Metagaming: player using knowlegde he/she posesses to succeed in a game, even when the player character has no way of having the necessary information yet.
Is this good or bad? Should metagaming be encouraged, or weeded out?
In my game design I have been keeping to a theme, where the main character cannot do something without a reason. For example, he will not pick up a tool he needs later in the game before he has SEEN the obstacle he needs the tool to overcome.
However, some of my testers have reported that this is annoying, especially when having to load an older save for any reason, as they would like to pick up the tool and proceed to the obstacle, without having to backtrack for 30-60 seconds to the previous room to get the item they need.
Opinions and discussion extremely welcome!
Metagaming is definitely a bad thing, but so is your solution to it in my eyes.
A player should always be able to pick up something useful - particularly a tool which the character could realistically choose to take with them without a specific purpose in mind. I think the challenge is to design your game so that players come across obstacles before they come across solutions. Ron Gilbert wrote an article about that, and the challenges it presents, I'd suggest you have a look at it.
Quote from: Ali on Tue 16/02/2010 21:35:09
Metagaming is definitely a bad thing, but so is your solution to it in my eyes.
A player should always be able to pick up something useful - particularly a tool which the character could realistically choose to take with them without a specific purpose in mind. I think the challenge is to design your game so that players come across obstacles before they come across solutions. Ron Gilbert wrote an article about that, and the challenges it presents, I'd suggest you have a look at it.
So I should allow the player to carry around the crowbar, a "monkey" wrench, sidecutters, duct-tape, sixteen keycards and a fine leather jacket just because he MIGHT need them later on? Of course, there are potential solutions to be found to this issue by setting up the puzzles and items so that the player comes across the challenges and solutions in a certain order to reduce inventory clutter, but what about free-roaming games, where the player can solve puzzles in whatever order he sees fit?
Doesn't limiting the player's ability to pick up objects go against the spirit of a free-roaming game? Free-roaming games like Oblivion let the player pick up and drop almost anything they want. Maybe that is the solution!
It depends a bit on how big the game is.
I don't mind returning to a location to retrieve an item my character just learned he could use, if it is just one or two rooms back, but more than that, it gets annoying.
Sure, it's meta-gaming/out of character to just pick up everything, but one thing to realize is that most people still playing adventures, have certain expectations of how the game should work. As with everything, only 'break' rules if you have good reasons, and have solutions to offer your users.
Most free roaming games are RPGs, with weight management included. You can take everything you want, up to a certain weight.
Quote from: WHAM on Tue 16/02/2010 21:53:02Of course, there are potential solutions to be found to this issue by setting up the puzzles and items so that the player comes across the challenges and solutions in a certain order to reduce inventory clutter, but what about free-roaming games, where the player can solve puzzles in whatever order he sees fit?
Well it's not really free roam if you cannot go back to some room, now is it?
Making the player act a certain way but not letting him know he/she is manipulated is probably the hardest part. For example a soldier in a base full of zombies - what would he do first? Find ammo/weapons room or something similar. He won't be going exploring and opening random doors - you have to make sure of it, throw in a cinematic depicting attacks or even simpler "I better get some firepower before going out there" lines.
No game is truly free roam. Even in ie GTA, you have missions, yes there are multiple ways of achieving things or doing certain things in different order but you are guided by mission objectives.
If you want to allow the player to pick things when he needs them - either make sure all areas are accesible and/or make the tools available in some other form. In the example of a soldier - he might find a dead soldier on the floor and take his ammo, or find a locker or a box with ammo - that way you provided tools in another form.
In case of you not wanting the player to have a wrench or taking it before it's due:
- "I don't need it right now"
- make limited inventory "it's too heavy to carry around"
- instead of it being in engine room, a player finds a note saying that a maintence unit was sent to another room, player later finds that room and finds a tech with a tool kit (including the wrench, that way it's not a random thing, but part of the story that played out before the player came into picture
Of course, learn to limit your area, that's most important in any game - for example COMI - you get eaten by a snake and get lots of items from it's belly, but then you fall into the sandpit and it gets sucked out - through narrative your inventory gets edited and cleaned up and the player doesn't mind or maybe even notice that at that point he/she's logic and freedom is manipulated.
The soldier shoots a gun but sudenly it jams and you have to run or use a wrench to kill a zombie - you've limited a solution thus pointed the player into a direction you want the story to go. Or you try to open a door with a key and as you open it a key brakes - you now don't have that key in inventory, player knows it's not going to be used again and everybody is happy.
P.S. there's a rule - the longer the player play uninterupted, the better the immersion in the story/game, thus if I have to load a game because I forgot something - immersion gets broken - so the awnser would be "bad". Going 2-3 rooms back to get something, I don't mind, it's only realistic, just as long as it's not a pixel hunt - if you we're stuck on a locked door, you'd go back and look for a key or something in real life, so it's ok by me.
WHAM: I've seen this idea in action before, the game was Speculum Mortis, and it expected you to revisit every single locations in the game and interact with every objects anytime you solved or encountered a puzzle for the very reason that "nobody in their right mind would carry all that junk around/do all those seemingly useless actions unless they had a good reason". The result was horrendous.
Plus, how would the game (and the player) know when the main character got a reason to pick up an item? Would they become pickable when you enter the room where the puzzle is located? Or would you have to look at every single puzzles you encounter? Or unsuccessfully interact with each of them?
Players complained at Dave Gilbert regarding the clue combination mechanic of his Blackwell games because they could figure out the answers to the questions in the games without combining the clues yet the game didn't let them progress because the main character couldn't figure the answers, no matter how obvious these answers were to the players. I don't think making a game where this problem applied to every actions you did would be a good idea.
Seriously, don't do that. It's just games after all, there's no need for this kind of realism.
Quote from: WHAM on Tue 16/02/2010 21:26:07
Metagaming: player using knowlegde he/she posesses to succeed in a game, even when the player character has no way of having the necessary information yet.
Is this good or bad? Should metagaming be encouraged, or weeded out?
Obligatory link... (http://crystalshard.net/index.php?g=4) :P
And I was wondering when you would show up, Radiant! :=
I personally dislike having to look at something or talk to someone first before you can pick up or do a certain action (in most cases).
