Game Design: How Much Help Do You Need?

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is one of the best games for the Game Boy and one of the best of the Zelda series.  It has tricky puzzles, smart dungeons and cool enemies.  We're going to focus on one dungeon in particular.  In this dungeon, there are four pillars on one of the levels and a steel ball that you can pick up.  The game doesn't really tell you what to do, but it expects you to do the math.  You throw the steel ball at the pillars (which are rather difficult to get to), which collapses the top level of the dungeon down to your level and enables you to fight the boss.  There aren't a whole lot of hints, so you have to sort it out yourself.

Compare that to Twilight Princess, Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks.  Most of the time you'll have your assistant telling you what to do, whether it's Midna, Ciela, or Zelda.  If you walk into a level, Zelda might tell you, "Oh no!  Look at those guards!  You better avoid them!"  Midna might say something like "Take a look at the jewel on that guy's head!"  They'll pretty much walk you up to the solution or tell you where to go next.  So, the question is, was it better before?  Were games better when they didn't tell you what to do, or is the extra help a good idea?

First, it's important to ask why we got so little help on older games.  Was it because the designers expected us to figure things out?  They trusted us more?  Not really.  It's because they couldn't give us any more help due to system limitations.  The cartridge memory for Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda was prohibitively small.  For instance, the clouds and the bushes in Super Mario Bros. are the exact same sprite, just palette-swapped.  Those were the kind of things they had to do by necessity in order to get the full game onto the cartridge.  So, the reason why they only said "Dodongo dislikes smoke" is because they couldn't say anything more.  They had no space for it.

Game designers always wanted to provide more pointers, and they tried to do so in instruction manuals and the like, but there weren't a whole lot of choices.  Was the game better off for it?  That's open to debate, but a lot of the games of those days were solved with hint books and heated debate on the playground ("I was able to do an infinite hair-pull kick!"  "Nuh-uh!").  Most gamers didn't go it alone, as much as they'd like you to believe they did.  Those playground conferences are gone for most of us, but in its place we have our group of friends that we game with, as well as the big playground:  The internet.  When we get stuck in a game or find an insurmountable obstacle, we're able to go to that bastion of groupthink and get the help we need.  For the most part, we're still not going it alone.

So, if you're a game designer, you know people are going to seek help and space is no longer an issue, what do you do?  You provide the help in-game so that frustration is reduced to a minimum.  If you're a designer, you don't want the gamer to step away from your game for a moment, especially in a moment of frustration.  Therefore, you provide those in-game tips to gently nudge (or shove) the gamer along so they can see the next location.  Another option is one provided by Demon's Souls, where the community provides tips and help and recreates that "playground" environment, where multiple gamers provide help on a solution.

However, where do you draw the line?  How much help is too much help?  It's an especially difficult problem now that more gamers are entering the fold.  For instance, you show me a small key in a Zelda dungeon and I know exactly what to do with it.  If you show my wife a small key, she'll need the full explanation.  She'll need you to tell her what the key is used for, what the doors look like, and how to open them up.  If you don't tell her these things, she'll get frustrated and throw controllers.  (Yes, she throws controllers.)  That makes giving tooltips and explanations a bit of a moving target:  Too many and you alienate more experienced gamers, too few and you alienate inexperienced gamers.  How do you accommodate all these different players?

The best solution that I've found is in one of the most sneakily revolutionary games of the last couple of years:  Professor Layton.  In Professor Layton, you're presented with a puzzle and given all the time you want to solve it.  You have the option of getting hints, and in order to use them you spend coins which are scattered throughout the world.  If you use the hints, great.  If you don't, no biggie.  You can do whatever you want with them.  It's a sliding scale of hints, and it works.

PC Games have had this sort of sliding scale for years, allowing tooltips and tutorials to be either used or skipped.  Granted, they won't help you outright with the game, but who's to say that's not a bad idea?  I mean, think of this:  You're playing Zelda.  When it starts up, it asks you how experienced of a player you are.  If you're a Beginner, tooltips will be all over.  They'll show you which doors have just been opened by your actions.  They'll point you in the direction of the solution.  If you're Intermediate, they may just show which doors have been opened by your actions and tell you what you've just picked up the first time you get it (i.e. "You got 20 rupees!").  If you're an Expert, you get no help whatsoever.  You picked up a small key?  Congrats.  You know what it does, so we're not going to tell you.  You have a boomerang?  Great.  You figure it out.  If you get a brand new, never-before-seen item, they'll explain what it is, but they won't belabor the point.  This sort of sliding scale works excellent in a game with a long reach like Zelda, but what about games like Modern Warfare 2 or God of War?  Honestly, those are OK the way they are.  They have varying difficulty levels, and most experienced gamers don't need to have their hand held throughout the game.  Most enjoy the thrill of the hunt and like figuring out where things go.

