The Altar of Sequence

First, watch this.  It’s a little long, but it’s super cool.

Done?  Okay, now let’s talk about what just happened.

You don’t typically think of Mario as the sort of guy to traipse around maze-like cave systems, his progression periodically halted by obstacles that must be surmounted by the rewards of further exploration.  A fire flower isn’t necessary for clearing out a tunnel of Piranha Plants blocking the way ahead, it’s just for making it a little easier to complete a strictly linear path.  Right?

But the mechanics of the Fire Flower itself don’t dictate much of anything other than “you shoot fireballs.”  The constraints of the item are imposed by the level design.  And the same is true when applied to the genres as a whole.  What this level in Mario Maker has pointed out is that “Metroidvania” is a question of how levels are designed more than anything else.  Even the mechanics of (what would normally be) a railroaded 2D platformer work surprisingly well in the context of exploration-based gameplay.  (This isn’t actually a new idea; I’d argue that Metroid fell down where Super Metroid rose to the occasion based on factors except level design)

The limits, then, are more a consequence of design of the game world.  Even Nintendo franchises whose games once had more open than linear worlds now tend to opt for the straight and narrow path.  Of course, back in the days of Wind Waker and Metroid Prime, these games were still not programmed well enough that the intended linearity mattered; in those titles, it’s possible to obtain major items and complete long-term milestones in a vastly different order simply by knowing the right bugs and even abusing intended mechanics.  In a way, the difference isn’t that games’ structures have changed recently – it’s that programmers have gotten better at rigidly enforcing them.

This ties in somewhat with the increasing emphasis on narrative and puzzles in games, as opposed to the purely action-driven forays on the NES.  After all, the more your game focuses on story or the player following a specific path, the more the experience stands to lose when the sequence is broken.

But I wonder if it doesn’t also have to do with a creativity drought among game designers?  What I see in a lot of games now is analogous to the concept of “teaching to the test” in schools.  Rather than designing challenges as a set of goals to be reached by any of the vast variety of means the game naturally affords the player, developers set up a goal, a starting line, and a definite plan for every step they want the player to take in between.  God forbid that any powerup or item be used for any purpose except the solving of puzzle specifically laid out by developers.  There’s a delicious irony in the player having to “figure out” less than ever in modern games that are often praised for being “smarter.”

This shouldn’t be taken to mean that a “hallway simulator” has no place in the medium.  Sometimes you sacrifice an explorable world and flexible challenges to highlight a narrative and precisely define the interaction you want.  I actually liked Final Fantasy XIII and even Metroid Fusion as a change of pace.  It’s when each and every game is built like this when I worry that developers have forgotten how to do anything else.

For the Challenge, Part II

Difficulty can, of course, be affected through programming as well as or alongside design.  Mario was programmed with hard limits on his jump height and the levels were designed accordingly.  There are some games where programming and design are complementary, and the result for the player is beautiful, lively physics.  The design and the programming tend to be set in stone for games – especially the latter – and that’s a good thing!  You need consistent ground rules in order for your game to be considered as, well, a “game.”  But when some elements are static, like the programming, other elements are often demanded to be dynamic, like the difficulty.

The most classic example of what I mean by “dynamic difficulty” can be found in the presence of multiple difficulty settings/modes in a game.  Easy, medium, hard – or if you’re feeling creative, “Kid Mode,” “Impossible,” “I am Death Incarnate!”, and so on.  They’ve existed for a long time, often as adaptive measures to player testing of a “baseline” difficulty.  The idea is that difficulty can be more flexible by tweaking certain parts of the game one way or the other depending on this setting.  This is more prevalent in games designed around complex stats and numbers – less so in platformers like Mario where player “stats” are as simple as failure upon taking one or two hits.

The problem is these tweaks are usually just that: tweaks.  Developers can easily program things like player/enemy stats to scale with the difficulty setting, but when they take this approach, every other aspect of the design is still operating under “normal mode rules.”  If you design a final dungeon with an arduous gauntlet of tough enemies, then double their stats as a hard mode condition, it’s unlikely that the difficulty of the same dungeon will remain well-balanced and tested.  Instead, it’ll simply take the player at least twice as long to complete a segment that was already balanced for a completely different pace – or else it’ll be unintentionally and incredibly difficult relative to the player character’s capabilities.  I mean, I’m convinced that oftentimes developers don’t even bother to test alternate difficulty modes at all, but that’s a little harder to examine and prove.

All joking aside, sometimes it’s painfully obvious that a game’s multiple difficulty levels are implemented more as an algorithm than a series of design changes or even tweaks.  Look at Fallout 3 or Skyrim.  When you slide the difficulty up or down, the only alteration you see is how much damage you deal and take.  Enemy configurations and dungeon puzzles remain exactly the same throughout.  The same as what they were when balanced for a “medium” difficulty (Fallout: New Vegas at least gets credit for introducing a “hardcore” mode that actually adds extra features and overhauls the mechanics).