I've played a couple AGS games that have done this, and I haven't enjoyed the linearity of it once. I actually get quite angry. Sure it's more realistic that you wouldn't go carrying around this large tool or object without a purpose, but it's annoying.
The only few examples I can think of why I would support a triggered moment before you can grab an item or do a specific action would be:
- The item looks dangerous.
Example: If a canister of radiated ooze was sitting on a shelf, I totally understand having to find out if the item is safe to pick up first before you can grab it.
- The action you're attempting doesn't make sense yet, or the action appears dangerous at the moment.
Example: Breaking the basement window before finding out the house door is locked, would be flawed in most cases. OR. Ingesting a medication before finding out what it is, or before finding out that you need to take it.
- Someone is stopping you from stealing or doing something. In those cases you'd have to distract the person or come back when they aren't there anymore. But make sure the player knows that person wouldn't be there anymore, otherwise it would appear random and odd.
But always make it clear that just not a possibility at that moment. And also make sure it's obvious that player would know that the trigger has been set, so they can now perform that certain action or grab that item.
For example, with the locked house door.
When you attempt to break the window before finding out the door is locked, instead of writing "Why would I break a window?", you should write "Try the door first." or "I wouldn't break a window unless I knew I needed to.", or something along those lines. Also make sure it's obvious to the player that the door is locked and you need to find another way in.
Sometimes there are timed events where you're actually required to grab an item only when the owner of it is distracted for a brief moment or looking away. Like in Ben's game Awakener. A timed puzzle like that can be a little tricky with narration if you're caught picking up the item. If you word it wrong, most players might think you can't pick up that item at all, or until the person leaves the room/area. Obviously you don't want to write "Try grabbing it when he isn't looking at you.", cause that gives it away, but something like "Dang, he saw me." or "I'll have to make sure he's distracted first." are subtle enough without giving it away.
Anyway these are my opinions and the most common, but everyone has their own ideas of how a game should be (doesn't mean everyone will like it though).
And yes, I kinda strayed off subject.. I got carried away. :P
I actually did something like this in Heartland Deluxe. The screwdriver in the box under the sink only becomes available after you've examined the locked wardrobe. I figured that I didn't want the player randomly holding a screwdriver, or, worse, triggering the wardrobe "puzzle" sequence before they even discovered that the wardrobe was locked in the first place!
An overuse of "Hmm. This might come in handy later..." is something I always disliked. Who carries an rubber ring, an onion, and some jumper cables on their person, in the hope that a spontaneous inventory puzzle breaks out?
Besides an adventure game character?
I was thinking I was the only one thinking about META..
Quote from: Radiant on Wed 17/02/2010 14:16:46
Quote from: WHAM on Tue 16/02/2010 21:26:07
Metagaming: player using knowlegde he/she posesses to succeed in a game, even when the player character has no way of having the necessary information yet.
Is this good or bad? Should metagaming be encouraged, or weeded out?
Obligatory link... (http://crystalshard.net/index.php?g=4) :P
Quote from: Dualnames on Wed 17/02/2010 22:53:27
I was thinking I was the only one thinking about META..
Quote from: Radiant on Wed 17/02/2010 14:16:46
Quote from: WHAM on Tue 16/02/2010 21:26:07
Metagaming: player using knowlegde he/she posesses to succeed in a game, even when the player character has no way of having the necessary information yet.
Is this good or bad? Should metagaming be encouraged, or weeded out?
Obligatory link... (http://crystalshard.net/index.php?g=4) :P
I was thinking about it too. I haven't played it yet, but still I seem unable to forget it.
I only like the "I don't need this" approach to items you haven't found the puzzle for yet when there's an obvious reason to not take it (and even then, it has to be prohibitive and not just preferential, eg. too large to carry or dangerous, but not just because your character doesn't want to) , or if you have a particularly realistic game world where you can't steal anything that isn't nailed down.
I think this works well in some cases. I'm working on a game, and at one point you're asked to get something from a cupboard, but it's not until you try to open it you realize it's locked. You then have to go back to the person who asked to find out about getting a key. This isn't simply to lengthen the game, but to throw in a second somewhat smaller puzzle to the game, AND it fits in well with my story, which may make no sense, but I don't want to give anything away.
I haven't fully read everyone's posts but I feel that there's no single "right" or "wrong" when it comes to this. I think it has to be considered very contextually. For example, I think if you have an item that the player might consider for a use other than where it's intended to be used at then it would make sense to allow them to realize their line of thinking with an appropriate response. This I would consider as being generally in favor of meta-gaming.
However, if you have an item that can only ever be used for a single purpose and you cannot possibly fathom the player contriving of another use for it, then I would say allowing them to carry it around half the game only to get "That doesn't seem to work," messages until they finally discover the item's purpose..that would be very much a reasonable argument against it.
Preventing the player from picking up a specific item until its exact purpose has been realized by specific game events seems a bit obtuse to me as the player will likely have ideas of their own as to how the item could be used.
As Ryan said though, allowing the player to break into the basement before learning the door is locked is equally bad.
So for me it's all about the implementation.
I absolutely loathe not being able to pick up or operate things until my character has learned their purpose. This can make me quit even a game that's great otherwise because I consider it a serious design flaw.
There has to be a very good reason if I'm not allowed to do something. (E.g. it's perfectly fine to prevent the player from doing something that would kill them if done too early. "If you push the button now, the blast would kill you!")
Anything else but a realistic, obvious reason why something isn't possible feels like the game is lengthened by a lazy designer.
If I'd rather break into the window without checking the front door, why not let the player do that if they have a suitable tool? Or even using their fist. Maybe later on, another puzzle requires a more complicated solution because the hand is injured. Sure, it's more work, but the game will profit immensely.
Good ideas and opinions so far.
Lets try this: In the demo of my next game I have a puzzle where this is relevant. (SPOILRES AHEAD!)
When you try to open a door, the door says that it requires a DNA identification of the person who locked it, or a password. As the main character has no idea what the passcode might be, the DNA is his best bet. The body of the person in question can be found in a morgue nearby. The puzzle: how to get a small piece of him for the DNA reader.
