Grabbing atention

[pmartin]

(Before I go and say anything, I'll recommend a book for all of you: "Making Comics" by Scott McCloud, It's about comics but anyone who tells any kind of story in any medium should read this).
(And beware, this is going to be a long long post).


Last week I finaly finished Half Life 2. Yes, I know, I'm kinda late. But see, I just got, for the first time in my life a video card (and it's a really old one to, a NVidia Mx 4000, if you want to know, I'm a poor gamer. ). All of this time having a pc with a 32mb onboard card was somehow good for me. I have the impression that I've playd every single one good game from 1990 to 2002/2003. Ask me, really, King Quest series? Played them all. Wing Commander? All of them. I played so many games that and I'm not even that big of a geek. But I digress. Half Life two.

All thing considered, it's not so good. Really. It's isn't a very consistent game. You can see as you play it that the game was made just to show off the source engine. But It has a great merit: It grabs your attention and the narrative is incredible and It has a genius pacing. It does. Do I have a point? I'm getting there.

There are, at least I think, two ways to grab the audience attention in the beginning of a movie or game or music or anything:
Slowly building it or suddenly,  with intensity.

The first one is the most 'safe' one. Like in the movies, you have to wait for everyone to get comfortable, open their sodas and SHUT THE @$%# up before the feature really starts, and most of the time just the trailers aren't really enough, so  the movie begins with a panoramic shot of the setting, showing some of the main credits, take The Shining for instance, and then after one or two minutes the camera finally stops on the main action. In the Shining this work also as a way to show how isolated the Hotel is. (should I say that I'm not a big fan of Kubrik?) Silent Hill 2 does the same with the long walk in the forest before you arrive in the city, it's so long you don't feel like going back. Anyway, when you finally start telling your history for real you can thrust whoever is playing/watching that they are at least a little bit engaged.

HL2 uses the second method. You start the game and after a few menus and a loading screen (that gives you the necessary time to get comfortable in your chair Gman's big scary face shows up in the screen telling Gordon to "Rise and shine", and on the background some  loud noise, as if the game was saying LOOK AT ME AND DON'T BLOODY BLINK ONCE, then you are throw in some train heading for a distopic city and the words "Point Insertion" shows up on the screen as you gain the ability to control your character. Genius if you ask me. But I don't mean to suggest that this method is better, it's just that intensity works.

What does this have to do with AGS? It's just that in most ags games I play I don't see that. Some AGS games just start right away with some introductory dialog, or some text explaining something and then the game starts. I mean I just double clicked  in the game Icon and 30 seconds later I already have to solve some puzzle? Think CMI, you have a puzzle in the first scene, sure, but only after about ten minutes of introductory cutscenes credits and all of that caribean music. When the game itself starts too soon the player feel kind of lost, he isn't "inside" the game world already, most likely he doesn't even know what kind of game he's playing. Is it serious? Is it easy? Should I expect a hard puzzle already? Or even: WHAT THE HELL DID THAT CHARACTER JUST SAID I'M SUPPOSED TO DO? Kinda sad, because most of the time this kind of thing happens to me I close the game and say "I'll play it later" and probably never play it again. I'm sure this happened at least once to you.

What I'm trying to say is that you should always try to 'introduce' the player to the game before the game really starts, you know? It's hard, but I think it's essential.

I hope I didn't sound too pompous, and I really really hope that no one give me answers like "Why are you trying to teach us how to make games? You didn't even released a game! Noob."

Anyway, what do you think about the subject? Today I'm in the mood for some forum discussion action, what about you?

[CaptainD]

CMI probably isn't a good example since the vast majority of players will "know" the character and game world from the first two Monkey Island games.

Most adventure games I've played (and I have played... rather a lot of them) feature a cut-scene introduction, then you start playing the game.  To me the immersion is usually there and increases as the game progresses.  I think characters and storyline are very important for this, although in adventure games having a good interface is perhaps almost as important.

I think you're probably right about the 2 methodologies - the "safe" slow build-up and the immediate throwing you into a situation.  I've seen both done, usually adventure games take the safer route but this is also a more logical route for the genre most of the time.  If the adventure game in question is one where you can never die or get a "game over" scenario, it's probably much harder to get the immediate adrenaline buzz going than other game genres where speed of reaction is an important factor.

I'm curious about which AGS games you've played already?  The King's Quest remakes by AGDI and A Tale of Two Kingdoms, for instance (among many others) have really good cut scenes that immerse you into the game world. 

[Dualnames]

Fantastic and very, very interesting food for thought, I really agree with what is being said there. I can't say much in the sake of agreeing, but I'll come back at a later time and contribute.

