Fundamental Challenges Part 1: Timing Challenges

The goal of developing a theory for any art form is to analyze that form and break it down into it's most basic parts. Music Theorists have spent centuries categorizing chords, musical forms, and time signatures. Game Theorists have argued about rational play, and have spent years analyzing the intuitively simplistic but mathematically intensive Prisoner's Dilemma, deriving increasingly complex strategies and situations from the basic game. Game Design by comparison has no established fundamental elements, besides wide sweeping ideas like "The graphics" and "the gameplay".

So far, Game Design books have aimed to deliver a "big picture" look at game design. Jesse Schell does delve into mechanics such as space or chance in The Art of Game Design, but doesn't really dig into any one topic that deeply. Chris Crawford, in The Art of Computer Game Design, almost exclusively looks at the bigger picture of video games as an art form. He focuses on prototyping a perspective of games and discussing how to approach game design. Besides his taxonomy of genres (which is understandably quite out of date), he barely tackles concrete fundamentals. Schell and Crawford are both looking at the big picture, rather than really attempting to investigate the most basic of game "units". I wish to remedy this, by adding my contribution to the study of Game Design as an art and science.

Schell writes that in essence all games are puzzles, or challenges if you will. Here I shall propose a taxonomy of challenge types found within all games (with examples from video games). I actually conceived this taxonomy a couple of years ago, and have been using it to deconstruct games ever since. With this tool in mind, a game designer can easily analyze a game's structure to better understand and augment it. Furthermore this taxonomy make it easy to see why a game is or is not difficult, addressing another need of game designers. I have plenty to say about all of these challenges, so I'm going to split them up into 4 different posts, one for each challenge type. Stick around to see them.

The first type of Challenge is the Timing Challenge. Timing Challenges are challenges where the player must perform a specified action within a limited period of time. Because this challenge involves Time, we can split it up into two sequential parts:

1. The Warning Window: The Warning Window is the amount of time between the player being told he will have to perform an action and the time when the Action Window starts.
2. The Action Window: The Action Window is the period of time, during which the player must perform the specified action. The size of the Action Window is the final word in the difficulty of a timing challenge. The smaller the window, the harder the challenge.

To further complicate matters, we have to consider both of these windows in terms of Actual Time and Relative Time. What are Relative and Actual Time? Here I'm defining "relative time" as time as expressed within the game's event system. In Final Fantasy Tactics (or any turn based game, really), time only passes in "Turns", and the metric that actions are judged to be "fast" or "slow" by is turns. The actual length of a turn for the player time is essentially infinite. The player can take as much or as little time as he wishes. From my observations, relative time often correlates with strategic difficulty (as in, decision making)of a game. Games with small windows of relative time are often more strategically intensive then games with long windows.

Actual time relates to the real world perception of time. As a window's duration decreases in Actual Time, the technical skill(as in reflexes and dexterity) required to complete the challenge increases. In a sense, for a window to be small in Actual Time, Relative Time must be expressed in a way that relates it to Actual Time. A great example of this is any fighting game, where time is measured in "frames". Frames are the individual animation frames of the characters performing actions. Modern fighting games (and all modern games really) run at 60frames/second, and this has become the standard unit for measuring time in fighting games. Because the game's Relative Time is a function of Actual Time, the game's technical skill requirements are heightened.

Now for an actual application of this challenge type: in fighting games, players must react to their opponent's moves and time their own button presses to land within very small Action Windows, with very small preceding Warning Windows. When I say small, I'm referring to both Actual and Relative Time, because Relative Time in this game is a function of Actual Time and the Actual time is often below a 3rd of a second (about 20 frames for those of you paying attention). Because fighting games are so rapid in both Actual and Relative Time, they require strategic as well as technical skill.

Final Fantasy Tactics also has very small Active and Warning Windows. But unlike fighting games, it features essentially infinite Actual Time to perform its actions, despite very tight windows in Relative Time. In this case a Relative Time unit is a turn, rather than a frame. Often, the player has 5 turns of information to plan with, which feels like eternity to the hyperactive fighting game player. But when things suddenly go wrong, you have an extremely limited number of turns (maybe two) to react and remedy a situation. The Action Window is quick, despite the Actual Time approaching infinity.

Try applying these tools to other games you know, Max Payne is an interesting exercise because it plays with Actual and Relative Times as the central gameplay mechanic. Music games arguably have massive Warning Windows, because notes almost always fall on the beats of the song. With this tool, I think you'll begin to look at games in a new way.

Why Realism

"This is awesome, it's so realistic"

"That's so stupid, why would anyone actually do that in real life?"

I'll start this off with a simple declaration: I believe the pursuit of realism in video games is as stupid as it is constant. I play games to get away from the rules of reality, to live by a clear, well defined rule set. I also enjoy the fantastic. Conversely, many seem to seek realism endlessly. They judge games almost exclusively on how realistic they are. It's as if they don't know they are playing video games. Reducing the nuance of performing a navy seal operation, driving an Italian sports car, or playing a professional sport down to a level controllable with a controller is ludicrous, even with the complex controllers we have today. Most gamers focus on specific "realistic" mechanics rather than the experience as a whole. It's a fairly idiotic mind set.