> The player must get a cutting tool and cut off a finger from the body.
There is a pair of sidecutters in a box in the very same morgue, and their presence is hinted at in an autopsy report that can be read on a computer in the adjacent room.
HOWEVER: if the player has not tried to interact with the door, and therefore does not know he needs the DNA, he will only say "There are small tools and junk in the box", when interacting with the box containing the sidecutters. After he knows that he needs the DNA, the character will say "A pair of sidecutters, I'll probably need these!" and get the item.
Is this a good way to proceed, and if you think not, how would you do the same puzzle? Would it be better to just allow the player to run around with the sidecutters as soon as he wants?
You should plan out the game so as to avoid such situations altogether.
Have something so that the player could not have seen/interacted with the door having the cutters BEFORE he sees the house with the DNA puzzle. Perhaps the player can only see the autopsy report after reading the person's name at their house? Perhaps looking at the DNA thing at the house triggers some event (I know that some people hate random triggering of events, but still), that gives the player some dialog option or inventory item that the player can then use with some guard at the morgue which then allows them to look for the cutters.
When trying to use the cutters/interacting with a box - "No time to play doctor now" or "Not desperate enough to get into black market of organ transplants just yet."
But first of all the description should be something along "Some surgical equippment, probably used on that poor dead fellow on the table...I hope he started out dead, these don't look very sterile" or "Autopsy tools, scalpels, scissors and such."
Probably make sure there's info in the pc about who is the man on the table in the morgue and/or put a tag around his toe (don't know the resolution of the game, might have the toe tag be a separate object if it's visible) with info and when you look at corpse part of description reads "...cause of death seems to be that hole in his head. There's a tag on his toe, it reads subject 1024 (then you look up the file on pc for example) or colonel J. Smith"
Don't be upfront with saying that these tools might be used later, just that these are some tools that were used for specific purpose. After the player finds about the door, a bulb lights up and "oh, wait, I know where I can get some DNA." Telling the player a tool shall be useful later is only gonna make him/her try to take the tool and be disappointed or obssesed with taking it instead of following the story.
If the player tries to "take the body" or something else when close to the solution, then use something like "I'm not hogging dead bodies around the compound, I only need a sample/piece" (try not to make him sound like a cannibal on detox though :P ).
IMO try to avoid cliches like "grab stuff from a box", wrapping it up as "a tray with surgical tools" or similar instantly shows the purpose of that tool in usual circumstances and therefor it's properties like "sharp" and "used on bodies."
When in game there are 2 main things which help a lot in the options and interactivity problem
- game logic - you find out how the game functions and what is expected of the player and what can I do in this interactive limited world - for example you won't randomly jump even if you can in real life and you won't put everything you see into your pocket, even though you can
- story/atmosphere - if I am truly scared that ie zombies are after me I probably won't try turning on the tv or go to get a snack right then or even if I try I will understand that mentioned game logic might say "Snacks, NOW?! If I don't get out of here, I'm gonna be one." Story will point into a certain direction and basically all the exploring is just to help the imersivness (think RPGs - there are side quests but the main story will pull you towards moving in designed direction).
Anian, I really like your dialogue snippets and advice. My 2cents are now put into your pocket for you to do with as you please.
Quote from: WHAM on Thu 18/02/2010 12:03:31
HOWEVER: if the player has not tried to interact with the door, and therefore does not know he needs the DNA, he will only say "There are small tools and junk in the box", when interacting with the box containing the sidecutters. After he knows that he needs the DNA, the character will say "A pair of sidecutters, I'll probably need these!" and get the item.
Is this a good way to proceed, and if you think not, how would you do the same puzzle? Would it be better to just allow the player to run around with the sidecutters as soon as he wants?
With that description I more than likely wouldn't attempt to look at or fiddle with that box ever again. Most people click things once, if the answer resembles anything like "no" or "nothing of importance", they flag that item in their mind and forget about it (at least I do).
Whats wrong with him just grabbing the side cutters? Hmm, I may need these.
Sure, realistically if the ego was grabbing one random item out of a box of multiple items, it would seem like a fluke that the item was even useful at all or why he chose that one instead of another one. But I never play adventure games for realism, I play them for fun entertainment (even the serious ones).
Just make sure that you prevent the use of the side cutters on the body before knowing who the body is, or before knowing that there are DNA scanners on the doors. "I'm not just going to start cutting a random body for no reason."
And I quote Khris because it's my exact thoughts on the matter:
QuoteThis can make me quit even a game that's great otherwise because I consider it a serious design flaw.
What about:
Player sees a crowbar > "I don't need a crowbar." > Player later discovers a crate that's nailed shut > Player goes back to crowbar > "Ahh! This should do!"
vs
Player sees a crowbar > "This might come in handy." > Player takes crowbar > Player finds crate > "Lucky thing I picked up this crowbar!"
To me, the latter is what I would expect from an adventure game character. On the other hand, real people usually don't horde random items they happen across.
As the player, when we see a crowbar we automatically assume we'll need it later, since we're aware of the mechanics of adventure games. Adventure game characters must also be aware they are in an adventure game, because they pick up and file away most objects they see...just in case.
But, as I said earlier, in a real world situation, a person isn't likely to behave like this.
Would stripping our characters of this preordained behavior damage the game?
The crowbar analogy gives me an idea.
To my mind, the big problem here is the dichotomy between what the player knows, and what the character knows. Whilst the player may think "I'm obviously going to need this, or else it wouldn't be here", to the character, it's just another item. You don't spend all day picking up every single item just because you might need it; but why not? If you were out on some kind of quest, you would probably want to have anything that might be useful. But you can't carry it all, so you only take what you know you need.
I'm thinking implementing a limited inventory would solve this problem in games. Fundamentally it removes the conflict between the player and the character who refuses to follow orders, because it is no longer the character saying "I don't think I need this", but the player. It also encourages the behaviour of encountering problems before solutions, and whilst this may lead to backtracking, a whily player might be able to avoid this by predicting what they will need. Additionally, backtracking could become a gameplay mechanic, for instance as in Resident Evil. With unlimited inventory space, that game would have been a breeze.
