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MISANTHROPIC MECHANICS -OR- FINDING YOUR GAME'S CORE
Do you really need to add another fishing mini-game?
slash- 02/28/2012 09:42 PM
- 8775 views
People add a lot of unnecessary features to their games.
Copy & paste isn't the way to go
Clutter is a problem I see in a lot of games. Feature clutter stems from the idea that adding a feature to a game always makes it better. Very often, these features come from other games in the same genre - for example, Mario games have coins, and Sonic games have rings. Not all of these features are bad, but when added to a game without question, the original purpose is often lost, and the game suffers.
When adding any feature to a game, the designer needs to think critically about what impacts it will have on the game as a whole, and whether it will make the game better or worse. If your game is cluttered, don't feel bad! Many industry games are cluttered with ill-designed, ancient features that nobody wants, because "XXX game had this feature, and it sold a lot of copies". Thankfully, you're all indie developers who don't have to worry about corporate thinking or pitching to a publisher!
Let’s took at an example:
Originally, Donkey Kong gave every player a limited amount of extra lives. If you wanted more lives, you had to drop another quarter into the cabinet and start from the beginning. The “extra lives” feature had a concrete purpose, grounded in both game design and profit. If you got better at the game, you got to play more for your money! It’s frustrating to people who suck at the game, but it’s very rewarding for players who learn how to play well.
The original Super Mario Brothers, inspired by arcade cabinets, also limited your lives. Though it didn’t require quarters, it still had a purpose for a “extra lives” system: Running out of lives meant you had to start over, which (while frustrating) increased total gameplay length. It also created a fear of failure, and thus created huge satisfaction when you finally beat a hard level, because you didn’t lose all your progress. In addition, you’re willing to go out of your way to find 1-UPs, because you desperately need them to beat the game in one go.
Today’s Mario games (Super Mario 64, for example) still use the “standard” lives system of its predecessors. However, starting from the beginning when out of lives is considered unforgivably frustrating nowadays; reasonably so, since the game’s length has increased naturally (via content). Then why does Mario 64 still have lives? What’s the point of a 1-UP? All running out of lives does is bring you back to the main menu and increase the time it takes for you to retry a level by about 30 seconds, because you have to run through the castle again. Extra lives are a relic from Mario 64’s ancestors which remain only because “it wouldn’t be a Mario game without 1-UPs”.
100 lives? But I'm already immortal!
RPG Maker and Clutter
Many RPG Maker games suffer from the same unnecessary clutter. Now, I was young once and I remember my thought process when starting a project: “It’s an RPG, so it needs towns, level-ups, lots of characters with magic abilities and swords, some minigames...”. I would rattle off a list of features I liked from other RPGs, and try and make them work in mine. Needless to say, this is a scatter-brained and overall ineffective design process.
P.S: Some of this can be blamed on the RPG Maker engine, which makes it very easy to add stereotypical RPG features such as level-ups, equipment, abilities, and turn-based battles. While you can easily add these to your game, you don't have to.
Finding Your Core
"The most immersive games are the games that know what they're doing and do it good" - Rami Ismail, of Vlambeer
When you start a new project, the first thing you should do is sit down and come up with your core. What is your game about?
Example cores:
The cores of the best games can be summed up in a sentence, which, consequently, makes it a hell of a lot easier to describe your game to someone else. EVERY time you’re designing a feature for your game, you can sit back and ask yourself: does this fit my core? If not, scrap it. You’re just watering down the original concept. Don’t add things to your game for the sake of a “feature list”. If your game's core is about the fear of being trapped in a scary situation, having your main character stop to play a fishing mini-game will detract from that.
If you design everything in your game around your core, not only will you have trimmed unnecessary, boring fat from your game (and thus saving yourself vital development time), your game will create an experience that feels more cohesive and focused, and it will be better for it.
World-impending doom? What better way to spend it then at the races?
-----
Copy & paste isn't the way to go
Clutter is a problem I see in a lot of games. Feature clutter stems from the idea that adding a feature to a game always makes it better. Very often, these features come from other games in the same genre - for example, Mario games have coins, and Sonic games have rings. Not all of these features are bad, but when added to a game without question, the original purpose is often lost, and the game suffers.
