From our good contributor TB:
What do you think? Is Black Ops 3 playing to the lowest common denominator, feeding on the need for instant-gratification? Or, is this a logical decision for games that can leverage it?
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I’m all for it. For me games are meant to be played. Experienced too but experienced through play. I think this can make for better game design because the focus will be more on the game play experience instead of trying to build interactive movies, character development and so forth. I think there is a place for such things. RPGs come to mind. But yeah I like the idea. Most of the time myself and the people I know have more fun playing a game in our own way not as the developer intended. I think a lot of people are this way.
I could understand for the sake of replaying. Goldeneye and Perfect Dark had a mission structure that could be replayed in any order without issue… you just had to unlock the levels first. Hell, there was even a mode where you could watch all the cut scenes in Perfect Dark straight.
For a first playthrough though, I don’t agree on principle. In theory, there is no divide between narrative and play, and skipping anything makes the work lesser. The common practice is of course the opposite with “games” that are either play toys or visual novels.
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Most players will play the game in the intended order anyway. If a level sucks or the save game is lost the player is free to skip and go on - great. Or if a game does not meet the player’s expectations - just play the really interesting maps and skip the rest.
I think this type of free choice is the future - at least for those strictly linear games that feel more like a tv show anyway.
It really just depends on the game and whether it’s designed around this or not. Look at open world games like Skyrim, they already let you go and do what you want in any order, no content is locked until you do something else first. You might have to do a quest chain and can’t do the last one until you’ve done all the others…but that’d be the same as an individual “level” in CoD.
In terms of FPS I’d see it migrating to more of a “drop in” scenario type of level where each one has its own story/events that are independent of the others. Would work quite well considering how the campaigns in the FPS triple A titles have been trending.
Skipping to the end of the last of us would be rubbish. This is a case which really doesn’t make any sense except for games with no story whatsoever.
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This also raises the point of challenge.
How many games do NES and Amegia era gamers and those up to ps1, remember sweating and swearing over at times for hours to get past a level that was excruciatingly difficult. The amount of satisfaction and gratification and individual pride you felt personally when beating that last boss or solving the puzzle or winning the race after a long battle and many defeats is missing in this ‘theory’.
The more you are defeated the sweeter the victory tastes when you finally succeed.
I guess instant gratification doesn’t take into account accomplishment and earned success.
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As far as I understood with this latest CoD they’re just splitting up individual levels/zones and allowing you to pick any one you choose. You’d still have to actually beat those levels to complete the game so if you got stuck on a boss you’d still have to go back at some point to try and beat it.
Think of Dark Souls and how all the paths are open, you just pick which one to go down. If you get stuck on one boss go try another and come back later.
Really as far as I see it this kind of thing isn’t new, it’s only new to FPS and even then a handful of games have probably already done it.
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Or for those with very little time to play. Or if they’re only interested in the story. Really I have to agree with both the company and TotalBiscuit. Once you’ve gotten paid for the game, does it really matter how the consumer decides to play it?
If they decide they’re only interested in the story, would you rather they watch those parts on YouTube? Or would you prefer they buy your game and watch them there?
Additionally I think the analytics reports, which occurred to me prior to that point in the video, would be interesting to read.
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Actually, even pure play style games are frequently being designed linearly. Just think about all the games that slowly teach new mechanics and layer complexity with each level.
Why does that matter though? If someone wishes to buy a game solely for some aspects but dislike the other aspects of the game, why shouldn’t they have the option to skip those aspects? You wouldn’t be forcing this on everyone as those who wanted to play those aspects could still play them.
Giving consumers a choice may potentially lead to more consumers purchasing your product. It isn’t like having a skip button is overly difficult to implement either.
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TotalBiscuit is right about this. Some consumers are tired of linear designs, and those consumers should have the option to hop around between levels if that is what they want to do. Additionally, companies should not force consumers to watch cut scenes. Every cut scene should have a well labelled option for skipping.
I have been on the fence about whether to allow players to select any single player level after unlocking a level or simply letting players select any single player level without any level unlocking system. After watching TotalBiscuit’s video, I am going to give players full control over level selection.
