Results tagged “failure” from Softcore Gamer
I get the impression that not a lot of people have heard of - let alone
played - Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble. That might not be the
case for long, though. The WGA just announced their nominees for best video game writing,
and DHSGIT took the dark horse spot. I haven't played, um, any of the
competition, except a little bit of Fallout 3, but I'd love to see a
well-written indie game like this one take the prize.
I certainly recommend that you give Dangerous High School Girls a look, although it isn't by any means a perfect game. In this interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun, author Keith Nemitz stated that "the story is about the culture of small-minded people and how strong, truthfully educated women can improve it." The writing is charming, funny, and does an excellent job of telling that story.
My reservations about the game come from some of the design decisions. Mostly, it's structured like a standard RPG, with semi-random encounters, experience, and character leveling - although it distances itself from any of that terminology. This structure works really well, actually, except that it doesn't allow the player to do any grinding.
In most RPGs, the player progresses the story by exploring a space and completing encounters. Succeeding in an encounter gives the player's party experience, which eventually causes them to become more powerful. Failing in an encounter, typically, does not give the player experience or progress the story (because, typically, it results in a fail-state, forcing the player to restore a saved game). The player, therefore, gets more powerful as the story progresses; later parts of the story open up new areas where the encounters are more difficult, theoretically matching the player's advancement.
Sometimes, though, the player doesn't level up fast enough. That's where grinding comes in. If the encounters become too difficult, the player can take a step back and play through some additional encounters in an easier area, gaining enough experience to tackle the continuation of the story on better terms.
Dangerous High School Girls doesn't have a death-equivalent fail-state, which I like. At least, it looks good on paper, but in practice, it doesn't always work out well. Instead of having to restart when you fail an encounter, you suffer some form of negative reinforcement and then play continues. At best, this negative reinforcement takes the form of a missed opportunity - a chance to have gained experience or some other bonus, while the story continues to progress. Frequently, however, you actually lose a buff or one of the girls in your party. Which makes it easy to find yourself falling behind the difficulty curve, facing encounters that are way out of your league.
Grinding is supposed to provide a way out of this situation. But Dangerous High School Girls takes away lower-level encounters as it opens up new, more difficult areas - or at least, it obscures the lower-level opportunities by putting them in the same space and not distinguishing between encounters of different levels. Add to that the pressure of time continuing to progress with each encounter, whether successful or not, and... well, the bottom line is that I feel like I'm falling further and further behind the more I play, and that my subversive little cadre of girls is becoming more ineffectual rather than more empowered as the story progresses.
Anyway, this post was really just supposed to be a couple of links and a brief review of the game. To sum up, then: worth playing, not perfect, but great writing. You can get a demo from Manifesto, here.
I certainly recommend that you give Dangerous High School Girls a look, although it isn't by any means a perfect game. In this interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun, author Keith Nemitz stated that "the story is about the culture of small-minded people and how strong, truthfully educated women can improve it." The writing is charming, funny, and does an excellent job of telling that story.
My reservations about the game come from some of the design decisions. Mostly, it's structured like a standard RPG, with semi-random encounters, experience, and character leveling - although it distances itself from any of that terminology. This structure works really well, actually, except that it doesn't allow the player to do any grinding.
In most RPGs, the player progresses the story by exploring a space and completing encounters. Succeeding in an encounter gives the player's party experience, which eventually causes them to become more powerful. Failing in an encounter, typically, does not give the player experience or progress the story (because, typically, it results in a fail-state, forcing the player to restore a saved game). The player, therefore, gets more powerful as the story progresses; later parts of the story open up new areas where the encounters are more difficult, theoretically matching the player's advancement.
Sometimes, though, the player doesn't level up fast enough. That's where grinding comes in. If the encounters become too difficult, the player can take a step back and play through some additional encounters in an easier area, gaining enough experience to tackle the continuation of the story on better terms.
Dangerous High School Girls doesn't have a death-equivalent fail-state, which I like. At least, it looks good on paper, but in practice, it doesn't always work out well. Instead of having to restart when you fail an encounter, you suffer some form of negative reinforcement and then play continues. At best, this negative reinforcement takes the form of a missed opportunity - a chance to have gained experience or some other bonus, while the story continues to progress. Frequently, however, you actually lose a buff or one of the girls in your party. Which makes it easy to find yourself falling behind the difficulty curve, facing encounters that are way out of your league.
Grinding is supposed to provide a way out of this situation. But Dangerous High School Girls takes away lower-level encounters as it opens up new, more difficult areas - or at least, it obscures the lower-level opportunities by putting them in the same space and not distinguishing between encounters of different levels. Add to that the pressure of time continuing to progress with each encounter, whether successful or not, and... well, the bottom line is that I feel like I'm falling further and further behind the more I play, and that my subversive little cadre of girls is becoming more ineffectual rather than more empowered as the story progresses.