I find this to be a slightly lazy solution to the difficulty “problem.”  What it really does at its ugly core is change the pace of a game, rather than the difficulty; you take twice as many swings at enemies, have to spend twice as long dodging them, and probably die a lot more.  Essentially, longer and more numerous iterations.  Like other fake difficulty, what this comes down to is a waste of the player’s time rather than a test of their skill or tactics.  I could seriously come up with some kind of fancy axiom… “the amount of enjoyment derived from a video game is inversely proportionate to the amount of control the player has over its pacing.”

A smarter way of adapting difficulty higher or lower might be changing enemy AI to not fall for the same tricks: a prime example would be the fighting game genre, where CPU opponents of higher levels will imitate correspondingly more complex tactics and reflexes.  Take level 9 CPUs in Smash Bros. games, which can destroy beginner players in much the same way a more experienced human opponent would: through better coordination of offense and defense.  Sure, you do often spend more time playing against a high-level AI than a low-level one, but the pacing is ultimately dictated by the skill of the player rather than the amount of bullets the enemy can absorb before going down.  If you practice a little more at Smash Bros., you’ll eventually be able to conquer an advanced AI (or human player) faster and faster as you adapt to the level of play.  If you practice a little more at Fallout 3, that irradiated mutant animal is going to sponge the same damage at the same rate no matter how much you wish it would die quickly.

But even stat changes can make for a more interesting challenge if balanced thoughtfully.  Look at Critical Mode in Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix.  Sure, enemies are programmed to deal out more damage, and the player’s max HP and MP gains are cut in half, but at the same time the player does more base damage and starts out with more abilities and ability points.  This results in a real dynamic difficulty where ultimately the player can take their time with cautious play to offset increased risk, but also apply skill and knowledge of the mechanics to actually complete the game faster.  In other words, the game rewards a higher difficulty with a potentially more streamlined pace.

But you’d better believe it took more thought to implement Critical Mode in Final Mix than “Very Hard” mode in Fallout 3.  There simply isn’t a shortcut to well-designed difficulty.  It bears repeating: simply making gameplay take longer does not make it more (legitimately) difficulty.  The whole experience has to be fun for the player in exchange for (and in proportion to) the extra effort.  Even if that requires a little extra effort.

Mario Maker Musings

Found a post on a forum I frequent bemoaning the presence of a full $60 price tag for the upcoming Super Mario Maker, a game that, funnily enough, involves designing one’s own Mario platforming levels.  At first I didn’t think such a complaint was well-founded.  I myself am really looking forward to trying it out; it looks to be a full-fledged editing tool that incorporates almost every potential element in the thirty-year history of the franchise.  There’s not really anything bad about that, is there?  Why gripe about the price?

But I admit, I thought about it a little more, and I can see how one might have (dry) bones to pick with whoever decided to slap the full price on the game.  Consider: what we’re going to be paying for with SMM is largely the ability to produce content of our own.  Don’t get me wrong, the editor looks fun and well-put together, the stuff of User-Generated Content legend; and there are still going to be pre-designed levels included in the game.  But I can’t help but agree at least a little bit with the sentiment that Nintendo is shirking design duty this time around.

I think it’s an easy but fatal mistake to assume that game development is basically just coding and animation, maybe some fitting audio to round it all out.  Even with all the aesthetics and technical underpinnings, there’s a very important component to actual interactivity, and that’s design.  Here, I’m not referring to the aesthetics of a game, like the character art or texture detail.  With games, design can mean something else: the deliberate arranging of all the aforementioned devices according to a certain vision.

Sometimes, especially in a modern context of deep narratives and painstakingly constructed 3D models, roles like playtesting, level layout, mechanical balance, and difficulty tuning seem like an afterthought.  It’s easier to excuse their absence now that we have the technology to wrap games up in prettier packaging.  Necessity is the mother of invention – or to put it in terminology more apt for games, constraints are the foundation of creativity.  When all you really had to sell your game was the design, you had to make doubly sure it worked.

Design, more than any other part of the process, is what determines the player’s assessment of “this is fun!”  Design is just as much a determinant of the game’s spirit as the narrative tone or the color scheme (just look at how much the identity of Super Meat Boy is driven by incredibly well-iterated platforming challenges).  Design marries Mr. Mechanic to Miss Aesthetic and serves you cake at the reception.

So when you put out a title like Super Mario Maker and charge as much for it as any game that does include design as a cornerstone, you’re implicitly attaching zero value to the process of tuning and assembling the artwork and code.  You’re explicitly handing your customer a wrench and some auto parts and saying “build your own car” before charging them the same price as if they had bought a brand new one from a dealer.

And there’s even a way in which the latter is a good thing.  For all the aspiring game developers who will be making their own in a few years, it’s hard to imagine a better way than Mario Maker to enter the world of game design (especially in the context of a genre that’s largely faded into obscurity as far as the mainstream is concerned).  And it’ll force a lot of people to think about the effort that goes into making a truly great game more than the sum of its parts.  Who knows – maybe it’ll cause more value to be ascribed to design rather than less because it can’t be taken for granted this time?

I’m not trying to say that Mario Maker is a bad idea, or even that it’s not necessarily worth the price of admission.  The point here is that it’s not really a game so much as an editing tool.  If you deceive yourself that you’re essentially just purchasing more of the same as an amusing diversion, then that’s when you’re truly missing out on one of the most important and essentially fun steps in any development cycle.