[pmartin]

I think I forgot to say something in my post. I guess I'll remember eventually

@CaptainD

Come to think of it, it isn't the best example at all. It's just that It was the first game that has a puzzle in the first scene that came to mind.

And yes, most adventures do have introductory cutscenes, mostly because Adventures try to mimic movies  in some level, more often than other genres.

The slow build is really more suitable for the adventure genre, mostly because it's a very slow paced kind of game, but there are some adventures that can really give you that sense of urgency, like those in Broken Sword, of course you can die in that game, but it's a totally different approach than action games. I would say that deaths in adventure games are more "meaningful" than in action games.

And regarding which AGS games I've played, quite a lot, actually. I've discovered AGS in 2004, I think, and since then I've played several games, the first was Quest for Glory 2/5 (or is it 1/5? Can't remember). Unfortunately I finished quite a few, for several reasons, the King's Quest remake and Tale of Two Kingdoms among them. The last I played through the end was The Marionette.

@Dualnames
Please do.

[Derrick Freeland]

I think its possible to do the "safe" opening by putting your player right into the game world.  The story and action don't have to start right away, they can still build slowly.  There doesn't need to be a puzzle right away, the player can just wander around and experience the setting.  Personally, I like story elements to be introduced in game-play.  I find that cinematics and cut-scenes (especially when there are too many) can pull the player out of the immersion.  It is an interesting dilemma; how much agency you want to give the player vs how much you want them to follow the story.

[Dave Gilbert]

This is an interesting subject!  And a huge point of contention with me. Things have changed so much in the last ten years.  It used to be that you expected the first hour or two of gameplay to be the most boring part.  You explore, you learn about the world, everything builds up, and THEN stuff starts to happen and it all pays off.  Now?  You've got maybe 5 minutes to make an impression before the players goes "Bleh, bored" and switches games.

Of course, back then you probably already bought the game and were already invested.  In this modern era of one-hour trial demos, you really have to get the player hooked in order to get them to pay.

[pmartin]

But that's different. I'm talking from a artistic point of view. Things sure have changed, today  the COD kids need at least 2 explosions in the beginning of the game or else they'll really going to say that the game is boring, but that's another discussion.

Games always needed to make a good first impression, it's a form of art, isn't it? The first few minutes matter because they set the tone for the rest of the game. They can be slower, the game can take time before things start happening, but it has to interesting? You know?

[CaptainD]

Games always needed to make a good first impression, it's a form of art, isn't it? The first few minutes matter because they set the tone for the rest of the game. They can be slower, the game can take time before things start happening, but it has to interesting? You know?

On a related subject, do you think that most trailers for adventure games manage to capture the interest well enough?

I think adventure games can maybe get away with not completely drawing you into the game world until you've played the game for a while, even the plot can take a while to build up, but the main character (playable character) absolutely has to get you feeling involved basically straight away.  If I don't care what my character is doing or why he / she is doing it, I'm unlikely to care about continuing to play the game.

[Grim]

Too many adventure games start with endless dialogs that do nothing to hook player in. I'm not saying you need the two explosions to achieve that, but in my opinion when characters talk about things that you're not yet involved with in any way, it's a poor start... All that gets much more interesting when you've got to know them a bit more and you know what's going on. Best recent examples here are Gray Matter and Black Mirror 3- fairly decent games but due to the extremely slow introduction of the story they will forever remain games for the hardcore fans.

  With many modern commercial adventure games I often feel like they are made not for people but for the idea of what adventure genre fans are like- boring. I think it's time developers changed the way they look at their potential customers and made good games, instead of games that sell ( but that was probably already said too many times, anyway )

Hey, just thought about something... Didn't Hitchcock say that you should start with a big bang and then slow down and gradually build up the tension again? So, maybe these explosions are not a bad idea after all?...

[EnterTheStory (aka tolworthy)]

Too many adventure games start with endless dialogs that do nothing to hook player in.

As with all things, Zak McKracken is the perfect example of how it should be done IMO. The title sequence introduces all the main elements - the mysteries, villains, chases, puzzles, planets, characters, who they are, what they do... all tied into a simple idea (a guy has a dream). With an unforgettable soundtrack to boot. Then bam, you're in a familiar looking bedroom in the real world, and it's time to explore. Or just skip the intro at the start and you're right there. Superb.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I think as storytellers we have a certain level of responsibility to tell a good story without compromise.  All I hear, in the various media websites and forums I take part in, is that each generation is having a lower attention span and is less patient and more demanding of visual stimuli.

Okay.  So how do we deal with this?  So many people suggest merely changing the way games and other media are made to accommodate these kidults, for lack of a better term -- but I rarely hear people suggest an alternate approach, and that is to try and combat this growing disorder -- and I do believe it to be a growing disorder -- impatience and hyperactivity to the point where you need constant visual reinforcement to remain invested in something is an issue that needs to be addressed, not pampered.