When adding any feature to a game, the designer needs to think critically about what impacts it will have on the game as a whole, and whether it will make the game better or worse. If your game is cluttered, don't feel bad! Many industry games are cluttered with ill-designed, ancient features that nobody wants, because "XXX game had this feature, and it sold a lot of copies". Thankfully, you're all indie developers who don't have to worry about corporate thinking or pitching to a publisher!
Let’s took at an example:
Originally, Donkey Kong gave every player a limited amount of extra lives. If you wanted more lives, you had to drop another quarter into the cabinet and start from the beginning. The “extra lives” feature had a concrete purpose, grounded in both game design and profit. If you got better at the game, you got to play more for your money! It’s frustrating to people who suck at the game, but it’s very rewarding for players who learn how to play well.
The original Super Mario Brothers, inspired by arcade cabinets, also limited your lives. Though it didn’t require quarters, it still had a purpose for a “extra lives” system: Running out of lives meant you had to start over, which (while frustrating) increased total gameplay length. It also created a fear of failure, and thus created huge satisfaction when you finally beat a hard level, because you didn’t lose all your progress. In addition, you’re willing to go out of your way to find 1-UPs, because you desperately need them to beat the game in one go.
Today’s Mario games (Super Mario 64, for example) still use the “standard” lives system of its predecessors. However, starting from the beginning when out of lives is considered unforgivably frustrating nowadays; reasonably so, since the game’s length has increased naturally (via content). Then why does Mario 64 still have lives? What’s the point of a 1-UP? All running out of lives does is bring you back to the main menu and increase the time it takes for you to retry a level by about 30 seconds, because you have to run through the castle again. Extra lives are a relic from Mario 64’s ancestors which remain only because “it wouldn’t be a Mario game without 1-UPs”.
100 lives? But I'm already immortal!
-----
RPG Maker and Clutter
Many RPG Maker games suffer from the same unnecessary clutter. Now, I was young once and I remember my thought process when starting a project: “It’s an RPG, so it needs towns, level-ups, lots of characters with magic abilities and swords, some minigames...”. I would rattle off a list of features I liked from other RPGs, and try and make them work in mine. Needless to say, this is a scatter-brained and overall ineffective design process.
P.S: Some of this can be blamed on the RPG Maker engine, which makes it very easy to add stereotypical RPG features such as level-ups, equipment, abilities, and turn-based battles. While you can easily add these to your game, you don't have to.
-----
Finding Your Core
"The most immersive games are the games that know what they're doing and do it good" - Rami Ismail, of Vlambeer
When you start a new project, the first thing you should do is sit down and come up with your core. What is your game about?
Example cores:
- An emotion you want the player to feel: Fear, ambition, selfishness, heroism, growth
- A mechanic you want to experiment with: Difficult platforming based around gravity-flipping ;a one-man, turn-based battle system
- A design skill you to practice: Using random generation while maintaining good level design; Frequent deaths without inducing rage in the player
The cores of the best games can be summed up in a sentence, which, consequently, makes it a hell of a lot easier to describe your game to someone else. EVERY time you’re designing a feature for your game, you can sit back and ask yourself: does this fit my core? If not, scrap it. You’re just watering down the original concept. Don’t add things to your game for the sake of a “feature list”. If your game's core is about the fear of being trapped in a scary situation, having your main character stop to play a fishing mini-game will detract from that.
If you design everything in your game around your core, not only will you have trimmed unnecessary, boring fat from your game (and thus saving yourself vital development time), your game will create an experience that feels more cohesive and focused, and it will be better for it.
-----
World-impending doom? What better way to spend it then at the races?
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CloseCoincidentally, the idea of a "core" in game design was discussed in today's Extra Creditz (Western & Japanese RPGS). They go more in-depth than I do, so take a look if you wanna learn more :)
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
...Super Mario 64 is one of "today's" Mario games? It's 16 years old!
