For reference Raph Koster wrote "the book" on game design, and was the lead designer for Ultima Online (among other things) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raph_Koster
Raph was the lead game designer on SWTOR a game that was way ahead of it's time and one of the most enjoyable sandbox mmorpg's I've ever played. I'm working on a new game that will take inspiration from lessons learned there.
I remember when Raph was working on Metaplace[1], which was a kid-targeting, programmable (Lua dialect), virtual world/user generated content factory that was contemporary to the launch of Roblox ca. 2006-2007. I wonder quite often what things might be like if Metaplace had gotten to the scale and scope that Roblox wound up achieving.
What was interesting/worked about it's design (and why did the players care?[1])
Was it resilient to the, uh, many, many well-documented problems that the genre pushes players/itself into?
---
[1] There's a lot of ideas in this space that sound interesting on paper to nerds bikeshedding, but often fall flat in actual implementation. I'm curious as to what were the ones that worked.
Game was SWG, not SWTOR. Launched in 2003 and was sunset in 2011 when SWTOR launched.
SWG set out to be something like Dwarf Fortress in terms of depth to the worlds physics; for example, gunsmiths could tinker on all parts of a gun and maybe get a lucky roll to unlock +N more damage or -N recoil. Same with land vehicles and bioengineered animals, droids. Parameters to noodle all the way down. Some under user control, others random to foster sense of a chaotic physical world.
As the in game object economy was entirely propped up by crafters this fostered economic PVP.
Lucasarts of 2000-2003, when the game was developed, did not understand MMO, and 3D games take much longer than 2D adventure games and shoved it out the door 2 years too early.
It also suffered from 90s OOP heavy software development patterns. Devs had difficulty managing it and updating over the years.
Ultimately it failed at being a Star Wars game. PVE was just "kill a nest of bugs" and failed to leverage storylines and characters. Players with nothing else to do ended up ruling the economy or whatever. Could have made them compete against Star Wars power brokers, IMO. Jabba sabotaged your factory, or something. Once a player was kitted out they had nothing to do.
Some have spent the last 10+ years implementing a server emulator, various tools and mods. An emulator built around the original release is here: https://github.com/swgemu
I tinker on a modded private server now and then. Initially added in random world events, to generate things to go do and replacing odd design decisions like mission terminals with NPC models to talk to in that seedy back alley, to foster more in world RP vibe.
When WOW launched SWG was redesigned to play more like that. Typical MBA "copy paste what they are doing" project management.
It truly was ahead of its time, I don't think any one game has come close to implementing such a rewarding group of systems and economy in an MMORPG, except maybe EVE but that is a very different game and admittedly I did not find EVE fun.
The most exciting systems to me had very little to do with combat, but especially as it pertains to this article, also couldn't be as rewarding without it. It was all the player run economies, homsteads, towns and cities, player shops, craftsman and markets. The fact that materials mined had quality which impacted item stats, on and on.
To get good gear, you had to know a guy who made it, they had to know a guy who'd mined good quality minerals, and that person may have found the minerals through another player who had prospected it.
It made sense to be part of a player city, so you could put your house in a known market area for people to visit.
It all mattered because people needed the equipment to go do the quests, and so it was a really symbiotic set of systems that made crafting and economy matter.
The skill tree system was so nice compared to the rigid class systems of other MMORPGs, too.
The fact that player towns just emerged was really cool.
It was such a shame the space expansion was so ... flat. Neither space nor ground had a storyline to follow, but space wasn't an open world, and had no real element of choice in skill paths.
Raph is, at once, incredibly accomplished, thoughtful about design, and humble about it. I once caught him coming off an international flight, and he was excitedly showing off a game he'd coded on the plane. He genuinely loves working on the stuff and thinking about it.
His writing is often SO full of ideas that I can't absorb an entire piece in one sitting. It's like a 12 course tasting menu. The neat thing with his writing is that, despite what he says here about all 12 pieces being important together, you can often just pick an isolated bit and chew on it for a while, and still learn something.
(Presumably return to the other 11 courses later; they'll still be fresh.)
