I talked a bit about "episodic content" in my last batch of mini-reviews (specifically concerning the Penny Arcade Adventures series). It's a business model that's really catching on in the video game world, so I thought I'd share some of my thoughts about the positives and negatives inherent to this system.
For the uninitiated, episodic content is the release of shorter, more focused games that build on each other to form an overarching narrative. If a full retail game is like a 3 hour epic movie, then episodic games are like a television miniseries. The episodic style originated on the PC, where downloading smaller games over a network and storing them on a hard drive was a feasible alternative to buying them in a store. However, the shift in console gaming to an "online all the time" model has opened that possibility for the Xbox 360 and PS3 as well.
Episodic gaming has distinct advantages over the full retail model:
It's cheaper for gamers - A retail game is usually 60 dollars. But if you broke the game into four episodes and only charged 10 bucks each, the customer saves substantially. Plus they feel like they got four games for less than the price of one. On top of all that, a gamer can use the first episode like an extended demo. If you buy the 60 dollar game and decide you hate it after a couple hours, there's not much you can do about it. But if you hate Episode One, you just don't buy any more. Now you're only out 10 bucks!
It's more flexible for developers - Again, the 60 dollar game has to be all-encompassing. It needs all the code to run the game, all the graphics drawn, all the story written, all the voice-acting finished, etc. If something is done wrong, or fans complain that some part of the game doesn't work well, all the developers can do is try harder for the sequel. With episodic gaming, the code to run the game is largely finished for the first episode. But after that, the developers can lean on that code for future installments, allowing them to focus on storytelling and presentation. Does the fanbase hate some part of the game? You can probably change or eliminate it in future episodes. Is the game super popular? Then do six episodes instead of three as you originally planned. As long as people are buying them, what's to stop the developer from cranking out more games in the series and printing money forever?
However, episodic gaming has its dark side as well. Here are some of the cons:
Narrative momentum is an issue - Braveheart is certainly an epic tale. But imagine if Braveheart was broken into 10 little episodes and you had to wait six months, a year, or maybe even longer between each one. I'm willing to bet that it would really change how people felt about the movie. Whatever suspense was built in one episode would have long dissipated by the time the next was available. It's the same way with games. One of the long running jokes in the video game industry these days is about Valve and their endless quest to avoid making Half Life Episode 3. Understand that I LOVED the first two episodes, and yet by this point I can barely remember what happened in them. That's the risk you take when you wait for years to give the conclusion to a story, no matter how interesting it might be.
Story structure needs to be altered - For episodic gaming to work, each game in the series needs to be largely self-contained. Much like a TV show, each episode needs to work on its own or else people will feel like they're being coerced into experiencing future content. But again, that changes the way a story is told. The plot needs to be written in such a way that there can be a beginning, middle, and climax to each episode (almost like vignettes). Despite that, you don't want your customers to get the impression that you're telling boring little mini-stories, so there will probably be a larger overarching plot to tie everything together. After all, that's what keeps them coming back for more. But that leads to the biggest problem...
The video game industry is not terribly stable - It seems like such a good idea at the time. "Hey, rather than doing one big game, let's do episodic games so we can keep the story going for years and years!" Great, but is your company even going to exist in a couple years? Who will be running it then? The current CEO might love your series of games, but will he work there forever. What if you get bought by a larger company, or at least get tied to a big time publisher? What I'm getting at here is, will you be able to finish what you started? I really enjoyed the first two Penny Arcade games. Solid gameplay with some new tweaks, great art style, engaging story, and tons of humor...what's not to like? But now it's been announced that there won't be any more, and I find myself two games into a series that just croaked, invested in a story that will likely never be finished. Now, I don't blame the developers (or the guys who do Penny Arcade). This is a business and they shouldn't be forced to make games that aren't selling. But it makes one wonder whether episodic gaming is a trustworthy business model in the first place. If enough people get burned halfway into a series, will they swear off these games forever? Once you buy your Mass Effect disc, you can play it beginning to end as much as you want.
I know that episodic gaming appeals to developers and publishers because it offers flexibility (as well as a way to cut retailers, renters, and the used games market out of the picture), but it will be interesting to see how it develops over the coming years.
Showing posts with label random thoughts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label random thoughts. Show all posts
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
More thoughts on game difficulty
Last time I talked about different genres of games and how the style of game relates to how challenging it should be. However, one point I left out is about what's often referred to as the "difficulty curve". The idea is that if you could make a graph with how far you've progressed in the game on the X-axis and the game's relative difficulty on the Y-axis, then ideally you should get a smooth line that starts low and ends high. Thus, the game starts off pretty easy and gets difficult at the end when you've developed your skills.