Aside from that semantic nitpick, I definitely agree with everything you're saying. When Final Fantasy 13 didn't have any towns, for example, at first I and a lot of people were like "...what!? How do you even do that? It's not an RPG without towns!" But then, actually, it worked really well. The combination of no towns, healing after each battle, and most of the mental "down time" being done through flashbacks succeeded in creating a constant sense of extreme urgency that almost no other RPGs have, which was exactly what they were going for. Towns didn't help their goals, so they dropped them.
I don't think this is really a valid argument for never putting minigames in any game, though. Or, well, to be more accurate, I do think that personally, but I know a lot of people who enjoy minigames when they're done certain ways.
Aside from that semantic nitpick, I definitely agree with everything you're saying. When Final Fantasy 13 didn't have any towns, for example, at first I and a lot of people were like "...what!? How do you even do that? It's not an RPG without towns!" But then, actually, it worked really well. The combination of no towns, healing after each battle, and most of the mental "down time" being done through flashbacks succeeded in creating a constant sense of extreme urgency that almost no other RPGs have, which was exactly what they were going for. Towns didn't help their goals, so they dropped them.
I don't think this is really a valid argument for never putting minigames in any game, though. Or, well, to be more accurate, I do think that personally, but I know a lot of people who enjoy minigames when they're done certain ways.
I don't really get minigames. When I seek a distraction it's because I am actively avoiding normal battles, not because I actually want to play the minigame.
Every moment spent making minigames is a moment that should have been spent improving the battle system. Why curing mental drainage caused by battles instead of preventing it?
Every moment spent making minigames is a moment that should have been spent improving the battle system. Why curing mental drainage caused by battles instead of preventing it?
Mini-games and sidequests have their place in some games. For example, my first instinct was to mention The Legend of Zelda's penchant for fishing games and "find them all" quests, but Zelda is well-known and respected for its exploration and discovery aspects - the idea of a fishing pond helps build a more fully complete world, which Zelda games strive to do.
Final Fantasy games may have many opportunities for mini-games, but it's hard to ignore the weirdness of spending 20 hours of gameplay time grinding levels and doing miscellaneous sidequests when you're supposed to only have 7 days until you explode. Sidequests break the feeling of impending doom, especially goofy ones like breeding chocobos.
@LockeZ: I actually intended to mention Super Mario 3D Land, but the final reward for SM64's 120 stars was too obvious a target. The same point applies to pretty much all Mario games after SM64, though :P
Final Fantasy games may have many opportunities for mini-games, but it's hard to ignore the weirdness of spending 20 hours of gameplay time grinding levels and doing miscellaneous sidequests when you're supposed to only have 7 days until you explode. Sidequests break the feeling of impending doom, especially goofy ones like breeding chocobos.
@LockeZ: I actually intended to mention Super Mario 3D Land, but the final reward for SM64's 120 stars was too obvious a target. The same point applies to pretty much all Mario games after SM64, though :P
Darken
3952
there's a stark difference between an open game and a focused game though. I kind of like it when games are scatter brained sometimes because there's a sense of 'zone' to it. Yes Portal was cool because it had one central mechanic and stuck with it and didn't bother with anything else. But RPGs are weird, like really weird. You can walk around, talk to people, do puzzles, battle, explore world maps. RPGs aren't ever known for their "core" even their genre status is questionable. If you want to make an RPG about only battles, cool, there's a certain preference for that. But yeah, boats and folks.
dude in OoT they put in the fishing mini game because they had extra time. It was completely improvised in the middle of development. The same argument against FF applies. I don't see how it's any different.
dude in OoT they put in the fishing mini game because they had extra time. It was completely improvised in the middle of development. The same argument against FF applies. I don't see how it's any different.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Openness is a type of focus too. I think the core mechanic in most typical JRPGs is an epic journey across the world to save it from destruction, and the core mechanic in most WRPGs is the exploration of an immersive and expansive world.
Some games have multiple focuses, which works in some cases as long as it's not too many. Plus, as you say in this article, the core emotion of the game is different from the core mechanic of the game.
Final Fantasy 7 has a focus on taking an epic journey across an entire world to prevent the destruction of the planet; it has a focus on strategically building up your power to use against increasingly powerful foes; it has a focus on discovering the secrets of Cloud and Sephiroth's past. Chocobo breeding actually incorporates two of these (exploration and power-building) and still feels dumb, so I'd argue the reason it feels dumb might be something else (like the fact that it contradicts a major plot point, or the fact that the ultimate magic spells are obtained by inbreeding colored ostriches). Catching a chocobo the first time to get past the Midgar Zolom didn't feel out of place, did it?