Fantastic watch thanks for sharing. I realize now how a favorite game of mine, Wario’s Woods on SNES, juices up a twist on match 3 puzzle and how dry early versions of Tetris were (succeeding despite that).
In that sense most things are simple. Though it's also simple to over simplify. Since often simplicity arises out of the accumulation of expert analysis rather than being obvious from the get go. Which I think is just as important as what you say:
Simple means not complex, means not composed of even simpler parts. A twelve step plan is literally a list of simpler parts, making it not simple. Most things are complex, since there are so many ways to combine simples. It is an ironic title.
I disagree. Most things are complex, yet most things are also simple.
Don't forget that words are overloaded so they only mean things in context. Words are both simple and complex because of this.
As an example: the rules to the game of life are simple. The outcomes are complex. The rules cannot even be decomposed further, making them first principles of that universe.
> means not composed of even simpler parts
These would really be "first principles". Which is a form of simplicity. Being the simplest something can be, yet that sentence itself conveys that "simple" relies on context and in a continuum.
This relationship of "simple yet complex" is quite common. We could say the same thing about chaotic functions like the double pendulum. It is both simple and complex.
I've played about 20 hours of Arc Raiders and I'm already a little bored of fishing stuff out of draws and lockers. These days I mostly just hunt Arc, or other players that shoot at me first.
It's kind of hard to stay equipped without salvaging
though.
I ask this because Ralph is a luminary in the field and you just likened his contribution to the industry to that of somebody who designs predatory engagement loops and this is utterly ridiculous.
I thought your comment was too dismissive at first, but then I read the whole article, and I fully agree with it.
The article gives useful theoretical tools for understanding and critiquing such shallow games, actually. Its examples are drawn from many genres, and it's thoughtful and insightful about many kinds and aspects of games.
The comment you call out with your question is indeed a low-effort and low-quality dismissal. I struggle to describe it without being more insulting than that.
the complexity of a given domain is not necessarily an indication of it's difficulty. I suspect that a guy of Koster's experience and reputation knows that and is making a spicy title for the clicks.
My question: is there a concise theory of game design that properly explains why cutscenes are fucking stupid?
There are a lot of AAA games out there that very clearly seem like the developers wish they were directing a movie instead. Sure, there’s loads of cutscenes to show off some cool visuals. But then they seem to think “ok well we need to actually let the player play now”, but it’s still basically a cutscene, but with extra steps: cyberpunk 2077 had this part where you press a button repeatedly to make your character crawl along the floor and the take their pills. It’s just a cutscene, but where you essentially advance frames by pressing the X button.
Then there’s quick time events, which are essentially “we have a cutscene we want you to watch, but you can die if you don’t press a random button at a random time”, and they call it a game.
If it’s not that, it’s breaks in play where they take control away from you to show you some cool thing, utterly taking you out of the experience for something that is purely visual. I usually shout “can I play now? Is it my turn?” at the screen when this happens.
But I digress… I essentially hate games nowadays because this or similar experience seems to dominate the very definition of AAA games at this point. None of them respect your time, and they seem to think “this is just like a movie” is a form of praise, when it’s exactly the opposite of why I play games.
> My question: is there a concise theory of game design that properly explains why cutscenes are fucking stupid?
Two things to consider regarding cut scenes. First, sometimes they are mandated by the game story writers and backed up by artists wanting to show off. Second, and more importantly from a game developer's perspective, they are a useful tool for hiding scene loading I/O such that the customer experience does not notice a nontrivial delay.
Sounds like you're still bitter over Dragon's Lair and other LaserDisc games.
But like AAA has never been an adjective that meant good or fun. Just that the budget is big.
Cut scenese are an opportunity for a change of pace and to tell the story in a different way. Or as a way to emphasize a game action. When you get a touchdown in Tecmo Bowl, you have a little cut scene which is nice (but gets repetitive). The cut scenes in a Katamari game give you some sort of connection to the world, but you can always skip them.
I think I've managed to skip most big budget games for most of my gaming life. That's fine, lots of other customers for those, I'll stick to the games I like.