Within the first 5 minutes of Day of the Tentacle, Bernard can have like 5 apparently useless items in his inventory. DOTT was a great game, and at this point, player expectation is going to be that your adventure plays like a Lucas adventure.
(http://www.gameclassification.com/files/games/Maniac-Mansion-Day-of-the-Tentacle.jpg)
We must be clever to continue the suspension of disbelief. My suggestion is that you have the player come across the DNA door BEFORE being able to enter the morgue. This will allow you to avoid many potential problems.
You could also equip the morgue with a "anybody's DNA will do" lock. Doing this will ensure that the player cannot find the finger cutter or the corpse before having some idea of why each of these things might be useful.
Also, forcing the player to use an "anybody" DNA door to enter the morgue will teach them some of the inner workings of your world. If they find the body first, they'll have a good idea that they need part of it. If they find a bone cutter, they'll surely go searching for a body to chop up.
People are crazy like that.
The first time I read the post I thought the OP was talking about puzzles that require the player to be aware of details that the character proper cannot possibly be aware of. An example would be the "How well do you know Hector LeMans" puzzle from Grim Fandango, where the player is aware of things that Manny cannot actually see at that point. Another one I've heard about is from one of the King's Quests where the location of a secret lever is revealed in a cutscene that the player character isn't in the room for.
I found this question quite interesting, even though I don't think it is probably the type of puzzle people are thinking about now that immersion is seen as the sovereign element of a game. I think it's probably an idea that belongs in the time when developers saw it as the duty of gamers to play with a notepad and pencil, noting down any details that could be important.
This actually relates a bit to the "Don't pick up the crowbar yet" question, in an odd way. It's both about a clash of playing the character, or just playing the game. Naturally we want to pick up everything in sight because we know how handy that thoughtlessly-discarded pack of gum in the rubbish bin might be. But would actual people in those situations do that?
I also think that the answer is in no way simple - it depends on the design. The example given of the player refusing to cut a finger off the cadaver until it becomes clear he needs it is a very logical one, especially given how odd it would be for a character to gladly do so when there is no apparent need for it. The idea can be taken too far, though - Runaway took the idea of only doing what the character wanted to do VERY seriously and became one of the most irritating games I'd played (and not even finished!)
If we use Runaway as the yardstick, then it gets to the point where the character insists on doing something in a particular way when you told him to do it the exact opposite way, which THEN turns out to have actually screwed up the machine he was trying to fix leading to MORE puzzles... then you have definitely gone too far and I might uninstall your game and wait years before coming back to it. ;)
Oh, yeah Runaway was especially annoying in that sense, it turned more into "guess what the developers want us to do" instead of what's logical to do as an average human being.
Quote from: Mr Flibble on Fri 19/02/2010 02:46:01I'm thinking implementing a limited inventory would solve this problem in games. Fundamentally it removes the conflict between the player and the character who refuses to follow orders, because it is no longer the character saying "I don't think I need this", but the player. It also encourages the behaviour of encountering problems before solutions, and whilst this may lead to backtracking, a whily player might be able to avoid this by predicting what they will need. Additionally, backtracking could become a gameplay mechanic, for instance as in Resident Evil. With unlimited inventory space, that game would have been a breeze.
While I kind of agree and it looks like the easiest/simplest solution, it does create some new problems.
How would you implement putting objects somewhere where they might be accessible later on? Leaving objects anywhere would be hard to draw, not to mention not being able to find it later. On the other hand that whole walking across the whole building is kinda annoying (especially if you grab something and it turns out not to be a correct item you should use...multiply that with 5-10 items and more than 1 puzzle...very annoying) and not to mention kind of breaks the immersion a bit. RE had very simple puzzles and when you found a puzzle it was usually some key or something and it told you what it was.
And yes, we're kinda returning on topic after wandering the adventure desert for a while. :P
I think this is gonna end in "no right or universal answer" and "careful designing." ;D
I also agree with Anian's 2cents, and my 2cents can go into the pocket as well ;)
WHAM, what I learned very quickly about "meta-gaming" after releasing the demo for Matt to the Future (http://tinyurl.com/yzh86zz), is that the players do get frustrated rather quickly. They know as a player that they need a specific item, but because they haven't triggered an event yet, they can't take it.
My theory was that if Matt didn't know why he needed something, he wasn't going to take it, even though the player knew that he needed it.
You have to try to remember that the player and the protagonist are two different people.
Fortunately for you, you haven't released your game yet so you have time to adjust your puzzles!
Quote from: anian on Fri 19/02/2010 10:43:47
And yes, we're kinda returning on topic after wandering the adventure desert for a while. :P
I think this is gonna end in "no right or universal answer" and "careful designing." ;D
I was expecting that. What I most wanted was a bunch of opinions and viewpoints, so I can then make a good compromise between my own evil plans and what the potential players would want to see. At the moment I KNOW I will not be able to avoid situations where the player will see the solution way before the main character will, and I think I might use a resident evilish backtracking gameplay mechanic to create challenge and contexct to some of the puzzles in question.
Quote from: LimpingFish on Fri 19/02/2010 01:55:30
Player sees a crowbar > "I don't need a crowbar." > Player later discovers a crate that's nailed shut > Player goes back to crowbar > "Ahh! This should do!"
vs
Player sees a crowbar > "This might come in handy." > Player takes crowbar > Player finds crate > "Lucky thing I picked up this crowbar!"
I am not fond of the former, and consider it artificial lengthening of playtime.
Quote from: Jared on Fri 19/02/2010 10:28:01Another one I've heard about is from one of the King's Quests where the location of a secret lever is revealed in a cutscene that the player character isn't in the room for.
I think that's the labyrinth KQ6, and the thing is that the player character is peeking through a hole in the wall. On the other hand, it's probably metagaming to know that you need to use the hole on
that particular wall...
I'd also like to point out that while I think my post outlined a realistic solution, it wouldn't be a fun one.
