As someone who’s always looking to improve their game design skills, I was giddy when I saw the ‘Design Club’ program from Extra Creditz appear. The first two videos were pure genius, that gave me some great insights on how to build better games, and ways to approach the problem of making games more fun and generally better-executed (anyone who’s played my three games so far agrees I need all the help I can get in that department.)
Today, I thought I would be just as happy when I found a new little gem in my YouTube inbox! So, I started watching.
I watched, but a few things didn’t quite add up. Maybe it was the sheer amount of rather uncharacteristic negativity from the narrator. I shrugged it off as playing to the audience; who really likes the Blue Shell in a Mario Kart game?
…But, like Fermi’s Paradox, it hit me:
Who really likes the Blue Shell?
Why is Extra Creditz pretending this is a good thing?
On my lunch break, I re-watched the video, and re-parsed their arguments. There’s problems.
I wrote a long, rather detailed blog post about my thoughts, and I would like to discuss this. I’ve made my point that I think ExtraCreditz is wrong; a punishing mechanic like the Blue Shell, to my mind, is a game development anti-pattern.
Am I wrong? Is ExtraCreditz actually right? Am I getting the right lesson out of this? Am I missing anything?
I see it more like the youtube video:
It would be boring if you are in front without it. And only having mechanisms that make the weak faster would also be boring. It gives a new goal if you are better than the others, to be so much in front that it does not matter or to try to evade it. For me it makes the game more interesting. I understand other viewpoints, but for me in casual games it can add fun.
I definitely like the blue shell - even when it’s used against me. It makes me feel like there’s always tension… always a chance I could lose even if I’m way ahead (unless I’m so far that it’s no big deal).
I like the sentiment, but I feel the author of this article is a bit off: the Blue Shell isn’t about an easy win for a down-trodden last-placer. It’s not welfare of any sort. It’s not what’s wrong with America, as it is what’s wrong with human nature itself.
It’s trolling.
The Blue Shell is useless as a strategic option, and intentionally toxic in all possible use cases. If you have it and you’re the leading person, don’t use it! In the circumstances you’re most likely to pull it, you’re not going to win anyhow, just screw with the leading person. The Blue Shell is not some panacea that makes life better or easier for the untrained casual, it’s a troll weapon, that exists for the sole purposes of trolling. It punishes success and good decisions.
While having a reversal mechanic in a game is a good idea to keep everyone engaged, I think the Thunderbolt or the Star fundamentally do it better. In fact, I think with some tuning of the drop rate and the duration/potency of such effects, the Thunderbolt or Star could completely supplant the Blue Shell, period.
Judging from the hate for the blue shell (from some other players, definently few others who have posted so far) it would do much to make the game more fun. Of course, fun is subjective, and maybe that’s where my ideals and that of others - specifically ExtraCreditz - breaks down.
While I respect the sense of danger it adds, what I disrespect about it is the certainty of danger it adds. The only ways to mitigate it are A) a boost mushroom, B) an invincibility star, or C) the rarest item in the game, which will destroy it in transit. These all rely on RNG to even have. The boost mushroom is worse, because while the shell has a slight tell before the nuclear detonation (!) it’s an extremely small window. You cannot evade it under normal circumstances.
I also dislike its toxic nature. When the narrator says that a valid strategy is to brake to try to get other people caught in the blast as an attempt to try to maintain the status quo, that reverbrated in all sorts of (bad) ways. What’s more, as I talk about in my article, the point isn’t to win the race with this thing, it’s a general screw you. It’s of nearly no actual utility, yet causes a lot of pain.
As before, maybe my ideas of fun are different (it wouldn’t be the first time), but I have a hard time justifying this as a ‘good’ mechanic. There’s gotta be a better way to equalize an unequal situation that a homing troll-nuke.
My feel is that it’s a catch-up mechanism … but not for the person who fires it. It’s a mechanism for the 2nd or 3rd place player to catch up. And it’s necessary, IMO, because without it, the first-place player often reaches an “island of safety” from which they simply pull farther and farther ahead.
The issue is that - while the 1st place player gets the worst items, the 2nd place player gets almost the worst items. They’re often not going to get anything capable of toppling the 1st-place player, and meanwhile they have to deal with the superior artillery possessed by the 3rd and 4th players. And if they do get hit, they get rapidly chain-reaction smashed by all the people coming up behind them. Which means that the former 3rd is the new 2nd, and the gap between 1st and 2nd is now wider.
So why not give blue shell to those players, instead of the last? Two reasons:
Giving it to the 2nd or 3rd player makes it a sure thing they can guaranteed capitalize on. Putting the timing outside their control makes it uncertain exactly who will benefit, and gives the 1st place player the chance to succeed anyway.
It gives the last / near-last place player something exciting to do.
Also, in terms of “it makes 2nd place a better place to be than 1st place” - I did find this true previously, but not in 8. In 8, there are a few factors that combine to make just getting in 1st ASAP the better strategy:
Power ups are less rigidly tied to place, so 2nd place won’t get consistently better ones.
And because of that, 3rd-4th place might get some really potent items that you’d rather not be the target of.