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On the other hand, having more choice can often lead to people being less happy, for a variety of reasons. First of all is that we suck at knowing what will actually make us happy. And then we start second guessing choices we made wondering if we’d have been better off with another selection, which is itself a negative experience and also leads to not appreciating the choice we did make as much. (Not sure where I read/heard that. Maybe a Dan Pink TED talk? Or one of Dan Airelly’s books? Seems to ring true, in any case.)
On the flip side, it’s a designer’s job to figure out the optimum way for a game to be played for most people. And while that realistically can’t be perfect for everyone, if they’re good at their job then I think it’s reasonable to expect that it’ll be better for most.
That being said, I agree with content being skippable where that’s reasonable. If content is actually good then it won’t matter because people won’t want to skip it the first time through. And if it’s not good, or is particularly contrary to someone’s tastes, then forcing people to watch or play it is just detracting from the rest of your game.
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@angrypenguin : I would add in a confirmation dialog the first time the player tried to skip anything. It may even be a good idea to throw one in when a new mechanic will be introduced to ensure those who are only skipping a few things don’t accidentally skip the new mechanic as well.
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If the game is actively trying to teach the player something, something that might very well be used for the rest of the game, then it makes no sense to have the player advance before they have mastered it. If the point of the game is system mastery, then there isn’t any reason to have the player advance without performance (at least on the first playthrough).
Imagine a player never figured out how to fire the second portal (an extreme case, admittedly), how much do they miss? Let’s say they even figure it out half way through, so how many other mechanics did they miss? How much more do they skip purely because they didn’t stay put to figure out one puzzle?
If the game is actively trying to teach the player a mechanic regarding the aspect of the game they don’t want to play, then allowing them to skip over it won’t hurt them as they would be skipping the situations where it would be applied too.
For those who only want to skip some parts but not others for a single aspect, you could have a confirmation dialog when a new mechanic is being taught. We don’t always need to exercise that mechanic to be capable of using it after all.
A lot of people will probably just play the game as you intended. Why I see this as good thing is because it just seems much better for a person to be able to continue enjoying a game instead of just putting it aside and no longer playing it.
Some people will learn the game and master the mechanics quickly. They may well play through as you hoped they would. It is the other people who aren’t connecting with your design as easily. Finding it more difficult to master the techniques and so forth. The risk with forcing them to play through or don’t is simply losing a player and possibly any chance of this person buying another game from you in the future.
So I see it as providing a way for these players to have more time to stay interested in the game and “connect” with the game world and your design. To master the skills needed. If they can bounce around to different areas that gives them a reason to keep playing the game. And keeping them in the game gives them more time to develop their skills. Then they can go back and get around whatever obstacle was blocking them originally.
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And the Lord said… “Thou shalt not skip content, for it hath been made and thus must be consumed.” But they hardened their hearts and skipped it anyway, and thus the Lord forsook them and sent plagues upon them, and there was much weeping and knashing of teeth.
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I used to think that way. I used to think “does it matter if people cheat in a single player game?” and “does it matter if people mod games?”
However the question of “does it matter if they consume content however they want” does matter.
However in a story based game, consuming the content in the wrong order can and will devalue how good that title is. If you want your gamer to come away feeling like the game itself is crap, and generally not having a good time, well that’s a problem. Any story practically becomes a nonsense story with no rhyme or reason if you shuffle the pages. What happens to the twist that leaves people going “you know what, that was cool!”? What happens to choices based on the past? It’s incredibly naive.
See, gamers don’t always know what is good for them. Nor do people asking for feature xyz in Unity. The fact is players only think they know what is good for them.
As for introducing mechanics slowly over a period of levels, well forget that. Forget balance. Forget story. It becomes goat sim, and I don’t want it.
I’m all for unlocking all levels at the end of anything with a story or any game that doesn’t have much story, but for a lot of games, story is a massive draw. Not least because the build up to the twist is pretty darn important.
Still we can let gamers have the ability to do this, rate the game 3/10 and poop on sales. We can let this behaviour become rife in the industry until all that remains are goat simulators.
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If the player is skipping because they know something is boring then sure (but how often do you know something is boring on the first playthrough?). The problem is if they are skipping purely because they don’t understand something. If so, then they are just skipping content that they might very well enjoy.