The underlying issue is that we're used to thinking of solutions in a 3-D space, or using video game logic to solve puzzles.  If we see a torch and a spiderweb, we know we can use the torch on the spiderweb.  If we see a block with strange markings on it and tracks by it, we know we can push that block.  Most new gamers, however, need a little push in the right direction.  They need to have someone basically point at the solution, and that's OK.  It's up to developers to sort out how much help is too much for everyone involved.

Run, Don't Walk To GOG.com

They're having a holiday sale right now.  I just got the Lords of the Realm Royal Edition (Lords of the Realm 1 & 2 and the expansion) and Beyond Good & Evil together for $11.  GO GO GO GO GO.

I Know Why The Caged Reviewer Whines

I've been trying to figure out why game reviewers hate Wii games so much.  Is it because they have some predisposed bias?  Is it because they represent some mysterious "hardcore" gaming cabal who is hell-bent on the destruction of the Wii at all costs?  Not really.  The answer is actually much simpler.

Consider this:  Many early Wii games got great reviews.  Metroid Prime 3 is holding at a score of 90 on Metacritic.  Zelda: Twilight Princess has a 95.  Super Mario Galaxy has a 97.  Those are arguably some of the most motion-intensive games around for the Wii. Reviewers liked those games and had no problems with the motion controls.  They might have thought of them as a slight inconvenience, but the reviews usually rated that games on their own merits and didn't throw in backhanded compliments like, "It's good for a Wii game."

So what changed?  Well, there's no denying that the Wii had some lean times through 2007 to 2008.  There were virtually no games that came out during that period.  We had Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit.  That was it.  However, if you're a reviewer you still have to review something, right?  You can't just ignore a console for an entire year.  So, if there are no good games coming out but you have to review something anyway, you end up reviewing some incredibly crap games.

After a while of playing awful games, what happened to their perception of the system? Instead of seeing the Wii as the Next Big Thing, they started seeing it as a nightmare. Every time they put in a game, they expected that it was going to suck because that's what usually happened.  Since they had to wade neck-deep into the waters of crapware and stay there for a long time, they thought the Wii is bad.  That's totally understandable.  Nintendo's awful Wii Music-revealing 2008 E3 conference didn't help matters either.  Instead of seeing a future of better games, they saw a bleak future of awful minigames and worthless ports, leading to no hope in sight for Nintendo's white monster.

Gamers at large, however, don't have to buy a new game every week.  They don't have review schedules or deadlines.  They can sidestep crappy games if they so choose, and for the most part they do.  Therefore, the Wii keeps selling because their perception of the Wii is completely different than the people who've been forced to play awful games for a year.

The next step to this process comes when the game reviewers look around after all this time playing crappy games and they see that the Wii is STILL SELLING.  They reason, "The Wii sucks!  I've played more crappy games for the Wii than for any other system!  These people must be idiots!  It's my job to steer people away from it so they don't get burned."  They become anti-Wii advocates and end up turning more gamers away from the system.  However, the vast majority of consumers don't care about reviewers or reviews, and instead rely on first-hand accounts and recommendations from friends.  Their friends are buying the Wii and Wii games, so they keep buying them too.  This makes the reviewers even more upset, since they're being ignored by the gaming public at large.  That makes them even louder. Remember, as a reviewer, it's your responsibility to be an advocate for games that are good and a warning for games that aren't.  When people keep buying the Wii, the reviewers get desperate because they assume that the public is buying crappy games for a crappy system.

Add to this the fact that lots of people are being exposed to gaming for the first time through the Wii, and you can see why reviewers are even more upset.  If the Wii sucks, and people are getting their first exposure to gaming through it, then these people will assume that gaming sucks.  However, since the Wii doesn't really suck, these people aren't drawing that assumption, and more people keep buying Wiis despite the protests of reviewers, and the circle continues.