Because you can’t hold two power-ups at once, there’s less ability to “stock up” in a lower place and then reap the benefits once you get into 1st.
The blue shell can be stopped. Counting on one is a risky strategy when it might not work. Also, blue shells just seem more rare in general.
I don’t really get the issue. For the kind of race that they trying to create, it makes sense to me. The whole point is to keep a tighter pack where poll positions can change on a dime, because that intermingling is the point they define where the fun is. It’s much less about getting last place to first so much as it’s about making sure first is contested.
This I find to be an interesting remark, but I have a problem with it. If you’re not the one doing the catch-up (in this case, helping someone doing better than you to - wait for it - do better-er than you), I think that’s still evidence of a bad mechanic. It’s a choice that it does not make any sense to make. Why is this mechanic even in the game, in this case? It’s simply unnecessary.
Point #2 is probably the best point in favor of this mechanic I’ve heard, just throwing that out there.
As for the timing, my problem isn’t who has the shell, the problem is that the shell itself is either superfluous, or a way of promoting a bad experience, both things that I understand are to be avoided. Given your point about how bad it is for the 2nd or 3rd place user just drives home how much more useless it is - if you’re the 2nd place player, it can backfire on you as much as it can help, and it still leaves the gap problem in place. This Blue Shell isn’t solving any problems, still. This is only reinforcing my arguments that it could be safely omitted due to uselessness, and is bad for the overall experience.
Points 1-3 I agree with, and I think are positive changes. Point #4 I call into question, because, as even ExtraCreditz has mentioned, there is no mitigation strategy for the Blue Shell, except for one of the three items (Mushroom, Star, Sound Box.) Those rely on RNG. There is no RNG-free way to defeat the Blue Shell; if you fail to roll correctly, you lose (not unlike D&D interestingly.)
I am calling BS on ExtraCreditz asserting that the Blue Shell is beneficial for Mario Kart 8. Specifically, I argue it adds nothing of value to the game experience, and is little more than a griefing tool. Specifically, it fails to solve the gap problem in races, which is one of the main arguments used in its favor. Additionally, it robs the game of agency, because your good decisions don’t matter so much as when someone at the back of the pack fires the Blue Shell. This is an ‘anti-fun’ mechanic, which is a game design ‘anti-pattern’ in a game designed to convey a sense of having fun.
? That doesn’t match my experience at all. The shell might backfire for the 2nd-place player, but in that case it will probably help the 3rd-place one. The goal of the shell is very simple - keep everyone bunched together, make sure that a wide gap doesn’t develop between 1st and 2nd place. For the purpose of the gameplay that Nintendo’s trying to encourage there, it doesn’t matter who benefits - the only important thing is that 1st place stays volatile rather than being a foregone conclusion after a certain point.
So - useless, I can’t agree at all. As to whether this is good gameplay - that’s a matter of opinion. For a serious competitive game about precision driving, it wouldn’t be. For Mario Kart - it is, IMO. Having the karts spread out too much means less interaction, less gameplay. Having victory guaranteed by sufficient skill would mean that only people with a similar skill level could really play together. So for this type of game, I’ll call it good gameplay.
Our experiences, and I suspect opinions in the bolded cases, do not match, but I respect your position; thanks for the good reply. But this is really bothering me on an intellectual level, because I’m still just not seeing the truth in the positions that EC advanced (namely, that the Blue Shell is good/useful to Mario Kart).
To the point, I still do not understand how the Blue Shell solves the gap problem, or how it encourages bunching. Given that A) it has a blast radius, and B) it always homes in on an endpoint of the pack, I think it encourages keeping your distance from the first place guy so you don’t get nuked, or if you’re the first place guy getting as much distance between yourself and the pack as you possibly can. Put another way, I think it does less of a job of solving the gap problem than possibly mitigating it.
The intriguing part about this mechanic, is it makes last-second plays for the 1st place goal a really good idea, and sort of end-loads the game experience as a result. The problem is, that doesn’t apply to most of the race. Even being really, really charitable with the utility of this mechanic, I still fail to see that it provides anything of significant value to Mario Kart, that better tuned items, or a different (for that matter, actual catch-up) mechanic wouldn’t solve more effectively.
Since this is a design discussion, would you mind elaborating on your experiences with how the Blue Shell made the pack tighter? I think between our experiences, I’m missing something that you might have a little better insight on.
How does the blue shell not help prevent a runaway lead? That’s its point. It’s there so that it never comes to be that first place is uncontested. As far as I am aware, it does that one function better than any other power up.
I would say this is a case where you really need to watch matches (as an uninvolved third party) and see what impact it has on races. If you actually took out blue shells, I would be willing to bet you would frequently see first place half the track ahead and a giant pack that does nothing but fight amongst itself for second.
Not everything is about winning. It’s a way that people near the end can have some influence on what happens, messing with the people that they otherwise have no way of impacting whatsoever. The ‘island of safety’ of a person out ahead in first place has been mentioned - has the flip-side of that been considered? Ignoring the people in the middle, how often are the players at the rear ever able to effect the players at the front in any way?
