28 April 2008
Bad Karma
)Published on April 28th, 2008 @ 11:14:10 am, using 1287 words, 352 views
Well, the last post generated a fair amount of discussion on the forums and elsewhere. And it served to illustrate how, as a designer, no matter how you envision some feature in your mind, your end user will probably see something different.
The general reaction to the Karma system has been unfavorable. Reasons vary; some dislike the fact that the system draws them outside the world, killing immersion. Others feel that casual players, without the playtime to build up Karma, will feel punished. Which was the opposite of my intention, really. I thought that the system was easy enough to ignore, more an easter egg, a way to tempt players into a behavior you desire instead of forcing them to it. But I suppose it is like having 2 children, and giving one a present in front of the other. Sulking and discontent ensues 
Scorpia even raised the question of “why bother"? Isn’t there enough failure in life, why do we need to experience it in games? What is the point of getting the player to accept “small failures"?
Well, the reason is simple. Drama. Tension.
Heroic fantasy is almost an oxymoron these days. You see it is impossible to be heroic unless there is some type of challenge to overcome. And for the “heroic” title to apply you can’t face some minor challenge, either. Delivering the post is not the stuff that champions are made of, no. In fact a key feature of any heroic tale is the triumph over incredible adversity. Often the hero suffers some sort of setback from which he or she makes a dramatic comeback. It’s a simple trick but one which works. (In some of the greatest tales the flaw the hero overcomes is within themselves, but that is a topic for another time, heh.)
The problem is developers have become convinced that the only acceptable form of setback for a player is the scripted setback. You know the type, you and your party have hacked and slashed your way through the Ultimate Caverns of Doom, a well-oiled, death-dealing machine, when a script kicks in, cue cutscene with rocks falling and half your party is separated from you! Oh no! Drama and tension ensue! Or do they? Is that drama or annoyance you feel?
The thing is, if this wasn’t a scripted sequence, most players would reload until they passed their “spot trap” roll or something. Add a succession of these reload-around-misfortune events and you are left with a peaceful romp through the dungeon, devoid of the dramatic high notes that fill stories and books, any moments that might have gotten the player’s pulse racing quickly undone. Aware of this, the designers force these dramatic events on you via scripting. But that doesn’t work very well either, does it? The sense that the game designer has stepped in, circumvented your control of your character and forced you into a situation where you are disadvantaged? Sacrificing player agency is another cardinal sin. And it just serves to reinforce the reload problem. If you know the only “real” setback is the one that occurs in a cutscene then why wouldn’t you reload around anything else? If the designer doesn’t tell you specifically that it is “alright to fail” there via a cutscene then how are you supposed to know?
Is this just a situation we have to live with, due to the nature of video games? I don’t think so. I remember playing Prince of Persia, the Sands of Time. A fantastic game, but one moment stands out in my memory in particular. There is a part where you as the Prince fight your monstrously transformed father and his soldiers. The thing is I had been in some hard fights before this point and had arrived with about 5% health. PoP used save points with the added ability to rewind time if you had enough magic sand. But I was out of sand. All I could do was attempt the combat or glumly reload my last save point, which was quite a way back. The combat was…something else. I/The Prince whirled between and around opponents, graceful, fluid, always one misstep away from disaster. The whole battle was dreamlike, more a beautifully choreographed ballet than a video game fight sequence.
The elation I felt when it was over, my opponents all dispatched and crumbling around me, was incredible. I felt…heroic. It was a moment to match any in a movie or book, and it was mine. And it was an experience I wouldn’t have had if I’d arrived with full health and plenty of sand. I was never in any actual danger, there was still that save point a while back, but time and effort I’d invested was enough to make me try. To push myself and experience the thrill of overcoming the challenge.
Likewise, in Diablo, the save mechanic serves to heighten tension. Many people dislike the limit on saving but Blizzard know their business. Fights with “bosses” are that much tenser when you know you can’t just reload and continue from the exact same point. I remember the tension of meeting the Butcher distinctly, I’d blithely walked through his door, that menacing “Ahhh, fresh meat!” of his sending me into a panicked flight through the darkened church as I desperately tried to bring him down before he cornered me and tore me apart. In many RPGs a lot of players would just reload at that point and “buff” up before going through that door. I know I’ve done that myself, reloaded because I wasn’t “prepared".
So it isn’t that I want to take something away from the player. I don’t. I want to offer them something more, the chance to experience that same elation, the tumultuous ride of tension and drama that emerges every so often in games, those moments when video games prove their power as a medium for communicating emotion, a capability far beyond books or movies, because it is something the player can own, something personal. An experience the comforting saftey net of constant reloading robs from you. The Karma system was an attempt to encourage players to embrace that tension by choice rather than it forced on them, as save points do.
Now the PoP example is a combat one. Can storyline contain “small failures” and still be enjoyable? Yes, I think so. A great example was Star Control 2. You were all that was left of humanities fighting forces in a galaxy controlled by the Ur-Quan. Your job was to collect resources and allies in your fight. But you weren’t forced to do anything really. You could drift around if that was your thing. But the longer you left the plot the more the situation degenerated. Your enemy would gain ground, your potential allies being eliminated one by one. Yet, right up till the end you could claim victory from the jaws of defeat. Three novel concepts, the idea that the player can fail just by sitting around doing nothing, that the enemy actually does something of their own prerogative instead of waiting for you to come whack him and that that failure is not an absolute, that it is a continuous process that can be reversed, not through a scripted sequence but through effort and determination in the face of adversity.
Truly heroic, I’d say. And yet we are supposed to believe game design has advanced since the era of SC2 and the like? I was playing Assassins Creed recently, yeah, it was SO tense watching the prescripted sequence when Altair gets stabbed and then, (luckily, because I was worried!) was shown to be ok in the next scene of the video. Whew. Close call indeed.
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