I think different people value different things in entertainment. For you, the "cinematic" aspects of the media are worthless - but for others, the whole "interactive cinematic spectacle" is worth it even if it comes at the expense of intractability or the ability to execute skills. Take the COD campaigns for example - notoriously, some of the turret-vehicle-chase-sequences don't actually require any user input to succeed at, but a certain class of player still enjoys them because they're in it for different things than you.
You should play more indie games. Not only are they more gameplay focused, there is an over abundance of great games at bargain prices.
I just picked up Prodeus, if you like games like old Doom and Quake you’ll probably love it.
Also, From Software games (Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Sekiro, Armored Core) are basically all gameplay. Cutscenes are kept to a minimum and gameplay is is tight AF
I know exactly what you mean. Lots of video games really do feel more like movies these days. Cyberpunk drove me absolutely crazy with all the cut scenes
my theory is a there are two camps of "games" (really more of a spectrum from the projection of 2 axes "play" and "art"):
- proper games ("play"): if you remove all the lore, cinematics, dialogs, etc the gameplay can stand on its own and the user find it fun. (ex: Elden ring, Pokemon. you can play a cut-scenes ripped version in a language you don't understand and still enjoy both, chess and other abstract games are the extreme end of this category)
- interactive DVD menus ("media arts"): it's a movie but sometimes you get to interact with it. in this category you have also have visual novels with branching trees/DAGs.
they are more than a movie but still ultimately the most important test: they can't stand alone without the story/lore.
I enjoy both, but I wish games and steam pages were more front and center about which camp they are in the beginning before I even buy them.
my ultimate sin is games that think they are in category 1 who give you unskippable cut scenes.
Bad take IMO. Cutscenes are fine. Many are beloved, even.
Taking agency away from the player is usually a bad thing, so its not something you want to do when the player has other goals to work on. They are a fine tool to break up the action and games are also about the story and world building so expositional sections are a natural thing.
Its important to not mess with the game pacing, though.
After a heavy boss fight where the player doesn't even know what their next goal is anyway? Perfectly fine time for some exposition.
Running past an NPC on the way to do something? That's a horrible time to whip around the camera and tell the player something.
AAAs have huge momentum so you'll often see plot points and exposition that needs to be shoehorned in to fix some writing issue or what have you. Of course, you also just have game directors making bad decisions.
Agreed. Cutscenes are perfectly fine things to have in a game. Ninkendo is writing like a personal preference (not liking cutscenes) is a universal law of game design, but that is not at all the case.
> But I digress… I essentially hate games nowadays
This is not exactly a new phenomenon. The final cutscene in Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008) is 71 minutes long (Guinness world record). The total cutscenes add up to around 9 hours according to a Reddit user. Maybe more games are doing this now compared to 15 years ago, but I wouldn't bet on it.
All the AAA games will be inherently fucking stupid almost by design.
And this is unavoidable - massive hundreds of millions if not billions in budget -> even if you alientate the bottom 10%, you lose 10% of sales. Bottom 20%, 20% of sales. Not gonna happen.
So you have Legend of Zelda games where pretty much all puzzles are so simple you can instantly tell what the solution is the very moment you see them, ie. downright retarded with few rare exceptions. This also applies to difficulty, etc.
As a result, AAA games can only be appretiated or enjoyed for not much else but production values. The soundtrack, the setpieces, the massive worlds and how much money must have gone into it, etc.
Or God of War. The puzzles almost solve themselves.
Interestingly, Elden Ring (2022) is AAA but very difficult, though not because of the puzzles. Perhaps puzzles test more for IQ (which can't be changed) than for gaming skill.
Nothing asserted here is simple. And after reading all that it's still hard to design and build a game that will cut through the noise of all the other games coming out on Steam.
It's not a matter of "simple vs. easy". If you have to write many words to list your ideas and you state each idea is deep and connected to all the other ideas, the thing you are talking about is not simple.
When I started writing fiction I found myself naturally gravitating towards inserting puzzles and mysteries and twists and unknowns. I think some people just love that. There's this dopamine aspect of solving the problem or knowing the unknown and the anticipation towards it can be very intriguing! Games do this in a more obvious way, but the 'rule of fun' is everywhere.