Plus, I suspect it helps to casual up the game. Zero Punctuation once remarked that local social games suck when you’re the owner, because you become “that guy” who has more practice than anyone else and either has to play down to the crowd or be in the awkward position of always winning when playing socially with casuals. It sounds to me like this mechanic was made to nullify that precise situation - even if it’s you and three casuals you don’t have to play down 'cause they can slam you with that, and even if the person who hit you doesn’t win as a result they might have fun just knowing that they punked “that guy”.
Not everyone takes these things as seriously as us.
Yep, and even when there’s a huge skill disparity.
I think the contention comes from the fact that it lowers the skill ceiling for the game, and the people who tend to analyze these things to be able to talk about them are typically people who don’t like deliberate skill ceilings.
As far as not caring for deliberate skill ceilings, it’s less that and more that I think this is being done in a very ‘raw force’ way. Yes, games need to be casual for the ‘Smash Bros.’ reason (during Smash Bros Melee, I was that guy…of course, back then I also had illusions of being a pro gamer, for a while…), but simply tossing a nuke at the first place player with very limited, RNG-based counterplay?
My personal suggestion for a better ‘catch-up’ mechanic is sort of a drag system, similar to why bicyclers experience. If you’re close to another cart (particularly a bigger cart) you get a ‘drag’ boost. If the first place guy goes too far ahead, he loses it, the pack all has it, so physics prevents the first place guy from going too far ahead. What’s more, for anyone who staggles behind, a (relatively) unobtrusive powerup could either give the last place guy a speed boost (the mushroom), or rocket-blast the last place racer at the end of the slipstream effect.
In other words, instead of using a nuclear missile, I’d use something vaguely resembling physics.
Racing games typically implement slipstreaming (what you’re calling the "drag system) as well as other mechanics.
Also, slipstreaming is a local phenomenon. Two or more cars working or competing in tandem can repeatedly slingshot each other to gain some communual speed, but someone who’s fallen behind the pack can’t. A guy who’s lost the pack can’t.
Also also, it takes a reasonable amount of skill to take advantage of slipstreaming, and we’re talking about providing benefits for people with the lowest skill levels, so I think there’s a mismatch there.
Right, but my hypothetical alternative would be to make the slipstreaming system more casual.
Unless you’ve got a realistic fluid physics simulation in your racing game (I’d suspect the Gran Turismo franchise would, but we’re not worried about them, we’re talking Mario Kart), I think having a trigger around the cart that, when entered gives a forward momentum boost, would be the way to go. Since we’re making it casual, the effect radius would be larger than real life (likely, about two to three times as far, depending on playtesting feedback), and the player would have it sold to them that they’re getting a boost with some good particle work and a sound effect. Conversely, getting too far ahead will have particle work and a sound to let you know your boost has worn off.
This way, you’re training even a new racer to aim for the pack (feedback is awesome!) What’s more, since this is a wacky cart racer, we do have things like mushrooms, the Bullet Bill, and various other powerups, so there’s ways to mitigate a racer falling too far behind. We’re not concerned with reality so much as we are with a self-regulating system that enables the behaviors we want to happen.
Is my idea here flawed, or is it truly impractical? Or, do I need to try it? Or, have I gone batshit crazy and need to lay off the skooma?
I don’t know about Mario Kart, but that’s exactly how it works in LBP and/or Modnation Racers. The thing is that even at two or three times realistic distances, once you’re out of the pack you’ve still lost it. The pack still has it, so you’re both behind and at a speed disadvantage. And, in a kart racer, it’s easy to get knocked out of the pack. It’s a great mechanic, but it’s not a solution to the same problem that blue 'shrooms seem to solve.
Also, consider that for a person who always comes first the game could actually get really boring if there wasn’t something to add unpredictability or tension. Slipstreaming mechanics wouldn’t do anything about that. Being able to get punked on the last turn totally does.
Only making weak players faster does not work, often they cannot keep the cart on track if it goes even faster. There are bonuses that get the weak closer to the pack without them having to keep on track at high speed. But if you are much better than the rest, something that stops you is also needed.
That is precisely the reason I’m pro blue shell. I agree in that it’s not reeeealy about balancing and more of a troll tool… but that it precisely it’s point and it is implemented very nicely.
If you have an easy game where you win all the time it gets boring, if you have a hard game where you loose all the time it gets frustrating. If you have a tense game where you’re just in reach of the 1st place you’re pretty likely to have a coronary… The blue shell helps to even that out.
Of course winning and positive feedback are important tools of flow but without negative feedback how can you grade how much fun you’re having?
Humans need contrast. If you’re in a bright room with no shading or shadows… only light… you can’t find your way around. to see the good bits and attenuate them they have to be shaded by the bad bits. Ying and Yang of game design so to speak.
Note on slipstreaming/drafting: Mario Kart has it, and not only that, if you draft for just long enough, you get a mushroom-like boost.
It’s still not enough to close the 1st place gap, and making it faster/longer wouldn’t really change that. As you get further up the pack, there’s less opportunities until you get to the place of 0 drafting…2nd place.
