Metagaming in adventure games - good or bad?

[Mr Flibble]

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.

[Ryan Timothy B]

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:

This can make me quit even a game that's great otherwise because I consider it a serious design flaw.

[LimpingFish]

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?

[Mr Flibble]

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.

[CShelton]

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.



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.

[Jared]

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.

[Anian]

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.

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.

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.  

I think this is gonna end in "no right or universal answer" and "careful designing."  

[Snake]

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, 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!

[WHAM]

And yes, we're kinda returning on topic after wandering the adventure desert for a while.  

I think this is gonna end in "no right or universal answer" and "careful designing."  

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.

[Radiant]

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.

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 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...

[Mr Flibble]

I'd also like to point out that while I think my post outlined a realistic solution, it wouldn't be a fun one.

[LimpingFish]

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.

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.

[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.

[potatocurry]

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.

[Charity]

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.

[Vukul]

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!)

[Anian]

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* 

[Charity]

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.

[close]

[blueskirt]

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.

[GarageGothic]

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.