I forgot to write a few things in my last post, instead giving into pretentious waffling. I'll list them down best I can:
-More replayability means more outcomes, which means that there's more that the player affects. This is what I mean by the richness of the interactivity, there's true agency. If there's more agency, then it means that there is more for the player to explore, and a larger space for the player to learn.
-This also means that there is more to be understood for the system that underlies the game. If the game is mastered quickly, the challenge is simple, there is nothing for the gamer with the hungry intellect and imagination. On the other hand, a challenge that can be played over and over is symptomatic of a more mentally challenging game-world.
Hopefully, I'm stepping away from vagueries with this post; but it's early in the morning (at least for a 20 year old), so I can't make promises.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Why Agency Matters
Let me start this post with an excerpt from Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities:
Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not kow he had; the foreignness of what you no longer were or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.
Marco enters a city; he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man's place, if he had stopped in time, long ago; or if, long ago, at a crossroads, instaed of taking one road he had taken the opposite one, and after long wanering he had come to be in the place of that man in that square. By now, from that real or hypothetical past of his, he is excluded, he cannot stop; he must go on to another city, where another of his pasts awaits him, or something perhaps that had been a possible future of his and is now someone else's present. Futures not achieved are only banches of the past: dead branches.
...And Marco's answer was: "Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering much he has not had and will never have."
I'll disepense with rhetorical questions and get right into what the point of that long quote is. There's a large emphasis on the notion of "replayability" in a game. Allow more characters, more plots, more bonuses, something that accomodates more outcomes? These seem like things that are parts of replayability, or may boost it in some sense, but none get to the heart of how to get replayability and why it matters so much.
The first obvious thing is that we can enjoy a game longer if its replayable. I don't think this is the real importance behind replayability though: a really long single-player campaign or RPG can start to get quite repetitive if it goes on too long, it gets tedious. If I have to play 50 missions in an RTS campaign, I'll probably get sick of it, I'm doing the same thing over and over again. When the single player mode gets really long, the same tasks repeat themselves over again, and this really is no different than replaying the same challenge, and one that you'll eventually get sick of. If that's the case, then should we use that as the basis for replay value? It seems more likely that we're just being forced by the overarching "plot" (should we be interested, or feel the compulsion to complete the plot set out by the designers) to replay the game as many times as it sees fit.
So let's forget plot for the moment. I get sick of an RPG once I've fought too many turn-based battles, sick of a real-time strategy campaign once I've played enough missions. It's the same challenge repackaged multiple times for all intents and purposes. I'll now focus on games like Civilization, in addition to skirmish modes in RTS games, fight games, sports games, etc. These seem to have differing levels of replayability, and they must have a reason for why that is. I've written about it before; we start a game not knowing anything about it, and understand it a little better each time we play it. The result is playing to better understand a paradigm each time, and gaining new satisfactions as it goes on. That's why long after one's forgotten their copy of Grand Theft Auto, they may still be playing games of StarCraft over the internet, continuing to come up with new strategies. It doesn't take long to get fully acquainted with all the ways to fight in GTA, and missions will probably stop being amusing once the fighting ceases to be any kind of a fresh challenge. StarCraft, on the other hand, allows for much more innovation in how to overcome the opponent, there are many ways a game can go and many things to try. Games like Civilization seem to take this richness to an entirely new level. A dynamic system is there for a player to explore. The opposite of this would be a puzzle game like Myst, once you've solved all of the puzzles, there's no way to challenge yourself in replaying the game. Zero replayability.
How long we can enjoy a game is important, but what's also important is that replayability is very strong indicator of richness in a game. If it's replayable, then there's something to be done that wasn't done last time. If there are that many possibilities, then there is that much more in the game. Replayability means a game with more to explore, whether it's a new strategy, a unique level, a specific chain of events, or anything else that's new to the player. In real life, people continue to study music, science, art, philosophy, etc. because there are constantly new surprises, and the richness of these endeavors helps to create great minds.