Some games have multiple focuses, which works in some cases as long as it's not too many. Plus, as you say in this article, the core emotion of the game is different from the core mechanic of the game.
Final Fantasy 7 has a focus on taking an epic journey across an entire world to prevent the destruction of the planet; it has a focus on strategically building up your power to use against increasingly powerful foes; it has a focus on discovering the secrets of Cloud and Sephiroth's past. Chocobo breeding actually incorporates two of these (exploration and power-building) and still feels dumb, so I'd argue the reason it feels dumb might be something else (like the fact that it contradicts a major plot point, or the fact that the ultimate magic spells are obtained by inbreeding colored ostriches). Catching a chocobo the first time to get past the Midgar Zolom didn't feel out of place, did it?
Darken
3952
That sounds like a context focus to me. Even so then JRPGs have lots of sidequests which sometimes diverges the story (aka subplots). Like uh I think there's an issue with context focus and mechanical focus that this article isn't clear on. In portal the mechanics are restricted to just the portal gun, you can move and jump but it never becomes more important than the gun. Every new toy introduced is reliant on the function of the gun. The context of the game is inside of a lab which serves the mechanics even more. I would call this a game truthful to its "core" because there's a gimmick with a well thought out execution that ties into it. In GTA if they chose to be more true to the core you might just spend the entire game stealing ONLY cars and ONLY doing driving missions. Nothing wrong with that or the existing GTA either way. ell.
Saying a game should stick it its core just sounds.... vague and restricting even though I'm with minimalistic games like Portal or Psychonaughts 100%. If slashphoneix's point is to tell people to stop adding in mini games and "systems" to the game for the sake of quantity then don't knock it up to games in general when talking about "sticking to the core" because that's a bigger issue. Limiting your focuses or whatever does not guarantee a good game, it's really just a preference (probably best for amateurs) and how much the creators really want to expand their ideas. Some people like open games at the expense of careful detail, some people don't.
Saying a game should stick it its core just sounds.... vague and restricting even though I'm with minimalistic games like Portal or Psychonaughts 100%. If slashphoneix's point is to tell people to stop adding in mini games and "systems" to the game for the sake of quantity then don't knock it up to games in general when talking about "sticking to the core" because that's a bigger issue. Limiting your focuses or whatever does not guarantee a good game, it's really just a preference (probably best for amateurs) and how much the creators really want to expand their ideas. Some people like open games at the expense of careful detail, some people don't.
There's no reason a game can't be "open" and still have a purpose or a core. Both The Legend of Zelda and Grand Theft Auto games are well known for having core mechanics deeply entrenched in exploration and unguided play.
This article is in no way meant to insult or belittle mini-games or cool features, or to imply that your game has to be "minimalist". I'm just pointing out that as a designer, you should take a step back, analyze your game and the feature you plan on adding, and make sure it will actually improve your game's quality. You should analyze everything in your game, and cut everything that doesn't make the game better.
Designers should question everything in their games. As soon as they start making assumptions about what works and what doesn't, the game begins to crumble.
This article is in no way meant to insult or belittle mini-games or cool features, or to imply that your game has to be "minimalist". I'm just pointing out that as a designer, you should take a step back, analyze your game and the feature you plan on adding, and make sure it will actually improve your game's quality. You should analyze everything in your game, and cut everything that doesn't make the game better.
Designers should question everything in their games. As soon as they start making assumptions about what works and what doesn't, the game begins to crumble.
yamata no orochi
184
Neat article! Think it's worth remembering that video game sprawl isn't always easy to diagnose, though. Take a game like The World Ends With You: at first, there's so many crazy elements at play that it almost seems like the game is a mishmash of superfluous features. But once you get further in, you realize that in reality not only is the game closely structured around its message, but literally every feature in the game is there to play into that message. Games like the latter Persona titles are even more sprawling, but might be even tighter in how the major themes feed into the gameplay and the story.