My suggestion is to take the high road rather than compromise and tell the story the way you want it.  If it's a complex narrative you will draw people who are interested in complex narratives.  The kidults will complain, but the way I see it this is an issue they need to work through, and the more someone caters to a person, whether it's because they're intellectually lazy, impatient -- whatever -- the more you enable and reinforce that behavior.

Just my view and the way I approach matters.  I do not go into a game design thinking 'oh no, are people too dumb to get this' or 'are they too impatient to put up with a lighter, less action-oriented story'.  I write the story I want to write, produce the game I want to produce, and frankly, go watch Spongebob if you can't even be bothered to invest some time in the narrative.

Fullstop.

[pmartin]

I think ProgZmax, tolworthy and Grim are absolutely right.

Grim, especially made my point very clear about the ags games. That was exactly what I was talking about.

[Snarky]

The whole "kids these days are idiots" shtick is as old as the hills. While the entertainment context today probably offers more distractions than before, and requires more multitasking and split attention, I'm not at all convinced that regular kids actually have a lower attention span than in generations past. What with 3-hour movies, Harry Potter, Lost, etc., people seem to have little problem keeping their attention focused for a long time if they're interested in the story you're telling.

But I do think the massive amount of options that are instantly available at the click of a button means consumers (players) make more snap judgments. And that makes it more important to hook them straight away, if you actually want people to play your games. I don't think that's a symptom of a deficient audience, just a sign that harder competition means games these days can't get away with things players might have tolerated in the past. (Another factor is that computer games back in the 80s were a novelty in themselves, so just showing pictures on the screen and playing music was enough stimulation to impress people. Full animation, recorded audio, FMV and 3D played a similar role in the early CD-ROM era.)

To slog through an opening that isn't interesting because it might repay your investment later requires a good deal of trust. Why should you think it gets any better further in? If you're a fan of the creator, or have had the work highly recommended, or just because you have to (as a reviewer or completist, or for a school assignment, maybe), then you might persevere, but many others will give up -- including people who might have enjoyed it if you'd just hooked their attention initially.

So while some creators may be able to rely on a committed fanbase or great reviews, or just not worry about reaching the audience at all, I think in most cases you absolutely should try to grab players' attention, and consider whether raising tensions (or whatever the motivating passion is in your story) from the very start would really be a compromise of your storytelling.

[CaptainD]

Very good points Snarky.

As a reviewer, there are games I might not have bothered continuing to play from a purely personal point of view (well, there are definitely a few!) but felt I had to continue to be able to offer a complete opinion in my review.  Some turned out to be well worth persevering with, others not so much.

Also - yeah, the oft-repeated "kids these days" motto might have about as much truth to is as the also oft-repeated "adventure games are dead" saying.

[Dave Gilbert]

It doesn't have to be necessarily about BAM BOOM in the first five seconds. You can definitely do a lot with a slower paced opening - but it still has to be engaging right from the get-go.  Many modern adventure games (including some of my own) have long, drawn-out introductions with lots of dialog and believe that to be immersive.  It's not.  Give the player control as soon as humanly possible, immerse them in a world, and make it worth exploring. 

This is especially true for modern games, where you typically download a demo (or one-hour trial) for free.  Back in the "old days", a player would be more willing to give it a try even if it didn't interest them at first, because they would have paid hard cash before seeing one pixel of it.  But now?  There is zero investment in downloading a free demo.  So if it doesn't interest a player then there's no reason to play it further, let alone purchase it.

[Snarky]

I should also say that I think a slow build can absolutely work, and that it's not like the only way to hook people is with 'splosions. The opening of The Shining from earlier is a good example of that, where the music plays a big part in building the atmosphere. (But even The Shining makes sure to throw in the elevator of blood vision early in the film just in case we weren't sure this was going to be a horror movie.)

To the original post's point, wasn't the first HL hailed for the way it kicked off the story through a playable sequence instead of with a cut-scene? Of course, a number of games have done that (before and) since. One adventure(-ish) examples that comes to mind for grabbing the player straight away is Fahrenheit, where the game starts with a brief flash of your character seeming to have some sort of seizure and stabbing a man to death in a toilet stall, and then right away you have to hide the body before a cop comes in.

As with all things, Zak McKracken is the perfect example of how it should be done IMO. The title sequence introduces all the main elements - the mysteries, villains, chases, puzzles, planets, characters, who they are, what they do... all tied into a simple idea (a guy has a dream). With an unforgettable soundtrack to boot. Then bam, you're in a familiar looking bedroom in the real world, and it's time to explore. Or just skip the intro at the start and you're right there. Superb.