My pomp aside, I mean to say a more daring and wishy-washy concept. Art holds in it the mysteries of life, of the self, of tradition, of the future and past, etc. These are all mysteries. Mystery and the unknown seem to define art (I say all of this taking myself with a grain of salt), and the mysteries of the unknown seem to be what are both beautiful and haunting about sights and senses that evoke emotion. The haunting concept brought forth by Italo Calvino about the infinite past and future seem to be ahead of his time in describing who we are and how we are defined. The ability to change how we experience a world and come to understand it with each runthrough is a powerful one that does justice to the concept that more exists in what we can't see than what's observable. The game world needs to be overwhelmed with possibilities in order to maintain a rich flavor, one that gives the player an ability to feel wonderment when they travel through it.
Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not kow he had; the foreignness of what you no longer were or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.
Marco enters a city; he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man's place, if he had stopped in time, long ago; or if, long ago, at a crossroads, instaed of taking one road he had taken the opposite one, and after long wanering he had come to be in the place of that man in that square. By now, from that real or hypothetical past of his, he is excluded, he cannot stop; he must go on to another city, where another of his pasts awaits him, or something perhaps that had been a possible future of his and is now someone else's present. Futures not achieved are only banches of the past: dead branches.
...And Marco's answer was: "Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering much he has not had and will never have."
I'll disepense with rhetorical questions and get right into what the point of that long quote is. There's a large emphasis on the notion of "replayability" in a game. Allow more characters, more plots, more bonuses, something that accomodates more outcomes? These seem like things that are parts of replayability, or may boost it in some sense, but none get to the heart of how to get replayability and why it matters so much.
The first obvious thing is that we can enjoy a game longer if its replayable. I don't think this is the real importance behind replayability though: a really long single-player campaign or RPG can start to get quite repetitive if it goes on too long, it gets tedious. If I have to play 50 missions in an RTS campaign, I'll probably get sick of it, I'm doing the same thing over and over again. When the single player mode gets really long, the same tasks repeat themselves over again, and this really is no different than replaying the same challenge, and one that you'll eventually get sick of. If that's the case, then should we use that as the basis for replay value? It seems more likely that we're just being forced by the overarching "plot" (should we be interested, or feel the compulsion to complete the plot set out by the designers) to replay the game as many times as it sees fit.
So let's forget plot for the moment. I get sick of an RPG once I've fought too many turn-based battles, sick of a real-time strategy campaign once I've played enough missions. It's the same challenge repackaged multiple times for all intents and purposes. I'll now focus on games like Civilization, in addition to skirmish modes in RTS games, fight games, sports games, etc. These seem to have differing levels of replayability, and they must have a reason for why that is. I've written about it before; we start a game not knowing anything about it, and understand it a little better each time we play it. The result is playing to better understand a paradigm each time, and gaining new satisfactions as it goes on. That's why long after one's forgotten their copy of Grand Theft Auto, they may still be playing games of StarCraft over the internet, continuing to come up with new strategies. It doesn't take long to get fully acquainted with all the ways to fight in GTA, and missions will probably stop being amusing once the fighting ceases to be any kind of a fresh challenge. StarCraft, on the other hand, allows for much more innovation in how to overcome the opponent, there are many ways a game can go and many things to try. Games like Civilization seem to take this richness to an entirely new level. A dynamic system is there for a player to explore. The opposite of this would be a puzzle game like Myst, once you've solved all of the puzzles, there's no way to challenge yourself in replaying the game. Zero replayability.
How long we can enjoy a game is important, but what's also important is that replayability is very strong indicator of richness in a game. If it's replayable, then there's something to be done that wasn't done last time. If there are that many possibilities, then there is that much more in the game. Replayability means a game with more to explore, whether it's a new strategy, a unique level, a specific chain of events, or anything else that's new to the player. In real life, people continue to study music, science, art, philosophy, etc. because there are constantly new surprises, and the richness of these endeavors helps to create great minds.
My pomp aside, I mean to say a more daring and wishy-washy concept. Art holds in it the mysteries of life, of the self, of tradition, of the future and past, etc. These are all mysteries. Mystery and the unknown seem to define art (I say all of this taking myself with a grain of salt), and the mysteries of the unknown seem to be what are both beautiful and haunting about sights and senses that evoke emotion. The haunting concept brought forth by Italo Calvino about the infinite past and future seem to be ahead of his time in describing who we are and how we are defined. The ability to change how we experience a world and come to understand it with each runthrough is a powerful one that does justice to the concept that more exists in what we can't see than what's observable. The game world needs to be overwhelmed with possibilities in order to maintain a rich flavor, one that gives the player an ability to feel wonderment when they travel through it.
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