How Many Hotspots?

[CaptainD]

This is an issue we're currently looking at with the Journey of Iesir development - in a typical location, how many hotspots do you need to make the game feel immersive without becoming over fussy?  A bare location with nothing to do is boring, but having hundreds of things to click on can feel overwhelming and frustrating, particualrly when the action is not important to progressing the storyline or solving puzzles.

So... how many hotspots do you think are a good baseline?  I'm tending to think 6-10 is a reasonable figure, but I'd be interested in everyone else's thoughts (especially as I'll be writing all the interactions for them, so I hope no-one suggests 20+ per location!  )

[ThreeOhFour]

I try to make a hotspot usable if I can do so in a way that adds to the game world.

Looking at every stone, blade of grass, shrub and cloud isn't going to tell the player any more about the game world than they can see with their eyes - unless the player character is a botanist or needs to solve puzzles with these things. If you can flesh out your world with a hotspot, make it interactable, if not, don't bother. How many per room depends on the content of each background, really!

[Radiant]

It depends heavily (1) on whether your interface has mouseover naming, (2) your art style, and (3) the room in question.

Generally I'd expect 2-5 hotspots in an empty-ish room, like a generic outdoors location, and 10-20 in a location with lots of little details, such as a laboratory.

[CaptainD]

I should probably mention that we're using a multi-level interaction system similar to that in Jolly Rover - i.e. the cursor will indicate whether anything new can be gleaned by looking / interacting with an object a second, third or whatever time.

My main concern is the player spending too much time on things that aren't actually going to achieve anything useful, but with the game world still feeilng fully fleshed out.

Thanks for your comments so far, they've been helpful.  8)

[tzachs]

If you're dealing with a comedy, then every hotspot is a potential joke, so the more the merrier (until you run out of jokes).
If not, then I agree with what been said about a laboratory having much more hotspot then a corridor, but I find 6-10 hotspots a reasonable average.
Another point of consideration is who is your target audience, the more casual gamers you want, the less hotspots you should put...

[CaptainD]

If you're dealing with a comedy, then every hotspot is a potential joke, so the more the merrier (until you run out of jokes).
If not, then I agree with what been said about a laboratory having much more hotspot then a corridor, but I find 6-10 hotspots a reasonable average.
Another point of consideration is who is your target audience, the more casual gamers you want, the less hotspots you should put...

Good points.

It's not an all-out comedy, but has a lot of comedy elements. 
I'd say we're aiming more at the middle ground adventure game market (possibly up to hardcore adventure gamers) - everyone on the project is a big adventure game fan with many years of puzzle-solving behind them, so I can't imagine any of us wanting to make a game that we wouldn't enjoy ourselves - so it's hopefully going to be somewhere between the style of Monkey Island and Broken Sword.

Thanks for your comments.

[Ryan Timothy B]

Here's one of the backgrounds that Zyndikate has created so you guys have an idea of what kind of game Journey of Iesir will look like:

click here to go to the production thread

CaptainD, I guess we haven't actually mentioned anything about hotspots in the JOI forum really.

Anyway, with a background like this, I'd probably just go with the moose head, the sign (if you could write something other than him just rereading what can already be read), the portrait, possibly the helmet and the books on the background table. And that's pretty much all I would personally do.

Mostly I would only add hotspots to the items that aren't foreground items, and mostly only to items that actually have a purpose in the game or an interesting response. Basically what everyone else has suggested.


The boards on the windows or the one leaning against the wall, or other elements such as the curtain, wouldn't need a hotspot since the character doesn't actually need that stuff nor does he need to interact with them.
I'm not even sure if I would add a hotspot to that left spear leaning against the entrance since the whole shack is filled with swords, helmets, shields and such. And I'm thinking that adding a hotspot just to have the character say he isn't going to pick up the spear will confuse some players into thinking they actually need it.

What do you guys think?

[CaptainD]

Ryan doesn't want too many hotspots because he's our programmer and it will mean more work for him! 

But strangely, in all the discussions about the game's layout and design, I don't think we have talked about it much on our own forum.  Weird (and probably my fault for not having time to do the writing much recently.  Real life can be so time-consuming sometimes!) 

[tzachs]

I'm not even sure if I would add a hotspot to that left spear leaning against the entrance since the whole shack is filled with swords, helmets, shields and such. And I'm thinking that adding a hotspot just to have the character say he isn't going to pick up the spear will confuse some players into thinking they actually need it.

What do you guys think?

Hmmm, two comments about the spear:
1. When playing, I might look at the picture and think that the spear is important. If there was no hotspot to it (and largely due to traumas from past games) I might think that I am simply missing the pixel and run my mouse over it again and again and get frustrated (though on second thought, possibly not relevant to your game due to the Jolly Rover system).
2. If there is some puzzle in the game which can be solved using a spear, and I don't have a hotspot on it to explain why I can't take it, I would get very frustrated...

