A solid diagnosis, but a poor prescription

A writer at gamestop recently posted an interesting article on fighting games and why they need to be fixed. You can read it at: http://www.gamespot.com/features/fixing-fighting-games-6368619/

I think the article starts out strongly, pointing out the recent short comings in fighting game sales and the historical precedent for the genre to collapse into a hardcore niche again as at the end of the 90s. To my knowledge there are at least 8 fighting game franchises that have been iterated on in the last year (plus several slightly less active titles that have active competitive scenes) and most of those franchises have been updating at least once per year. Because the differences between them are only apparent to hardcore gamers and game designers, the market for fighting games has already become over saturated and will probably implode soon unless somebody puts on the brakes. Of course people keep buying them so companies will keep pumping them out, but that's a different discussion.

Despite that strong diagnosis, the author's ideas for how to fix the fighting game genre are lackluster and frankly unimaginative. Essentially he just wants all Capcom fighters (I believe they're the only ones dropping the ball on what he prescribes) to have story modes and mission modes (that don't suck). Despite spotting the symptoms, the prescription completely misses the mark on what's wrong with fighting games and how to fix them.

The real problem with fighting games is a matter of focus. For a couple of decades now, the fighting game genre has tweaked, expanded, and retweaked the Street Fighter 2 formula over and over again. Two players creating spatial challenges for each other in real time. The problem is the focus of that endless tweaking is mainly in the combo systems. To me, this is what really drives players away. Combos are odd things to think about unless you study the gameplay system and really get down and dirty with training mode, something newbies are disinclined to do. If you want to appeal to more users (newbies), you need to expand on a part of SF2 that doesn't require so much practice.

If you were to ask me how to fix the fighting game genre, I would say change the way the spacing game works. Super Smash Bros broke it by adding in platforms (not to mention changing a lot of the underlying mechanics, but platforms are most relevant to the spacing game which is what fighting games are really about). I've always wanted to make a fighting game where the players can modify the gravity of their player (Metal Storm meets Guilty Gear). Something like that modifies the spacing game, and could breathe fresh air into a rotting genre. I don't think you would even need combos if you made the spacing more interesting, and combos are the biggest barrier to entry (solving another of the author's gripes about fighting games).

Of course, there are a number of other things you could mess with. You could change the ways the life bars work (Smash bros.), you could create a new visual style instead of recycling old ones (Guilty Gear, SF3, Skull Girls), or you could change the environment that the game functions in (another project I thought about for awhile was a sort of online poker version of a fighting game). But the space control game is the core of fighting games, and it's been untouched for far too long, if you want to refresh the fighting game genre, change the spacing game.

An Overlooked World Building Problem

I was thinking about world building the other night at my girlfriend's house when I tripped over a huge (though maybe subtle) stumbling block to the creation of really immersive, deep worlds in video games. I was actually thinking particularly of Valkyrie Profile, a stellar game which doesn't completely suffer from the problem I'm going to talk about in the specifics of gameplay, but which does embody it in a larger sense.

The problem has to do with actions available to players. Namely that when world building, most game/world designers (particularly ones in the sci-fi and Fantasy genres) fail to account for the dichotomy between actions available to characters in the universe and actions available to the player. While compelling fiction that is mostly removed from the action is still a fine way to tell a good story in a game (or at least, it's worked out okay in the past), I've always been frustrated playing games where the world I'm inhabiting doesn't correspond to the world I play in. I actually think the Metal Gear Solid series shows off both the downsides of this and possible ways of handling it.

One of the best examples of this break between player and avatar abilities is almost any custscene from Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. The scene I remember most is when the player beats the boss battle with the HindD helicoptor. In the ensuing cutscene, Solid Snake back flips onto an inflight missile and then uses it as a pivot so he can get a better angle to fire back the killing blow at the helicopter. It would be an amazing segment in an action movie, but after a grueling boss battle where the player is forced to take cover and fire back at the right opportunities, it seems kind of insulting. Meanwhile, in MGS2 and 3 you can actively break the game's story-line by cleverly exploiting the situations in cutscenes.

For example, early on in MGS3, a boss who you'll fight later (The End) will appear, being carted around in a wheel chair. If the player skips the cutscene and has good enough aim, they can shoot The End in the head and kill him. This helps reinforce to the player that the world he's in is real, which is how we get to that sweet immersion spot. How do you know the end is dead? His boss fight is changed to the player fighting a bunch of random foot soldiers.

Is there a general solution? Well, I think it's just a matter of being more creative with the rules of your worlds, and accepting that your players will try to subvert those rules. Rather than trying to recreate a political intrigue story for an action RPG (which leads players to ask "Why can't I just jump villain x in an alley way?"), make they're inaction an explicit rule of the universe. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective does a great job of this by explaining right from the get go that the player is a ghost who can only interact with certain objects in the world.

Mischief Makers is another great example of this. It stars a robot named Marina who can pick objects up, shake them, and throw them. The player doesn't feel robbed within the context of the story because that's all she can do. In fact Marina often attempts to use all of these actions during cutscenes, but usually fails to apprehend the person/boss/clancer.

It certainly takes more work, but I think the payoff is there. Game design is really about consistency more than anything else, and by unifying the actions the player can use and those available to people in the world, the game as a whole becomes more consistent and more intimately immersive.