Unfortunately, a lot of games that would otherwise be pretty enjoyable are hurt by failing to follow the proper difficulty curve. One example I've recently run into is Top Spin 2, a tennis game for the Xbox 360. Top Spin 2 has a fairly robust career mode in which you create a player, assign points to various attributes to customize your playing style, train via mini-games, and select which tournaments you want to compete in during the year. It's a fun system that does a great job of hiding the fact that you're playing a glorified game of Pong.
But while the setup is well executed, I've run into a big problem. I was working through the career mode with a great deal of success, staying away from the big tournaments and focusing on training and lower-tier events to build my abilities and bankroll. Things were proceeding very well...my fledgling player had placed first in a few minor tournaments and it felt like I was getting the hang of the game. Then the computer offered me a special event, in which you play against your rival (assigned by the computer) for a big purse and a boost to your abilities. Since I was progressing nicely, I decided to accept the challenge.
However, the match didn't exactly go as planned. Much like Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, my rival apparently didn't understand that it was supposed to be an exhibition. Not only did I lose, but the computer mopped the virtual court with me. Seriously, I could hardly win a point. After retrying the match several times, I was stumped. I started to think that maybe it was scripted so that you were destined to lose this match, but a quick internet search made it clear that, in fact, winning this challenge was the key to proceeding in the game.
What really struck me was the number of angry posts about Top Spin 2, with titles like "I hate this stupid game" and "*@#$ cheating rival...". Apparently everyone runs into this match and has the same trouble I'm having. Some struggle through, eventually succeed, and go on to beat the game. Others get frustrated and quit. But here's the thing - this could all be avoided if the designers had used their brains and not laid down a challenge vastly beyond what I had faced previously. A bump in difficulty was to be expected, but going from me kicking butt on the court to not being able to win more than a handful of points in an entire match feels arbitrary and unfair. That's not a difficulty curve, it's a difficulty BRICK WALL!
It's amazing how a nice gradual difficulty curve that eases players into a game (think Rock Band) will often greatly improve their opinion of it. Conversely, Top Spin 2 got a lot of very negative feedback despite the fact that, difficulty screw-ups aside, it's a pretty solid tennis title. Developers would be wise to learn a lesson here and give careful consideration to the right way (and WRONG ways) to challenge a player.
Unfortunately, a lot of games that would otherwise be pretty enjoyable are hurt by failing to follow the proper difficulty curve. One example I've recently run into is Top Spin 2, a tennis game for the Xbox 360. Top Spin 2 has a fairly robust career mode in which you create a player, assign points to various attributes to customize your playing style, train via mini-games, and select which tournaments you want to compete in during the year. It's a fun system that does a great job of hiding the fact that you're playing a glorified game of Pong.
But while the setup is well executed, I've run into a big problem. I was working through the career mode with a great deal of success, staying away from the big tournaments and focusing on training and lower-tier events to build my abilities and bankroll. Things were proceeding very well...my fledgling player had placed first in a few minor tournaments and it felt like I was getting the hang of the game. Then the computer offered me a special event, in which you play against your rival (assigned by the computer) for a big purse and a boost to your abilities. Since I was progressing nicely, I decided to accept the challenge.
However, the match didn't exactly go as planned. Much like Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, my rival apparently didn't understand that it was supposed to be an exhibition. Not only did I lose, but the computer mopped the virtual court with me. Seriously, I could hardly win a point. After retrying the match several times, I was stumped. I started to think that maybe it was scripted so that you were destined to lose this match, but a quick internet search made it clear that, in fact, winning this challenge was the key to proceeding in the game.
What really struck me was the number of angry posts about Top Spin 2, with titles like "I hate this stupid game" and "*@#$ cheating rival...". Apparently everyone runs into this match and has the same trouble I'm having. Some struggle through, eventually succeed, and go on to beat the game. Others get frustrated and quit. But here's the thing - this could all be avoided if the designers had used their brains and not laid down a challenge vastly beyond what I had faced previously. A bump in difficulty was to be expected, but going from me kicking butt on the court to not being able to win more than a handful of points in an entire match feels arbitrary and unfair. That's not a difficulty curve, it's a difficulty BRICK WALL!
It's amazing how a nice gradual difficulty curve that eases players into a game (think Rock Band) will often greatly improve their opinion of it. Conversely, Top Spin 2 got a lot of very negative feedback despite the fact that, difficulty screw-ups aside, it's a pretty solid tennis title. Developers would be wise to learn a lesson here and give careful consideration to the right way (and WRONG ways) to challenge a player.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
How difficult should video games be?
A while back, Rachel asked a question in our joint review of Assassin's Creed 2 about whether I thought the game was too easy. I answered specifically for AC2, but I think it hints at a broader question about video game difficulty in general. Should developers make games hard to challenge the player, or easy so they're more likely to succeed?