Look how exciting mystery is and how boring well known things are, but ironically there's a lot more to, say, the theory of gravity that if contextualized differently would be exciting and deeply interesting that 'unknowns' like the mystery of some cult or whatever can't even come close to, but in the end, there's something inside of us that wants to read about that cult. I make sure to self-aware of this and do deep dives into the boring 'known' world and push back on the sensationalism and such I'm so drawn to.
To your last paragraph I think contextualising the mystery is a good amount of the fun and I guess all of the storytelling.
There's a lot of things about our real world, that if told by an alien race, would make us sound like ethereal wizards.
"They convinced the sand itself to think for them, guided the power of Sol to move them, and spoke to eachother through the very fabric of energy that moves invisibly through us all"
Similar to that, there's a bunch of magic/fantasy storytelling that can kind of pull me out of disbelief, because I can't help but think "yeah we have that, it's electricity" or "witches are just pharamacists without good research"
For reference Raph Koster wrote "the book" on game design, and was the lead designer for Ultima Online (among other things) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raph_Koster
Raph was the lead game designer on SWTOR a game that was way ahead of it's time and one of the most enjoyable sandbox mmorpg's I've ever played. I'm working on a new game that will take inspiration from lessons learned there.
I remember when Raph was working on Metaplace[1], which was a kid-targeting, programmable (Lua dialect), virtual world/user generated content factory that was contemporary to the launch of Roblox ca. 2006-2007. I wonder quite often what things might be like if Metaplace had gotten to the scale and scope that Roblox wound up achieving.
1: https://www.raphkoster.com/2007/09/18/metaplace/, or this demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZiB_JcRH_s, or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaplace
What was interesting/worked about it's design (and why did the players care?[1])
Was it resilient to the, uh, many, many well-documented problems that the genre pushes players/itself into?
---
[1] There's a lot of ideas in this space that sound interesting on paper to nerds bikeshedding, but often fall flat in actual implementation. I'm curious as to what were the ones that worked.
Game was SWG, not SWTOR. Launched in 2003 and was sunset in 2011 when SWTOR launched.
SWG set out to be something like Dwarf Fortress in terms of depth to the worlds physics; for example, gunsmiths could tinker on all parts of a gun and maybe get a lucky roll to unlock +N more damage or -N recoil. Same with land vehicles and bioengineered animals, droids. Parameters to noodle all the way down. Some under user control, others random to foster sense of a chaotic physical world.
As the in game object economy was entirely propped up by crafters this fostered economic PVP.
Lucasarts of 2000-2003, when the game was developed, did not understand MMO, and 3D games take much longer than 2D adventure games and shoved it out the door 2 years too early.
It also suffered from 90s OOP heavy software development patterns. Devs had difficulty managing it and updating over the years.
Ultimately it failed at being a Star Wars game. PVE was just "kill a nest of bugs" and failed to leverage storylines and characters. Players with nothing else to do ended up ruling the economy or whatever. Could have made them compete against Star Wars power brokers, IMO. Jabba sabotaged your factory, or something. Once a player was kitted out they had nothing to do.
Some have spent the last 10+ years implementing a server emulator, various tools and mods. An emulator built around the original release is here: https://github.com/swgemu
I tinker on a modded private server now and then. Initially added in random world events, to generate things to go do and replacing odd design decisions like mission terminals with NPC models to talk to in that seedy back alley, to foster more in world RP vibe.
When WOW launched SWG was redesigned to play more like that. Typical MBA "copy paste what they are doing" project management.
Oh wow it was SWG?
It truly was ahead of its time, I don't think any one game has come close to implementing such a rewarding group of systems and economy in an MMORPG, except maybe EVE but that is a very different game and admittedly I did not find EVE fun.
The most exciting systems to me had very little to do with combat, but especially as it pertains to this article, also couldn't be as rewarding without it. It was all the player run economies, homsteads, towns and cities, player shops, craftsman and markets. The fact that materials mined had quality which impacted item stats, on and on.
To get good gear, you had to know a guy who made it, they had to know a guy who'd mined good quality minerals, and that person may have found the minerals through another player who had prospected it.
It made sense to be part of a player city, so you could put your house in a known market area for people to visit.