Quote from: Radiant
Quote from: LimpingFish on Fri 19/02/2010 01:55:30
Player sees a crowbar > "I don't need a crowbar." > Player later discovers a crate that's nailed shut > Player goes back to crowbar > "Ahh! This should do!"
vs
Player sees a crowbar > "This might come in handy." > Player takes crowbar > Player finds crate > "Lucky thing I picked up this crowbar!"
I am not fond of the former, and consider it artificial lengthening of playtime.
I agree, when applied to traditional adventure logic. That's probably how most of us would look at it.
But I wouldn't write it off completely. Depending on the design of the game, it could be tailored to certain gameplay mechanics.
Like Mr Flibble said earlier, the player might immediately recognize objects like crowbars or screwdrivers as being useful, but the character doesn't necessarily have to have the foresight to horde every possibly helpful tool they come across. If the author wants to craft a certain experience, while abandoning the traditional idea of an "Inventory", I can see it as a starting point.
It also bugs me when characters can store items that are clearly too big to carry around. Any game that let's it characters invisibly store ladders about their person is just too deeply buried in Adventure Land soil.
Quote from: Mr Flibble on Fri 19/02/2010 21:04:45
I'd also like to point out that while I think my post outlined a realistic solution, it wouldn't be a fun one.
Probably, since it would be very difficult to pull off in a way that doesn't instantly prove Radiant's point.
Quote from: LimpingFish on Fri 19/02/2010 22:41:35
Quote from: Radiant
I am not fond of the former, and consider it artificial lengthening of playtime.
But I wouldn't write it off completely. Depending on the design of the game, it could be tailored to certain gameplay mechanics.
It's probably possible to do something good with it if you think it out very carefully, though I cannot actually think of any adventure game that has done that. And I can certainly think of a few adventure games that do it wrongly.
What I would probably do is either make the protagonist unable to take the item, or make the player not realize the item is actually important (although the latter is hard to do with a Sierra interface, because players tend to click the hand everywhere).
I just realized that there's one adventure game that solves it cleverly (if in a way that's otherwise annoying): Dreamweb. yes, you can pick up all the cups and plates and knives and forks if you really want to, but there's
way too many of them and your inventory is limited to some 20-30 items.
Normally, a limited inventory is something that seems to work well in text adventures (IF games), but not really in graphical ones.
Hotel Dusk use this a lot,
You saw an item but you can't pick it up until you know what you gonna do with it.
I think it still works fine on this case, not sure why.
I've tended to be a little bit of a hoarder in real life, so maybe I'm biased, but I don't think that it is that unrealistic to have people on a quest picking up things like scissors and crowbars because "they might come in handy."
It is true that in real life, we have an extremely limited carrying capacity and only leave home with a few generalized items that will fit in our pockets, purses, or if we want to travel heavy, our hand bags. We usually limit ourselves to things like keys, wallets, phones, and maybe one or two other items we use frequently - a pair of sunglasses, a notepad and pen, a mini flashlight, a pocket knife (but not all of these at once). Then maybe we carry some receipts or business cards or other excess crap that was useful once, or that someone handed us and we haven't bothered to toss yet. (Little more leeway if there's a handbag involved, of course, but the principle still applies).
We only pack more than this if we expect to need it, in which case we might tote around some specialized set of items - meals, school supplies, etc.
The rest of the time we expect any item we might need to exist in our immediate environment.
The problem is, in real life we have these expectations because in real life they work. Desperate trips to a store or frantic searches all over the neighborhood for usually common items we never expected to be stuck without do occur, but they are relatively rare. However, in adventure games, we are often faced with these types of challenges repeatedly.
If I got hit with a couple of these situations in a row and, in addition found myself in a distressing and unprecedented situation (which I must be in loong before I start stealing body parts from the morgue), I might not start stealing everything that isn't nailed down, but neither would I feel any cognitive dissonance if I happened to find myself pocketing scissors and screw drivers "just in case." After all, my day to day routine has been compromised, and I can't really know what to expect. It's probably best for me to be prepared for anything.
If you really want immersion, I'd say define your character's carrying capacity. Do they have a lot of pockets? Then let them carry an indefinite supply of small things, but for every potential item, ask yourself "would this fit in a pocket"? Or if you give your character a purse or a tote bag, then ask "would this item fit in a purse/tote bag." Likewise with backpacks, briefcases, or whatever other carrying container your character might hold. If an item won't fit, don't let your character take it with him/her - and say why. Say "that won't fit in my pocket/purse/bag." And show the carrying container on the sprite itself, otherwise just assume that your are working with pockets. It seems like the vast majority of games, even commercial ones, rely on this abstract concept called an "inventory" in which we store the "inventory items" that we come across in our travels. We accept this default without thinking about it, but it really is quite absurd.
You don't necessarily have to limit the -number- of inventory items (it is more realistic, but it can get annoying very fast), but avoid even including in your game more than one or two long term items that look as though they would push the limit of your carrying capacity (things like books and crowbars might fit somewhere on your person, but if you have me carrying five hardback novels, a crowbar, a bottle rocket, and a small bucket, I expect to be positively bulging, clumsy, and quickly exhausted, whereas I might overlook an unrealistic number of bitesized trinkets).
Don't be afraid to limit the character picking up items without proper motive if they are obviously items that an ordinary person would need a strong reason to take. I know I've never felt too put off from a game that has prevented me from stealing or carrying obviously dangerous or straight up absurd items without an in game motivation. But if you are going to do this, avoid putting these items on the other side of the game world from where you find out that you need them, and don't extend this reasoning to small, harmless, ownerless, multiuse items like scissors and pens, because sure, not everyone would take these things, but someone always might. After all, these items ARE useful.
You might consider leaving more than one set of a given common object (scissors, pens, string) or types of objects (cutters, blunt things, writing scraps and utensils) around your game world, and allow them to be picked up and used interchangeably. Finding these things isn't much of a puzzle in real life, so it shouldn't be in your game either (at least, not too often). If you want to save on inventory space, you could even have a message like "I don't need that knife, I already have something to cut with." But again if you do that, don't penalize the character for not taking the knife, later on.