And of course there's charm in excess, as well. NIER is a game where every dungeon is a homage to a video game genre, where the player may choose to fish or garden or power slide on a boar, where sometimes your only reward from a sidequest is listening to the main characters banter. But despite the excess, and despite the game's obvious flaws, it's also deeply sad and expresses for the first time messages that have probably been swimming in cavia's consciousness since Drakengard. I've also been reading a Let's Play for this crazy adventure/shooting/rhythm game called Dangan Ronpa, and while it is literally swimming in ridiculous mini games, the atmosphere is just deranged enough, and the attention to detail strong enough, for it to work.
At any rate, I've heard the word "masterpiece" defined as a work in which every element feeds into the whole. That sounds an awful lot like "the importance of the core" to me. Occasionally a complete mess comes around that is infinitely greater than the sum of its parts, but generally if there isn't a guiding, consistent vision backing everything up then what you have is something pretty much unsalvagable.
And of course there's charm in excess, as well. NIER is a game where every dungeon is a homage to a video game genre, where the player may choose to fish or garden or power slide on a boar, where sometimes your only reward from a sidequest is listening to the main characters banter. But despite the excess, and despite the game's obvious flaws, it's also deeply sad and expresses for the first time messages that have probably been swimming in cavia's consciousness since Drakengard. I've also been reading a Let's Play for this crazy adventure/shooting/rhythm game called Dangan Ronpa, and while it is literally swimming in ridiculous mini games, the atmosphere is just deranged enough, and the attention to detail strong enough, for it to work.
At any rate, I've heard the word "masterpiece" defined as a work in which every element feeds into the whole. That sounds an awful lot like "the importance of the core" to me. Occasionally a complete mess comes around that is infinitely greater than the sum of its parts, but generally if there isn't a guiding, consistent vision backing everything up then what you have is something pretty much unsalvagable.
author=LockeZ
...When Final Fantasy 13 didn't have any towns, for example, at first I and a lot of people were like "...what!? How do you even do that? It's not an RPG without towns!" But then, actually, it worked really well. The combination of no towns, healing after each battle, and most of the mental "down time" being done through flashbacks succeeded in creating a constant sense of extreme urgency that almost no other RPGs have, which was exactly what they were going for. Towns didn't help their goals, so they dropped them.
I haven't played FF13 so I don't know exactly how it did things, but if it is as bad as people says ("Like being pushed trough a tube") then I really don't see the fun in that... I know where are you coming from, though. I guess the reason I like SRPGs so much, despite being so time consuming, is that the battles are the fun part. You can go from one to another, from beginning to end; That's the entire game. Towns, sidequests and other stuff still have their place on them but they're not part of the 'core' per se.
However, I still like to do things at my own pace. I really disliked how Fire Emblem 7 did it, for example. Rushing you from one major plot point to another, only letting you manage your units before each battle, and seldom letting you access shops or the arena. I was never really hampered by it, but it felt like bad design... Fire Emblem 8 fixed all of this. And while it's true that dicking around the entire continent when you're supposed to get somewhere fast, doesn't help that "sense of urgency" I say: screw that!
author=slashphoenixWhat about pokemon and fishing. Is that clutter or not, explain.
Mini-games and sidequests have their place in some games. For example, my first instinct was to mention The Legend of Zelda's penchant for fishing games and "find them all" quests, but Zelda is well-known and respected for its exploration and discovery aspects - the idea of a fishing pond helps build a more fully complete world, which Zelda games strive to do.
Final Fantasy games may have many opportunities for mini-games, but it's hard to ignore the weirdness of spending 20 hours of gameplay time grinding levels and doing miscellaneous sidequests when you're supposed to only have 7 days until you explode. Sidequests break the feeling of impending doom, especially goofy ones like breeding chocobos.
@LockeZ: I actually intended to mention Super Mario 3D Land, but the final reward for SM64's 120 stars was too obvious a target. The same point applies to pretty much all Mario games after SM64, though :P
For sure!