It all mattered because people needed the equipment to go do the quests, and so it was a really symbiotic set of systems that made crafting and economy matter.
The skill tree system was so nice compared to the rigid class systems of other MMORPGs, too.
The fact that player towns just emerged was really cool.
It was such a shame the space expansion was so ... flat. Neither space nor ground had a storyline to follow, but space wasn't an open world, and had no real element of choice in skill paths.
Someone should convince Richard Garriott and Sid Meier to write too.
Raph is, at once, incredibly accomplished, thoughtful about design, and humble about it. I once caught him coming off an international flight, and he was excitedly showing off a game he'd coded on the plane. He genuinely loves working on the stuff and thinking about it.
His writing is often SO full of ideas that I can't absorb an entire piece in one sitting. It's like a 12 course tasting menu. The neat thing with his writing is that, despite what he says here about all 12 pieces being important together, you can often just pick an isolated bit and chew on it for a while, and still learn something.
(Presumably return to the other 11 courses later; they'll still be fresh.)
> crazy juicy, so that players are captivated by spectacle, well beyond the needs of feedback from a UX perspective
What a great phrase to describe an aspect of game design to strive for.
https://www.raphkoster.com/2015/06/29/game-design-ux-design/
"juice" (in terms of game making) will always remind me of this amazing, classic talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg
Fantastic watch thanks for sharing. I realize now how a favorite game of mine, Wario’s Woods on SNES, juices up a twist on match 3 puzzle and how dry early versions of Tetris were (succeeding despite that).
Interesting, I came across "juice" in this same sense of relatively subtle UX polish in this article: https://garden.bradwoods.io/notes/design/juice.
This feels like a classic example of the concept that simple ≠ easy
In that sense most things are simple. Though it's also simple to over simplify. Since often simplicity arises out of the accumulation of expert analysis rather than being obvious from the get go. Which I think is just as important as what you say:
I think if people remembered these things then things would be more simple. I'll add one more relationshipSimple means not complex, means not composed of even simpler parts. A twelve step plan is literally a list of simpler parts, making it not simple. Most things are complex, since there are so many ways to combine simples. It is an ironic title.
Don't forget that words are overloaded so they only mean things in context. Words are both simple and complex because of this.
As an example: the rules to the game of life are simple. The outcomes are complex. The rules cannot even be decomposed further, making them first principles of that universe.
These would really be "first principles". Which is a form of simplicity. Being the simplest something can be, yet that sentence itself conveys that "simple" relies on context and in a continuum.This relationship of "simple yet complex" is quite common. We could say the same thing about chaotic functions like the double pendulum. It is both simple and complex.
> Simple means not complex, means not composed of even simpler parts.
“Simple” is obviously subjective and context-dependent, but I don’t agree with that.
Getting a bowl of cereal is simple, yet still composed of several simple steps.
> Simple means not complex, means not composed of even simpler parts.
Is that formally defined and widely accepted? If not, I don’t think your argument holds because almost nothing is simple based on what you said.
Yeah kind of feels like "writing a hit novel is simple - you just need a plot that is engaging, well written prose, and a satisfying story arc".
I mean... yeah kind of obvs. Very "rest of the owl".
Well, that wouldn’t give you a “hit” novel. That would give you a good novel. Hit != Good
This reads like the handbook for people making grind-based games. Sure enough, the author exclusively works in the mmorpg space.
If you are a game designer, please take this with a grain of salt.
Fun does not equal repeated challenges. And let me also reject the implicit notion that stories are entertainment but not, academically speaking, fun.
I've played about 20 hours of Arc Raiders and I'm already a little bored of fishing stuff out of draws and lockers. These days I mostly just hunt Arc, or other players that shoot at me first.
It's kind of hard to stay equipped without salvaging though.
Have you made any games?
Just wanted to say that I really appreciated your articles about game networking and game physics (https://gafferongames.com/)!
Thank you!
I ask this because Ralph is a luminary in the field and you just likened his contribution to the industry to that of somebody who designs predatory engagement loops and this is utterly ridiculous.
I thought your comment was too dismissive at first, but then I read the whole article, and I fully agree with it.