I think that games can be separated into two broad categories: skill games and scenery games. In "skill games", the objective is to develop a set of skills that are then used by the player to overcome increasingly difficult challenges. The fun comes from seeing yourself improve, as evidenced by succeeding at a challenge that once would have been too much for you to handle. Examples of this include Tony Hawk titles, music/rhythm games like Rock Band, and fighting games like Soul Caliber.
On the other hand of the spectrum, you have "scenery games". Now, don't mistake my point here to mean that scenery games don't require skill. It's just that in these games, the FOCUS isn't so much on improving your skill as it is exploring the game world itself. Scenery games might tell a great story. They might have interesting new locales to visit. They might allow the player to explore detailed environments freely. For example, think Assassin's Creed, most RPG's, or Resident Evil 4.
The key difference between these two types of games is: What motivates the player to continue? You don't play Rock Band thinking, "I wonder what happens after I beat this super-difficult song on Expert?" because you already know the answer - NOTHING. They just give you another, more difficult song to play. Your satisfaction must be derived from the accomplishment itself. Conversely, I doubt many people think, "I hope this next mission in Assassin's Creed 2 is CRAZY difficult and I fail a bunch of times. That'd be far more interesting than seeing where the story goes."
And that brings me full circle to the topic of this post. All games should start out pretty easy (even sequels...some people might not have played the original). That gives you a chance to learn the controls and adjust to the game. But from there, skill games should have increasingly ramping difficulty culminating in very difficult challenges, while scenery games should have much milder challenges to prevent the player from getting hopelessly stuck. I think the biggest mistake that developers make (looking at you Grand Theft Auto!) is taking a scenery game and cramming it full of immensely difficult challenges. Consider a game like Resident Evil 4. Some people complained that it was too easy, but is repeated death conducive to enjoying that game? If something scary happens, forcing you to frantically fight for your life, but you succeed, then you stay immersed in the gameworld and remain primed for the next scare. But if the difficulty is dialed up so that every scary event comes complete with multiple failures and do-overs, then the game becomes a tedious grind filled with barriers to progress.
Of course, the best possible situation is variable difficulty that allows new players and veterans to choose the amount of challenge they want to face. Some games do this well, and others not so much. But barring that, I'd rather see a game like Assassin's Creed 2 be a little too easy than too difficult, since with the former I still get to see everything the game has to offer, while the latter is just a recipe for frustration.
I think that games can be separated into two broad categories: skill games and scenery games. In "skill games", the objective is to develop a set of skills that are then used by the player to overcome increasingly difficult challenges. The fun comes from seeing yourself improve, as evidenced by succeeding at a challenge that once would have been too much for you to handle. Examples of this include Tony Hawk titles, music/rhythm games like Rock Band, and fighting games like Soul Caliber.
On the other hand of the spectrum, you have "scenery games". Now, don't mistake my point here to mean that scenery games don't require skill. It's just that in these games, the FOCUS isn't so much on improving your skill as it is exploring the game world itself. Scenery games might tell a great story. They might have interesting new locales to visit. They might allow the player to explore detailed environments freely. For example, think Assassin's Creed, most RPG's, or Resident Evil 4.
The key difference between these two types of games is: What motivates the player to continue? You don't play Rock Band thinking, "I wonder what happens after I beat this super-difficult song on Expert?" because you already know the answer - NOTHING. They just give you another, more difficult song to play. Your satisfaction must be derived from the accomplishment itself. Conversely, I doubt many people think, "I hope this next mission in Assassin's Creed 2 is CRAZY difficult and I fail a bunch of times. That'd be far more interesting than seeing where the story goes."
And that brings me full circle to the topic of this post. All games should start out pretty easy (even sequels...some people might not have played the original). That gives you a chance to learn the controls and adjust to the game. But from there, skill games should have increasingly ramping difficulty culminating in very difficult challenges, while scenery games should have much milder challenges to prevent the player from getting hopelessly stuck. I think the biggest mistake that developers make (looking at you Grand Theft Auto!) is taking a scenery game and cramming it full of immensely difficult challenges. Consider a game like Resident Evil 4. Some people complained that it was too easy, but is repeated death conducive to enjoying that game? If something scary happens, forcing you to frantically fight for your life, but you succeed, then you stay immersed in the gameworld and remain primed for the next scare. But if the difficulty is dialed up so that every scary event comes complete with multiple failures and do-overs, then the game becomes a tedious grind filled with barriers to progress.
Of course, the best possible situation is variable difficulty that allows new players and veterans to choose the amount of challenge they want to face. Some games do this well, and others not so much. But barring that, I'd rather see a game like Assassin's Creed 2 be a little too easy than too difficult, since with the former I still get to see everything the game has to offer, while the latter is just a recipe for frustration.
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