When we analyze it from this angle, we can understand why reviewers see the Wii like they do.  In many ways, it's Nintendo's own fault for not spacing their releases a little better and giving reviewers a reprieve or even throwing them a bone once in a while. However, now that there are better Wii games, it's also the responsibility of the reviewers to put aside their prejudices and review the games for what they are, not what they could have been.

Creating A Need

I'm studying marketing right now with a view to getting a degree in the field.  I'm learning some things that demonstrate why Nintendo is more successful now than in the past.

There's a hierarchy of marketing performance: Selling Products, Meeting Needs, Anticipating Needs, and Shaping Needs.  Typically, companies that merely sell a product are in the weakest position.  They're depending on other companies to create the need and then moving into that gap, so if the need goes away so does their business.  Companies that merely meet needs are in a slightly stronger position, but it's kind of a reactive field.  Someone else has found the need and probably filled that gap, so you're just competing with them in that field.

Those who anticipate needs are in much better shape.  They'll see, like Sony has, that high-definition video is becoming a big deal, so therefore there needs to be a new standard for it.  They saw that a need was coming up and they're anticipating the need.  However, Nintendo has shaped the need.  There was no need for motion controls in gaming until Nintendo made it a big deal.  Of course, Sony now talks about motion controls as being the "holy grail" of gaming, but it wasn't there until Nintendo created it.  Nintendo also created a need for touch-screen gaming and has benefited from it greatly.

I think the gaming public in general (Yahtzee excluded) is coming around to this idea.  The new market has been extremely beneficial to gaming.  Can you imagine what would have happened to gaming in this economy without the Wii?  As it was, the other consoles benefited from Nintendo's exposure and helped everyone out.  The problem is that you have to keep innovating and not rest on your laurels, but Nintendo might do just that.

This is the whole "Red Ocean/Blue Ocean" strategy that Nintendo talks about from time to time, but it's a lot simpler than that.  It's about creating a need and then filling it, which they did.

Digital Distribution And Dennis Dyack

Dennis Dyack loves digital distribution, but you'll notice something telling about his comments.  Before we get to them, remember how I said that digital distribution isn't good for the average gamer, and that they'll reject any system that isn't in their best interests?  Dennis Dyack thinks so too, so he's trying to make you think that it's good for you.  Take it away, Dennis:

"In some ways it's the absolute elimination of any hardware as far as the consumer is concerned, because the hardware is the cloud," offered Dyack, a long-time advocate of a single standard format for games. "It helps on so many levels because it resolves the piracy issue, which is a massive problem today, and the used games issue, because you buy something and it's yours forever – it resides on the cloud. These are wins for the consumers and wins for the game developers."

I love the quote at the end.  What exactly is the win for the consumer?  You notice that he doesn't really have any benefits.  Both of his supposed "problems" are only problems for the companies themselves.  For instance:

1. Piracy.  Piracy is the ultimate consumer-benefit system.  I mean, all the games you want and you don't have to pay?  SCORE!  Don't misunderstand me:  Piracy is not good for game companies, but "free" is the ideal system for a consumer.

2. The Used Games "Issue."  Oh, you mean the issue where you can buy a game for less than retail instead of being beholden to the company who makes the games?  Yeah, by all means, let's get rid of THAT.

Both of these issues are problems for the companies themselves and not necessarily the consumer.  Dennis knows this, so he's going to try and make it sound like these are issues for the consumer.  It's a hearts-and-minds battle, and one that they'll lose.  For instance:

People confuse a one console future as a monopoly and that's completely wrong.

His argument is that it would be easier for anyone to pick out games because it would be all the same console, which is understandable.  If your grandma wants to buy you a DVD, she doesn't have to find out if you use DVD-X or DVD-Y, if you're running version 6.2.4 of the DVD-X firmware, or if you're connected to DVDLive! so you can watch the bonus features.  However, the vast majority of consumers understand the multiple-console system.  It's not a rampant problem, so it's a gigantic solution for a tiny problem.

In a perfect world, a one-console future wouldn't be a monopoly.  In a perfect world, games would be just like DVDs or CDs, with one format that's easy to use for everyone.  However, Sony is already stepping all over the next high-def format.  When someone makes a Blu-Ray drive or disc, they pay money to Sony (which is why Nintendo will never put in a Blu-Ray drive in their systems).  Blu-Ray is now the only high-def format available, and Sony charges at least $5 to $15 more per disc than standard DVD.  They want to make money.