The article gives useful theoretical tools for understanding and critiquing such shallow games, actually. Its examples are drawn from many genres, and it's thoughtful and insightful about many kinds and aspects of games.
The comment you call out with your question is indeed a low-effort and low-quality dismissal. I struggle to describe it without being more insulting than that.
The title is ironic. Game design is very simple indeed.
This is an amazing article. I work on game design and I think this could work as a map of the terrain.
the complexity of a given domain is not necessarily an indication of it's difficulty. I suspect that a guy of Koster's experience and reputation knows that and is making a spicy title for the clicks.
My question: is there a concise theory of game design that properly explains why cutscenes are fucking stupid?
There are a lot of AAA games out there that very clearly seem like the developers wish they were directing a movie instead. Sure, there’s loads of cutscenes to show off some cool visuals. But then they seem to think “ok well we need to actually let the player play now”, but it’s still basically a cutscene, but with extra steps: cyberpunk 2077 had this part where you press a button repeatedly to make your character crawl along the floor and the take their pills. It’s just a cutscene, but where you essentially advance frames by pressing the X button.
Then there’s quick time events, which are essentially “we have a cutscene we want you to watch, but you can die if you don’t press a random button at a random time”, and they call it a game.
If it’s not that, it’s breaks in play where they take control away from you to show you some cool thing, utterly taking you out of the experience for something that is purely visual. I usually shout “can I play now? Is it my turn?” at the screen when this happens.
But I digress… I essentially hate games nowadays because this or similar experience seems to dominate the very definition of AAA games at this point. None of them respect your time, and they seem to think “this is just like a movie” is a form of praise, when it’s exactly the opposite of why I play games.
> My question: is there a concise theory of game design that properly explains why cutscenes are fucking stupid?
Two things to consider regarding cut scenes. First, sometimes they are mandated by the game story writers and backed up by artists wanting to show off. Second, and more importantly from a game developer's perspective, they are a useful tool for hiding scene loading I/O such that the customer experience does not notice a nontrivial delay.
Sounds like you're still bitter over Dragon's Lair and other LaserDisc games.
But like AAA has never been an adjective that meant good or fun. Just that the budget is big.
Cut scenese are an opportunity for a change of pace and to tell the story in a different way. Or as a way to emphasize a game action. When you get a touchdown in Tecmo Bowl, you have a little cut scene which is nice (but gets repetitive). The cut scenes in a Katamari game give you some sort of connection to the world, but you can always skip them.
I think I've managed to skip most big budget games for most of my gaming life. That's fine, lots of other customers for those, I'll stick to the games I like.
Cut scenes can also be a valuable tool for giving information to the player:
- a camera flight go give an overview of the map
- show the location of the final boss
- hint at future missions
- provide a clue for solving the puzzle
- etc.
I think different people value different things in entertainment. For you, the "cinematic" aspects of the media are worthless - but for others, the whole "interactive cinematic spectacle" is worth it even if it comes at the expense of intractability or the ability to execute skills. Take the COD campaigns for example - notoriously, some of the turret-vehicle-chase-sequences don't actually require any user input to succeed at, but a certain class of player still enjoys them because they're in it for different things than you.
Half-Life got it right. The cutscene plays but you can still run around and do whatever you want (including not listening).
You should play more indie games. Not only are they more gameplay focused, there is an over abundance of great games at bargain prices.
I just picked up Prodeus, if you like games like old Doom and Quake you’ll probably love it.
Also, From Software games (Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Sekiro, Armored Core) are basically all gameplay. Cutscenes are kept to a minimum and gameplay is is tight AF
I think you summed it up yourself, because cutscenes are trying to turn this medium into that of movies.
I know exactly what you mean. Lots of video games really do feel more like movies these days. Cyberpunk drove me absolutely crazy with all the cut scenes
my theory is a there are two camps of "games" (really more of a spectrum from the projection of 2 axes "play" and "art"):
- proper games ("play"): if you remove all the lore, cinematics, dialogs, etc the gameplay can stand on its own and the user find it fun. (ex: Elden ring, Pokemon. you can play a cut-scenes ripped version in a language you don't understand and still enjoy both, chess and other abstract games are the extreme end of this category)
- interactive DVD menus ("media arts"): it's a movie but sometimes you get to interact with it. in this category you have also have visual novels with branching trees/DAGs. they are more than a movie but still ultimately the most important test: they can't stand alone without the story/lore.