For items that can be picked up, but are too large to realistically carry around indefinitely, or which only have a use in a specific context (a fact your character should be aware of), you might consider allowing the player to pick them up, but then not let them leave the screen with them. The most realistic way to do this (especially for larger items) would be to show the item in the in the player's hand, and stop them from performing any complex hand interactions until they put the item down, because now their hands are full. But you could also just put the item in the inventory and then have the game check if you try to leave the room. Or do what King's Quest 7 did. There was a puzzle in a forge that let you use a large pair of tongs, but when you picked up the tongs, they overruled your cursor, so you couldn't perform any non-tong actions (including walking) until you put them back.
This is fairly realistic behavior. Many people would not hesitate to pick up and fiddle with any number of items that they would never actually take with them for practical or ethical reasons.
For the specific puzzle you brought up, I would let the player pickup any old knife or pair of scissors instead of or in addition to the specific mortician's instrument. Then let them cut off the bit of DNA with whatever they can get their hands on. You might even let them yank out some hair for the DNA scan with their bare hands. I'd probably do that before I went cutting pieces off of people.
Further, I wouldn't let them leave the morgue with any of the morgue's tools unless they had a long term motive for the theft, be it kleptomania, "I need this elsewhere for a specific reason" or "hey, I hate to steal, but they WERE useful once, so maybe..."
I mean, if you are going to take in game motives seriously, you may as well go the whole way.
Just remember that if you have the player trying to guide the character through some sort of mental gymnastic every time they need to motivate an action, you haven't stopped the player from thinking outside the constraints of the game world; rather, you have emphasized the fact that they are outside this world, and that the mind they are thinking with is not the same mind that their character is thinking with.
Having read the discussion above, I decided to throw in some of my ideas. They're just random - don't take them very seriously (but I'd really like to see them implemented in a game :) ).
A bit of preface: Once I participated in a discussion concerning IF. The topic was about using the compass directions to navigate between locations and rooms. There were a lot pros and contras (one of them, e.g. being 'the illogical presumption, that a person has some inner compass in a situation when he/she has no idea where, for instance, the north is'). Obviously, this contra was to support the 'realistic' approach vs 'traditional' one.
Here, I think, goes the same: we have a 'traditional' approcah, to which we got accustomed having played dozens and dozens of adventure games. This approach presupposes, that PC can have lots of various items he/she took everywhere for no obvious reason and without (sometimes) obvious sense. Moreover, PC is presupposed to have an infinite amount of space within his/her pockets, even for especially large/bulky/heavy items.
This is unrealistic, but it's conventional, since lots of players don't mind that. Do we need to battle this approach and get rid of it altogether? I don't think so, but some certain flaws should (and can) be avoided without any losses in gameplay and gaming experience.
First of all, there're large/bulky/heavy items. I quite agree with Lyaer about them, and examples he cited. I can even add one more: in 5DaS there was a rifle in sitting room, which also overrid the player's cursor. I think it is a good decision for this particular case: we need the item only in one room.
But what about the situation, when we need, e.g. a ladder in some distant room? I think, having the PC carrying it around is out of the question. One of possible solutions: let the player see the reason of using a ladder. Then he/she thinks "A-ha! I've seen a ladder in an other end of building!" So he goes for it. I foresee, that this solution will be called 'backtracing' and 'artificial prolonging of the game'. Of course, it shouldn't be used too often in a game. And, after all, why can't we let the PC to go after this very ladder, then just 'teleport' him to the room where he needs it? I think, it won't annoy the player.
Other solution is as follows (I think, I saw something like this in A Vampyre Story, though I haven't actually played it myself): include 'memories' of some items (esp. large/heavy/bulky) in the PC's inventory. So we can 'use' those items to learn if they're really useful in that particular place, and have a logical excuse for not carrying it around.
What about small items? It was also mentioned by Lyaer, that there's always a number of multi-purpose small items that can be used almost everywhere and don't occupy much space in our pockets. I think I must emphasize the word multi-purpose here, because I really feel that if the item is in the PC's inventory - the player should have a clear reason of where it should be used. Otherwise, it should be clear that the thing could come in handy - here I must mention the thing that has always annoyed me in almost all the games I played: the great amount of extraordinary items in the inventory (dead mosquitoes, flower pots, half-chewed chewing gums, banana skin...) Who can tell me what a screwed logic makes the PC pick them up? This makes me think of the disability of a game designer to think out proper puzzles.
And now we came to the conclusion: the best solution to the problem is the overall game design and pacing. The game should be created (mostly) using the following principle: the problem should appear before its solution. Then, too, the items should be as multi-purposed as possible.
How to implement that on the situation under discussion (I mean, the one with 'DNA-morgue'): The best solution, I think (it was mentioned already, but I feel like repeating it), is to let the player visit morgue only after he has encountered the DNA-locked door. I understand it can result in drastic changes in the game architecture, so there's another way:
The player visits morgue, sees, that there're corpses and dissectional tools. We just mention, that they're there here - and... Think, whether the side cutters will be used at some point later in the game. If not: don't let the player take the item! Instead, we can just elegantly say along the lines something like this: "I don't think I need to carry them around. But if I'll need them I know where to look"... And then, encountering the DNA-lock, we (as a player) think "A-ha! I can take the DNA sample from the body in the morgue!" Okay, he goes there, we confirm this guess by a response on looking at the corpse: "Hmm... I think, he has the sample I need." Then how to take it? Dissetional tools! - Interact them, and - voila! - the PC takes the sample. It's easy, logical, and we don't make the PC carry lots of unnecessary and silly things (the cut finger is in our inventory because we KNOW the obvious reason for that!)
I agree with Lyaer on the "idea of a large thing", it adds more interactivness and explains game logic more than a cutscene where PC just goes and takes ie ladder. With that system you also don't really need the change of cursor, you can just have an idea a pair of tongs or a machine gun etc. so it'd save on programming as well while not hindering puzzle solving.
The stranger the object, the less of a multifunctionallity it'll have in most cases. Something like a crowbar or a gun can solve 90% of any adventure puzzles, why talk to somebody to persuade them when you can say "hand it over" (although with this you could add a karma or notorious system, which would be interesting to use as a social interaction changer like NPCs being scared of you and wanting to talk or running away or police chasing you).