In what future can you see a company selflessly creating a console format that everyone can use and make games for and NOT gouge customers?  Nintendo won't.  They make copious amounts of money off of their consoles.  Microsoft won't.  They want a foothold in the living room.  Sony won't.  They just spent millions of dollars on Blu-Ray, so they're not going to make a new format anytime soon.  That leaves a mysterious fourth contender, a dark horse, to make this nebulous "one-world" open format that will work on all consoles.  It would need to be a company with the clout to tell three giants what to do.  Can you think of any company that fits that bill?  No.  All three companies are extremely rich and don't have to answer to anyone.

Dennis, it's understood that you want the cloud.  We get it.  It would be great for your company, but it's not going to happen no matter how much you want it.  It's not good for the consumer so they'll reject it.  The main console makers won't agree to it.  And a word of warning to developers:  If you put too much emphasis on it, you'll run into major problems down the line.

Are you psyched for Mega Man 10?

...because I can't say I am.  

This is weird for me.  I like Mega Man games, but for some reason Mega Man 9 turned me off of them due to the tremendous difficulty.  I played it for about 4 hours and only beat one boss.  Heck, I could barely get through half the stages.  I miss having the charge shot and the power slide.  I want to be able to duck.  

Sometimes, changes to the formula are there for a reason, Capcom.  You learned the wrong lessons from Mega Man 9.  I'll have to dive into it at some point.  Right now, I'm playing catchup on a lot of games (thanks Goozex!) and powering through Spirit Tracks, so I'm too busy for a whole lot of in-depth articles.  They'll be back shortly, though.

↓C Games of the Year: 2009

Most Game of the Year articles are going to look about the same:  Modern Warfare 2, Uncharted 2, Dragon Age, Demon's Souls.  That's not how we roll at ↓C.  Here's our Game of the Year picks in reverse order.

3. Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

The last Professor Layton game was enjoyable for a lot of people, but I couldn't stand it.  Frustrating puzzles, worthless clues, a boring location, and people who stop you every second for another puzzle bogged down what could have been an intriguing title.  Diabolical Box improved on every aspect of the game, making the puzzles feel more natural, the locations more varied, and the story a much more gripping tale.  I read spoilers on the finale (as I am wont to do, unfortunately) and STILL got misty-eyed.  One of the best DS games, hands-down.

2. Batman: Arkham Asylum

Theoretically, brawlers should be fun.  The issue with most is that you never really feel any stronger than the people you're fighting.  Stealth games should also be fun in theory, but never end up being as fun you would hope.  Add to that the dearth of good licensed games, and you have a recipe for failure that Batman: Arkham Asylum could have easily fallen into.

However, Rocksteady did a fantastic job on several fronts.  First, combat is simplified greatly, with only three buttons controlling the majority of moves.  Second, when being stealthy, you have a lot of ways to get around and realistic behavior from enemies (but not too realistic) that makes the whole exercise ridiculously fun.  For instance, it's great seeing the Joker's minions getting more and more panicked as you take them out one by one, until they're randomly shooting their rifles in the air and screaming, "Show yourself!"  It's in those moments that you feel like the Caped Crusader himself, and it makes for a fantastic game.

You could have even stripped the Batman license out of the game and made a fantastic game, but this is one of the rare instances where the license adds layers of fun.  It's a blast hearing the Riddler get upset as you find more of his trophies, and it's awesome roaming the halls of Arkham.  It's also extremely welcome to hear Mark Hamill's Joker ripping it up again.  If you have any interest in Batman at all, you should play Arkham Asylum.  If you already have, then you know what I'm talking about.

1. Beatles: Rock Band

Much like Arkham Asylum took classic gameplay styles, prettied it up and added a layer of familiarity that made the game that much better, The Beatles: Rock Band did the same thing.  It took a now-standardized music game format and polished it to a sheen, which would have been great if the game was just a standard Rock Band/Guitar Hero game.  Instead, the Beatles wrapper made everything that much better, with tons more style, background and texture than the cardboard-cutout characters of a standard music game.  Add to that the solid locations, dreamscapes, and automatic online leaderboards and you have a definite winner.  Your enjoyment of the game definitely hinges on how much you like the Beatles, but if you have any appreciation of their music at all, this is the game you want to play.  There's really no reason for any other Guitar Hero/Rock Band games after this one.