I enjoy both, but I wish games and steam pages were more front and center about which camp they are in the beginning before I even buy them.
my ultimate sin is games that think they are in category 1 who give you unskippable cut scenes.
Bad take IMO. Cutscenes are fine. Many are beloved, even.
Taking agency away from the player is usually a bad thing, so its not something you want to do when the player has other goals to work on. They are a fine tool to break up the action and games are also about the story and world building so expositional sections are a natural thing.
Its important to not mess with the game pacing, though.
After a heavy boss fight where the player doesn't even know what their next goal is anyway? Perfectly fine time for some exposition.
Running past an NPC on the way to do something? That's a horrible time to whip around the camera and tell the player something.
AAAs have huge momentum so you'll often see plot points and exposition that needs to be shoehorned in to fix some writing issue or what have you. Of course, you also just have game directors making bad decisions.
Agreed. Cutscenes are perfectly fine things to have in a game. Ninkendo is writing like a personal preference (not liking cutscenes) is a universal law of game design, but that is not at all the case.
> But I digress… I essentially hate games nowadays
This is not exactly a new phenomenon. The final cutscene in Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008) is 71 minutes long (Guinness world record). The total cutscenes add up to around 9 hours according to a Reddit user. Maybe more games are doing this now compared to 15 years ago, but I wouldn't bet on it.
All the AAA games will be inherently fucking stupid almost by design. And this is unavoidable - massive hundreds of millions if not billions in budget -> even if you alientate the bottom 10%, you lose 10% of sales. Bottom 20%, 20% of sales. Not gonna happen.
So you have Legend of Zelda games where pretty much all puzzles are so simple you can instantly tell what the solution is the very moment you see them, ie. downright retarded with few rare exceptions. This also applies to difficulty, etc.
As a result, AAA games can only be appretiated or enjoyed for not much else but production values. The soundtrack, the setpieces, the massive worlds and how much money must have gone into it, etc.
Or God of War. The puzzles almost solve themselves.
Interestingly, Elden Ring (2022) is AAA but very difficult, though not because of the puzzles. Perhaps puzzles test more for IQ (which can't be changed) than for gaming skill.
I have never disagreed more with a comment on this site.
For the people taking the title literally without apparently reading the article:
> Put another way — every single paragraph in this essay could be a book.
Nothing asserted here is simple. And after reading all that it's still hard to design and build a game that will cut through the noise of all the other games coming out on Steam.
It's not a matter of "simple vs. easy". If you have to write many words to list your ideas and you state each idea is deep and connected to all the other ideas, the thing you are talking about is not simple.
This is an extremely interesting article about game design and it's a bit silly to fixate on the title.
I think it's tongue-in-cheek.
When I started writing fiction I found myself naturally gravitating towards inserting puzzles and mysteries and twists and unknowns. I think some people just love that. There's this dopamine aspect of solving the problem or knowing the unknown and the anticipation towards it can be very intriguing! Games do this in a more obvious way, but the 'rule of fun' is everywhere.
Look how exciting mystery is and how boring well known things are, but ironically there's a lot more to, say, the theory of gravity that if contextualized differently would be exciting and deeply interesting that 'unknowns' like the mystery of some cult or whatever can't even come close to, but in the end, there's something inside of us that wants to read about that cult. I make sure to self-aware of this and do deep dives into the boring 'known' world and push back on the sensationalism and such I'm so drawn to.
To your last paragraph I think contextualising the mystery is a good amount of the fun and I guess all of the storytelling.
There's a lot of things about our real world, that if told by an alien race, would make us sound like ethereal wizards.
"They convinced the sand itself to think for them, guided the power of Sol to move them, and spoke to eachother through the very fabric of energy that moves invisibly through us all"
Similar to that, there's a bunch of magic/fantasy storytelling that can kind of pull me out of disbelief, because I can't help but think "yeah we have that, it's electricity" or "witches are just pharamacists without good research"
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