But what would happen is that with a crowbar for example (which is trying to be realistic) you'd be pretty much unstoppable in real world situation most of the time. Realistic, but not very fun. And having a knife with you would probably have the same effect and you come to the same problem - designing puzzles that don't benefit you from having a gun
This kind of frustrated me in new Sam&Max, you have a gun but you use like once. In every action movie, even the hero, would use a gun if it would mean saving lives.
With these soultions of game design (seeing problem before the solution), the whole story, gameplay, puzzles and world design morf into one complicated rubix cube. It really is a work of art if all that can be pulled of.
*runs of with the money before Snake and Fibble catch him* ;D
Useful as knives and guns are, there are plenty of reasons why we don't use them in our everyday problem solving (err, interpersonally, at least, knives we keep in our kitchens and use all the time). I think it is perfectly reasonable to make a character need a strong motive before they go about putting a gun to everyone's head or killing everything that gets in their way. When things get desperate enough to where a character realistically would start resorting to this strategy, as probably will happen in the average adventure, you can still complicate the whole "violence or threat of violence solves all problems" sort of dynamic by forcing the player who pulls guns on people to navigate dialogue trees wherein they have to get reliable information/aid out of a character whose fight or flight instinct has just gone through the roof. If the gun ever goes off, you can have guards/police swoop in and make an arrest (not always realistic, if it is immediate, but approximately realistic, and if you wait around for the neighbors to get up nerve and call the cops, you've probably just put the player in a walking dead situation). And if the gun was supposed to go off, you can do the same thing, and just not make it a game ender. You can also make your character a terrible shot, or someone who has never been in a knife fight, and so is easily disarmed by your average thug.
Still, I agree that if you give someone a gun, knife, or big stick, you should expect them to try to use it on everything, so it is best to design your game around this possibility, or avoid giving them a potential weapon to begin with. If you can make them lose the weapon soon after it is necessary, without coming off too contrived (an out of ammo, or getting it confiscated by the authorities or badguys might be believable in some situations), this is another good route.
I really liked how the whole gun situation played out in The Vacuum.
Spoiler
Bringing the gun into play at all heightened tension and made the world much more dangerous for the NPCs you were trying to protect, and even when it was useful, it mostly just escalated things and forced a more fatal climax than was actually necessary.
Don't confuse realism with immersion. A game can have outlandish puzzles, unrealistic setting and a GUI that occupy half of the screen, and as long it's a fun game, your players won't mind any of that and play your game for hours. On the other hand, force your players to backtrack because the main character is too dumb/lazy to carry a ladder in their hands, get lost because there's no easy way to navigate the rooms, double or triple test every hotspots because of some arbitrary triggers... for the sake of realism and your players will quickly remember they're just playing a game. Dying from anything, walking-dead, maze and timed puzzles are also realistic, but there's a reason why they're not in modern adventure games anymore.
I must say I really like that Vukul's Vampyre Story idea, where the items are not always taken but are nonetheless carried in the main character's mind. And with a fade in, fade out effect, you can also remove most of the useless backtracking.
I agree that the A Vampyre Story's concept of ghostly "memory" icons in the inventory is a very simple but effective solution (and let's be honest, they got a lot of praise for it - adventure gamers are such an easy bunch to please). But the implementation in A Vampyre Story itself was quite horrible - you had to watch the player character turn into a bat, see her appear in the room with the item, pick up the item, then reappear in the room where you wanted to use the item and actually perform the action. All this for an item you'd in any other game would already have in your inventory.
So yeah, if you limit it to items that would be silly to carry around (a ladder, a dog etc.), and keep the transition to a simple fade out/fade in, I think it's a good solution. Much better than Still Life 2's ridiculous "now I must put all the items from my pockets in a cupboard because otherwise I can't lift a mattress" design.
Also, in regards to Dreamweb, the main reason that the many items and limited inventory worked so well was because it used real-world-logic (albeit a bit insane) and straightforward solutions to obstacles. I mean, this must be the only adventure game where you shoot a random security guard in the face instead of puzzling your way around him.
QuoteDying from anything, walking-dead, maze and timed puzzles are also realistic, but there's a reason why they're not in modern adventure games anymore.
Walking deads are not realistic. They stem from the entirely unrealistic (but necessary) dynamic of only having a limited number of predefined ways of solving a problem. True, in real life it is possible to sabotage yourself or fail to the extent that a given goal that was once conceivably within your reach no longer is, but when this happens, your life does not just stop. It doesn't get stuck--at least, not in the way it would in an adventure game. And generally this doesn't happen because you forgot to pick something up or for some other trivial nonsense. (Okay maybe in bureaucracy, but that's different)
Death from everything isn't that realistic either. True, there are a lot of things out there that can hurt or kill you, but games tend to unrealistically exaggerate the fragility of human life and/or the prevalence of lethal entities--and then, not even consistently. True, people can die from most of the things that kill you in an adventure game, but it isn't a given that you will die every time you fall in the river, every time you get shocked, every time you get hit by a car. The other problem with this is that game characters are unrealistically clumsy--or rather, the way we control them is. No matter how intuitive your control system is, it will never approach the complexity with which real humans can interact with their environment. The subtleties of footing and finger movement and the senses--things that allow us, for instance, to drive safely. In real life we surround ourselves with potentially lethal entities all the time, but we are rarely at any significant risk from any of them. Most people will even have a number of "close ones" before they finally die. Serious injuries they recover from, or near misses, such as when you nearly avoid being run over. If the game worlds and the way we perceived and interacted with them were truly realistic, death would be quite rare in them.
Part of the problem with realism in games will always be with the player. One of the problems is that as a player I will never see the consequences in the game world as real enough. Whether I know that I won't die, or that I can reload, or that I can restart, I will always engage in much riskier behavior than I would in real life. When the game world makes it clear that there will be real consequences, in game, however, I may react oppositely and become paralyzed. Unlike the real world, I will never be able to anticipate the risks I am taking with a high enough degree of accuracy to accept that I in fact have a reasonable life expectancy of 70 years, or even 7 days, for that matter.
