't wait to watch this later on!