The LucasArts graphic adventures in general are great examples of parsimonious intros. TSOMI: "I'm Guybrush Threepwood, and I want to be a pirate!/Go see the pirate leaders in the SCUMM bar." Fate of Atlantis: "All right, Jones, how are you gonna find the statue in all this junk?" (Though FOA does run a lenghtier cut-scene after the playable titles sequence.

This reminds me of a previous post about unnecessarily long intros and too much background information as you start off.

[cat]

I don't like when a game starts with a long dialog just for the sake of introducing the characters. On the other hand, I also don't like when it just starts without giving directives where to go first or what to do.
I think Snarky posted a great example: The intro scene from FoA gets directly into action but with simple control. Only after the player is immersed enough in the gameplay the long cutscene with dialog starts.

When a game starts with endless dialog I really get bored. I want to right jump into it but always with directions on what to do next (i.e. no exploring needed to find the task/story).

[pmartin]

BUT you still can start a game with lot's of dialogues!
Let's take another movie as example, because it's easier:

Reservoir Dogs starts with an eight minutes conversation between eight guys you don't really care about. And it's a classic. It's another example of intencity, I mean, it dosn't start with loud music or explosions and all, the intencity is in the dialog itself:

"Let me tell you what Like A Virgin is about. It's all about a girl who digs a guy with a big dick.
The entire song is a metaphor for big dicks."

The second you hear this you're already interested. It's funny, it's bold, and it's unique. Eight minutes of dialogue and it doesn't bore you at all.

But wait, it doesn't mean that if you do the entire scene in AGS it would be as cool as the movie. No. If you do this scene with 8 sprites that move only their single pixel mouth as this speech hoover over them it would be boring as hell. You would have to do an well animated scene, something a lot more dynamic than what usually happens when a character is talking in a adventure game. Put in some voice acting and it's even better.
(And probably 8 minutes is quite long for a game, the player hopes to start playing sometime soon)

So, you can start with a lot of dialogue. BUT IT CAN'T BE BORING. The player really need a reason to read/listen to the dialogue.

And this is a REALLY hard task.

[Anian]

Well you can't really do 8minutes of a cutscene because, unlike a movie, you're not on your couch just watching, you came it because of the gameplay as well, it's not a passive medium. Besides that intro scene doesn't require an info dump because basically the whole movie fills in the story and characters already know what has happened to them, but if you come in as a player and want to get into a character you need to know what's happened - say you're in that dialog and you need have an option of saying you're a cop...you'll get shot, but everybody in that scene already knows they musn't say such a thing...

Yeah, easy (simplified) interaction with a lot of drama (being an explosion or an intense dilaog) is a good way to grab attention in the beging. And, unlike movies, you can make a short intro then credits that explain the backstory through pictures or something, then go into action. Indiana Jones (1st movie) have an action intro that's loosley connected to the plot of the rest of the movie, but you get the sense of the character and there's action right away, while the real plot gets under way after that.

[ddq]

It's really annoying when a game fucks around at the beginning. Take Mass Effect 2 as a seemingly innocuous example. When I was playing, there was a bug that caused the game to crash sometimes on the character creation screen. This wouldn't have been a problem in the original Mass Effect, since rolling your character is the first thing you do after hitting "New Game" but ME2 starts off with a short gameplay section sandwiched between two lengthy cinematics. The intro isn't egregiously long or poorly written, it's just unskippable and, while pretty engaging the first time, kind of annoying the fifth.

I prefer a few short lines and BOOM, throw me into the game. This works particularly well in first-person games such as Bioshock, Portal, and Half-Life 2. The whole "limited area to explore" thing can go on for too long though, depending on the level of immersion; Half-Life's tram ride into work wears on your patience more than GLaDOS' quick opening speech in Portal. And despite my love for the games, the openings of Persona 3 and 4 go on for waaay too long without any real gameplay, around 1-2 hours of talking before you fight your first enemy, much longer until you get free exploration.

In adventure games, my patience is usually a bit higher, since a great deal of their appeal is in the dialog. Frankly, I'd prefer an opening monologue/conversation to being simply dropped into the world, as adventure games owe most of their immersion and life to the characters and story rather than the mechanics of play. Most AGS games I can think of start with a lot of talking before setting the player free, usually an appropriate amount. Since exposition is normally distributed throughout the game, it's rarely a big infodump at the start, often having a little dialog, a short gameplay segment, the rest of the dialog, before starting the game proper. Eternally Us did a very nice job at this; I thought the opening was pretty good compared to the rest of the game.

So as a player, I don't mind adventure games starting out with exposition or character-introducing conversations, although to grab my attention, I don't like it to drag on for too long.