These concerns relate to timing puzzles in games just as easily as they relate to death in games. In real life we have a heightened awareness of time, we have more time, and we have a much larger arsenal of ways to compensate when we, for instance, realize we are going to miss an appointment or deadline. So to say it is realistic to have timing puzzles in a game is only an approximate truth.
It should also be pointed out that the closer we get to solving these issues and making our games "real," the more they will become sandbox games, and not story driven adventure games.
So I guess I agree that not every step we take toward realism is a step toward a more immersive game, especially if that game is an adventure game, even if I do think that on the whole, a game that behaves like reality, is perceived like reality, and is interacted with like reality, would theoretically be about the most immersive gaming experience possible.
That said, I think careful, if heavily stylized, attention to reality is an excellent strategy for creating a more believable and immersive world. Just remember that as in books and film, the trick is to capture the essence of reality in a way that does not frustrate your audience or compromise your artistic intent. When you write dialogue, you want the flow of the conversation to be "real," you want people to say things that they would actually say, but at the same time, you don't actually want to write word for word what people DO say in the real world. You'd be bogged down in "uh"s and "errr"s and awkward pauses, people repeating themselves, cliches, mumbling, unintentional rhyming and alliteration, and not only will this be annoying to your readers, but they will likely get lost in all the excess crap and actually lose track of the layers of meaning that the same exchange would effectively convey in real life. So instead you try to capture the essence of what people say, the essence of how they say it, and this is a flexible and somewhat subjective thing, but it will still only benefit from careful attention to reality.
Likewise, when we talk about things like motive and carrying capacity for game characters, getting too bogged down in a perfect duplication of reality will be counter intuitive and ultimately impossible, but that isn't a blanket excuse to simply ignore reality in favor of an unrealistic status quo that everyone accepts. Not saying there should never be games where you get to put tires and mini-refrigerators in your pants, or pick up hairballs and gum wrappers and press strange buttons "just 'cause." But if you do this, do it on purpose, and when your world is not meant to be humorously or surreally counterfactual (and even when it is, really), pay attention to what reality is actually like, and try to capture some essence of it in the way your world behaves and in the way people interact with it (even if you do achieve this by showcasing reality's absence), because this is a big part of what will draw people in.
In a way, the player character is an extension of the player himself. So if I as a player know something - If I figure out a solution or realise I needed to pick up that coathanger a few screens back - I would assume my character would have made the same observations given that he is IN the very scene that I am looking at. And I wouldn't mind trekking back a few screens to fetch said coathanger. But a balance is needed, because you don't want the whole game to consist of trekking back and forth picking up items as an when you realise you need them.
Although you could argue it from a different angle... Having said all that about the protagonist being an extension of the player, Adventure games are not Role-playing games... you could argue that the puzzles are for you (and the character is just a proxy for you to solve them) and that the story is for the character) and you are his means of experiencing it.
I guess theres no right or wrong answer, but it's an interesting discussion.
You could also say that the player is merely a voyeur, like all audiences, and the player character is his/her own entity entirely, except that there is an intersection wherein the part of the mind that solves problems is largely the same for each. Even their motivations are different, really, because the character has some objective in the interest of which these problems must be solved, but the voyeur just wants to see what happens if the character succeeds, and may or may not have any preference as to what happens in the end.
Interesting discussion!
Generally I agree with most here that following the typical adventure game conventions is fine in most games. People expect to collect everything they can, and bending realism a bit shouldn't be a problem as long as the game doesn't aim to be uber-serious or realistic. Some backtracking here and there is fine for objects that are too big or dangerous or that the player character really shouldn't expect to be useful until a later point of the game.
In semi-serious games I enjoy it when the often crazy adventure game logics are connected to the PC's character traits. E.g. I loved the confession scene in Ben Jordan 7 where Ben could confess that he was a cleptomanic. In my own game the player character is known for his unconventional ways of problem-solving/thinking and teased by his girlfriend about it.
Quote from: LimpingFish on Fri 19/02/2010 01:55:30
What about:
Player sees a crowbar > "I don't need a crowbar." > Player later discovers a crate that's nailed shut > Player goes back to crowbar > "Ahh! This should do!"
That was done in Black Mirror, and done well I feel, though not everyone enjoyed it. Of course it helped that you could always count on the needed object being somewhere close by, not at the other end of the game world. On the other hand finding these objects was sometimes a case of needless pixel hunting. But overall the design worked because the game world was very realistic.
In comedic games I have no problems at all with filling the inventory with all kinds of strange or even bulky objects. That's part of the fun. One of the best visual jokes in Simon the Sorcerer was the animation of the PC cramming a 8-foot ladder in his tiny sorcerer's hat. In such games it is also totally fine to find the problem a long way after the solution. I have fond gaming memories of carrying weird (or sometimes seemingly very useful) inventory items through most of the game until I was finally put into a situation where I could use them.
I've just finished the first draft of a design for a short room escape game that involves the player doing a bit of research on the internet to help him solve some of the puzzles... It's called 'The Cupboard', and the character is (you guessed it) trapped in a cupboard. There are many puzzles within the cupboard, but some end up rewarding you with URLs which will lead to webpages that will contain information useful for solving the 3 'main' puzzles.
Then I remembered this discussion... See, It's a first-person game, so essentially you are the one trapped in the cupboard... a cupboard with no computer and no internet access, so making the player use outside knowledge to solve the puzzles would be an example of metagaming.
As a player, would this bother you, or would you happily embrace this aspect of the gameplay? (personally I'm really pleased with the result and can't wait to implement it into an actual game.)
I could solve the problem by plonking a working, internet-ready laptop in the cupboard and having a message like 'Ooh, that's handy. I have full internet access' when clicked on, which would give the player license to exit the game window (it will be windowed) and use the real-life internet, as though it were in-game.
Stupot: Perhaps a cell phone with internet access would be more plausible, or a PDA of some kind if you don't want to give explanations for why he can't call 911. This totally makes me wonder how many people have accessed this webpage (http://www.wikihow.com/Escape-a-Locked-Closet) while actually being stuck in a closet.