I would say that in Pokemon, fishing is just another branch that extends from the core of the sweet gameplay tree that is Mystery and Exploration. I can't speak to the Pokemon games nowadays, but one of the major appeals of Red/Blue's gameplay was the whole mystery of the thing. Encountering crazy rare pokemon in one patch of grass on the south side of nowhere was so damn cool feeling - it creates this sense that anything could be anywhere - and the players have no idea where the limits are. If the Pokedex didn't hint that there were only 150 Pokemon, some kid could easily believe there were several hundreds!
In many ways Pokemon is all about discovery. All of the minigames in Pokemon (that I can remember) had to do with this discovery. Gambling to get HMs (which were labeled with a number and nothing else), the Safari Zone's rare Pokemon, and fishing to increase the number of places the little buggers could be hiding all added to the core exploration. I would go so far as to say that the path to Victory Road is just a good excuse to take you through the entire Pokemon world and show off all the things you could explore.
So, in the end, fishing made Pokemon totally awesome. Hell, I've got nothing against fishing mini-games in general if they're fun and add to the experience. However, minigames are one of those things I see so many try to add to their RM games, when they aren't even really making the game more fun and are only sacrificing focus.
I would say that in Pokemon, fishing is just another branch that extends from the core of the sweet gameplay tree that is Mystery and Exploration. I can't speak to the Pokemon games nowadays, but one of the major appeals of Red/Blue's gameplay was the whole mystery of the thing. Encountering crazy rare pokemon in one patch of grass on the south side of nowhere was so damn cool feeling - it creates this sense that anything could be anywhere - and the players have no idea where the limits are. If the Pokedex didn't hint that there were only 150 Pokemon, some kid could easily believe there were several hundreds!
In many ways Pokemon is all about discovery. All of the minigames in Pokemon (that I can remember) had to do with this discovery. Gambling to get HMs (which were labeled with a number and nothing else), the Safari Zone's rare Pokemon, and fishing to increase the number of places the little buggers could be hiding all added to the core exploration. I would go so far as to say that the path to Victory Road is just a good excuse to take you through the entire Pokemon world and show off all the things you could explore.
The combat in Pokemon might have been simplistic, but do you remember the feeling of seeing an Gym Leader's Pokemon and wondering where the hell he caught something so cool looking? Or when your Pokemon learned a new move you'd never heard of, or started evolving into who-knows-what? That stuff gave me shivers when I was 10.
So, in the end, fishing made Pokemon totally awesome. Hell, I've got nothing against fishing mini-games in general if they're fun and add to the experience. However, minigames are one of those things I see so many try to add to their RM games, when they aren't even really making the game more fun and are only sacrificing focus.
author=slashphoenixYou have given me a lot to think about obi one kanobi(i know the spelling is probably wrong). Thanx. I used to think the more I learn the easier it becomes, but now it feels quite the opposite, making games is getting harder.
For sure!
I would say that in Pokemon, fishing is just another branch that extends from the core of the sweet gameplay tree that is Mystery and Exploration. I can't speak to the Pokemon games nowadays, but one of the major appeals of Red/Blue's gameplay was the whole mystery of the thing. Encountering crazy rare pokemon in one patch of grass on the south side of nowhere was so damn cool feeling - it creates this sense that anything could be anywhere - and the players have no idea where the limits are. If the Pokedex didn't hint that there were only 150 Pokemon, some kid could easily believe there were several hundreds!
In many ways Pokemon is all about discovery. All of the minigames in Pokemon (that I can remember) had to do with this discovery. Gambling to get HMs (which were labeled with a number and nothing else), the Safari Zone's rare Pokemon, and fishing to increase the number of places the little buggers could be hiding all added to the core exploration. I would go so far as to say that the path to Victory Road is just a good excuse to take you through the entire Pokemon world and show off all the things you could explore.
The combat in Pokemon might have been simplistic, but do you remember the feeling of seeing an Gym Leader's Pokemon and wondering where the hell he caught something so cool looking? Or when your Pokemon learned a new move you'd never heard of, or started evolving into who-knows-what? That stuff gave me shivers when I was 10.
So, in the end, fishing made Pokemon totally awesome. Hell, I've got nothing against fishing mini-games in general if they're fun and add to the experience. However, minigames are one of those things I see so many try to add to their RM games, when they aren't even really making the game more fun and are only sacrificing focus.
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