[Alun]

The boards on the windows or the one leaning against the wall, or other elements such as the curtain, wouldn't need a hotspot since the character doesn't actually need that stuff nor does he need to interact with them.
I'm not even sure if I would add a hotspot to that left spear leaning against the entrance since the whole shack is filled with swords, helmets, shields and such. And I'm thinking that adding a hotspot just to have the character say he isn't going to pick up the spear will confuse some players into thinking they actually need it.

What do you guys think?

Eh, personally, I'm in favor of erring on the side of too many hotspots (within reason).  The boards on the windows and the curtains I'd agree don't need hotspots -- there's no reason most players would ever want to interact with them anyway -- but there are some other things that I'd put hotspots on.  In particular, I don't necessarily agree that foreground objects shouldn't have hotspots here.  If the foreground objects were just silhouettes, maybe, but in this case there are some foreground objects that look interesting enough that if I were playing this game I'd want to interact with them (even if they didn't turn out to be important), and would be disappointed if they weren't hotspots.  Namely, the book and the corked bottle.  Maybe the swords and the candles, too, though to a lesser degree.  No, actually, the candles are prominent enough that I'd say definitely the candles, and probably the swords too.

And yeah, as tzachs said, the spear should definitely be a hotspot, if only so the character can explicitly say he doesn't need it.

Oddly, though, there's one thing you mentioned that you would make a hotspot that I wouldn't see as important, namely the helmet.  If you really wanted to make lots of hotspots, sure, but I'd put the helmet as a fairly low priority; I'd sooner make the shield on the back wall a hotspot than the helmet.

[Snarky]

On a screen like this, you can get away with a generic hotspot called "clutter" or something if you don't want each individual item to be separately interactive. Interesting or useful-looking items that don't have any kind of hotspot tend to be frustrating, in my opinion.

[cat]

Yeah, Snarky is right, an object with the label "useless junk" is much better than no hotspot at all. And since Snakes of Avalon the Moose has to have a hotspot 

[Radiant]

Yeah, Snarky is right, an object with the label "useless junk" is much better than no hotspot at all. And since Snakes of Avalon the Moose has to have a hotspot 

Since King's Quest III the moose has to have a hotspot.

[Snake]

I personally like everything I look at to have a description. Depending on the game, everything that you look at, the protagonist is looking at. I love to know how they perceive particular objects, especially during certain situations. It doesn't always have a direct purpose to progress the storyline, or the current puzzle, but everything you examine is a portal to these character's worlds. There is no other way to get there but through them.

You should have a hotspot for everything that looks like something, because you know that somebody, somewhere, is going to click on whatever the fuck that is in the corner.

\\--EDIT--//
A very small example of what I'm talking about is, take that sword handle that looks like it has a happy face on it. I would definitely click on that, wondering what I was going to get for a response. I would absolutely be nothing more than discouraged if all I got was, "A couple swords lay here in the corner.", if anything at all. GAH.

[MMMorshew]

To me, it depends on how interested I am into the world of the game. My favorite games (Kings Quest series and Quest for Glory series) had a lot of hotspot in every location and I really enjoyed interacting with everything to get more informations about the world of the game. 

[Igor Hardy]

Yeah, Snarky is right, an object with the label "useless junk" is much better than no hotspot at all. And since Snakes of Avalon the Moose has to have a hotspot 

Since King's Quest III the moose has to have a hotspot.

What happened in King's Quest III!?

[Radiant]

What happened in King's Quest III!?

It's the first game to contain the moosehead, which is a recurring joke in many Sierra games.

[Gravity]

The more hotspots, the better. Not just generic messages though. If I see something in a game, the protagonist should be able to see it, touch it, smell it, etc. To me, it does not matter if the object in question has any real use. Adventure games are meant to be explored. It also helps give the player a insight on how the protagonist views the world around him. If you kept it to a bare minimum you might as well just have objects you can only use in the game, accompanied with a in game walkthrough telling you what you need, where you need it, and what you need it for.

Of course I don't mean that ever little book in a bookshelf needs a separate description or interaction. But you get the idea.

[CaptainD]

So to summarise what people have been saying...

It seems that the consensus is that having too few hotspots is a more likely hotspot than too many.

Gravity - I'm really not a fan of generic messages myself, and as I'll be writing the interactions, they should be easy enough to avoid  8)  At least, if there are generic messages in the game, you'll all know to blame me now.  :

[Igor Hardy]

With the games visual style I'd expect the number and style of hotspots to be modeled after Curse of Monkey Island.

In general a large number of hotspots is cool, but give them really short and snappy responses from the main character rather than neverending conversations in the vein of A Vampyre Story.