Despite my views, realism is a cherished quality. I've long wondered why. I first pegged a gamer's desire to do what he cannot in real life as the culprit. For gamers like myself, that means exploring the impossible. For gamers who enjoy realism, that usually means exploring what is unsafe, unpractical, or unfeasible for them in the real world. Being a navy seal is a full career (and a dangerous one), driving an Italian sports car would put you back more than a few pieces of quiche, and you need to be born with talent before you can train for years before you can become a pro athlete.

I believe this desire is part of it. But tonight I got to thinking that there's another, much better reason that people strive for realism: Consistency.

I don't believe gamers are after realism because it's particularly impressive. I believe they pursue a set of rules consistent with their model of the world. Consistency is something humans seek constantly. The search for consistency has birthed religion, social norms, government, just about everything. I'm arguing that it also factors into game appreciation. Logically, most games are not accurate representations of anything, at least not directly. For example, most games involving Samurai (except Busido Blade) give players life bars allowing them plenty of cuts from katanas before they finally die. In Way of the Samurai, this is a gameplay precaution to protect fun, but it makes no sense with the rules of the "Real World". Despite this, the game delivers an experience consistent with real samurai. The player must always be conscious of when and where they draw their weapons and speak politely and respectfully in company, much like actual samurai did in "real life".

Similarly, updated stats keep sports games in sync with the real world. Each update factors in how players have performed over the year to create a sense that players are in control of real players. Gran Turismo spends almost too much time seeking that real world consistency that players love. Polyphony Digital meticulously tunes their games, delays them constantly, and frequently making trips to race tracks to double check their numbers.

Why do I think consistency is the real culprit? Super Mario Bros. The Super Mario universe is far from realistic, but one thing commented again and again by game journalists is that the Super Mario universe holds a mysteriously cohesive consistency in its world. In Super Mario Bros 3, for example, if Mario eats the "Super Leaf" he grows a racoon tail and ears. These new appendages mean Mario can fly. It's a ridiculous chain of logic, but in a context of flying turtles, fire flowers, and mushroom people, the Super Leaf feels like a crucial part a complete system. Somehow, Miyamoto was able to create a world that is instantly sensical and consistent to everyone who plays it. Maybe that's why it's the best selling game series of all time. Consistency.

I suppose the lesson is to always aim for consistent worlds. Make mechanics that are reflective of what the characters will be doing in the storyline, and what they'd be doing otherwise. Make sure the logic of the world and your game blend. Things can be random in the context of our world, but make sure they aren't random in yours. People notice, though maybe they don't think they do.

Talking about HUDs: What Bioshock did wrong

As recipient of more than one Game of the Year award, one looks at Bioshock as a pinnacle of modern gaming. The visuals are engrossing, the world is hyper interactive, the combat is engaging while allowing creative thinking, and it has a great storyline. It breaks my heart then, that Ken Levine and his team at Irrational completely botched the climatic scene, the confrontation with Andrew Ryan, by violently ripping me out of the experience.

What did they do? They screwed up the HUD. It disappeared.

HUDs are funny things. Though I'd never heard the term until I played StarSiege, HUDs have been around since pong. They are a useful and (if well designed) unobtrusive way of giving the player pertinent information about the current game session. In olden days they showed the player's score, coins in Mario games, ammo in shooting games, and the ultimate resource: life. But HUDs give players one more, often overlooked piece of information. A piece of information whose importance increases as the depth of the story does.

The HUD tells the player he's playing a game.

When the HUD is active, any seasoned gamer is on their toes, looking for threats. The game is active, and is feeding them the information they need. Anything that goes wrong is their fault. This reaction is the primary importance of HUDs. They force the player to remain connected and focused, even if they have no actual control over the situation.

Let me start with a simple thought experiment and then I'll return to Bioshock's folly. Think of any game you want that has narrative scenes broken up by gameplay scenes. My example is Shinobi, which shows a cinematic at the start and end of every level, with gameplay filling the gaps between. It doesn't matter if it's an action game or an RPG. Imagine you're in an intense battle in this game, in Shinobi you'd be teleporting around and killing enemies. You're glancing at your life to see how the battle's going, you look at your magic meter (scrolls in Shinobi) to see if you can do any special attacks, you're keeping track of any modifiers the game's engine supports (Such as the number of enemies you've killed in rapid succession in Shinobi).

Suddenly the screen goes white. Your HUD is still there, but you can't see anything else. What runs through your head?

If you're a normal gamer, you're going to start freaking out. Why is the screen white? Did I die? Is this some enemy's special attack? Did my game crash?

All from a simple white screen! Imagine the same situation, but this time your HUD disappears. I believe you'll find that after an initial moment of panic, you quickly realize this is a cinematic and relax. This is exactly the reaction we must avoid when telling stories with games. Once the game reverts to a movie, the player checks out of his character, and returns to reality.

Without spoiling too much, in the climatic scene in Bioshock, the main character is stripped of control of his body. While a nice enough plot point, this scene is delivered HUD free. When I watched it, I didn't feel what the character felt. He was powerless, I was not. I had been completely removed from the game's world. Imagine if the scene had kept its HUD. I would've hammered away at the buttons on my controller, trying to see if any buttons would work. I'd slam the joysticks around trying move my body. I would have been wildly thrashing (much as the character would be) in the only way I knew. Both the protagonist and I would be panicking at our lack of control.

There are other examples, but this seems most prominent. HUDs let players know that they are playing a game. It's a deciding and often overlooked aspect of games that separates them from movies and books. We as game designers must embrace HUDs and use them as traps to ensnare our players.