Anyway, this post was really just supposed to be a couple of links and a brief review of the game. To sum up, then: worth playing, not perfect, but great writing. You can get a demo from Manifesto, here.
I've been having some serious trouble formulating a response to this post over at HardCasual. A couple days ago they called out me and the rest of the blogosphere for the way we've handled You Have to Burn the Rope.
HardCasual's point is that YHTBTR is a "smart" game, like Passage, and
that games journalists are making it out to be merely "clever," by
which they seem to mean "good only for a cheap laugh." I've been
reading HardCasual for a couple weeks now, and I like it a lot, but
something about this rubbed me the wrong way. I do agree, though, that
YHTBTR is worth a bit of deeper analysis.Aside from being funny, what, exactly, is YHTBTR saying? It's an almost perfect example of a classic action-adventure puzzle of the sort you might find in a Zelda game. It's simple, but its simplicity shouldn't be overestimated. Under normal circumstances, a player would naturally spend a couple minutes jumping around bullets and throwing axes before he or she figured out how to beat the Grinning Colossus. The point, of course, is that these aren't normal circumstances, and the game takes every available opportunity to point out the solution to the puzzle ahead of time. Knowing the solution removes all - well, almost all; there's still some platforming that requires twitch-play - the challenge from the game.
What's interesting to me is what that leaves you with: this super-simple, ultra-short, minimally challenging game is a perfect test case for an experiment about the relationship between difficulty, accomplishment, and fun. I've played YHTBTR a dozen times now, despite the fact that there is very little reason to do so. One play-through is almost exactly like another; it's impossible to lose, and no significant way to win with style. There's no emotional build, and likewise no significant narrative arc. The credits song is catchy, but I've already got it as an MP3, so that isn't a great motivator. The only good incentive, as far as I can make it out, is an emotional burst associated with winning, even in the absence of a challenge.
Possibly I'm reading my own reaction all wrong. It's conceivable that the real attractor to this game is the relatively high production value. Certainly, YHTBTR is well polished. Its graphics are solid, its interface is very well designed, and its self-aware sense of irony is downright charming. But it seems to me that there is something about burning that rope; maybe not a feeling of accomplishment, exactly, but a sense of satisfaction, or at least completion, that provides some sort of positive reinforcement. Something which indicates that - or rather, reinforces my belief that - at least for some gamers, myself included, a game can impart a sense of joy that is unrelated to its difficulty.
Is this what Kian Bashiri was trying to way with his game? I don't know; maybe not. It's what I got out of the game. If you're interested in the author's intentions, there's an interview with him over at IndieGames that's worth checking out.
The problem I have with HardCasual on this issue, aside from the pretentious tone that they adopted and the fact that they seemed to spend more energy complaining about the blogosphere's reaction to the game than on their own analysis of it, is that the production of FAQ files and video walkthroughs is not counterproductive to the message of YHTBTR. In fact, from my perspective, it's an excellent demonstration of the game's lesson. Creating elaborate guides for this game simply reinforces the central point that the puzzle is not a significant challenge, and doing it with the evident joy expressed on blogs like Rock, Paper, Shotgun or my own supports the thesis that a game without a significant challenge can still be fun. I think the fact that these fan-creations were so quickly aggregated on the YHTBTR homepage is further evidence that, far from detracting from the game, these artifacts are very much in keeping with what the game is trying to accomplish.
I was playing God of War this weekend; I've been playing quite a lot of
it lately, because I'm finding it a very interesting and radically
different experience, and I want to get through it before I'm
overwhelmed by the fall lineup. I'll post some general thoughts on the
game a little later, but the sections where the gameplay flips from
brawler to platformer have gotten me thinking about death. On two
occasions yesterday I played through an extremely short segment of the
game between twenty and thirty times, trying to get past difficult
platforming challenges, which unlike the rest of the game are
unforgiving - a relatively minor misstep kills the player character -
and do not scale well in difficulty. Kindly, God of War autosaves the
player's progress just before these sections of the game, so the cost
of dying is relatively low. Still, repeating the same actions twenty
times - and being met, every time, with the words "You Are Dead" thrown
up on the screen in blood red - pushed me to the limits of my patience.
And rather suddenly I realized that I had entirely lost emotional
connection with the game.
The issue of player character death is one of the most fundamental in modern game design - perhaps because modern games are so disproportionately focused on violence and death. In more general terms, the death of a player character can be equated to a game state from which it is not possible to complete the game. Placing fourth in Mario Kart is not not equivalent to dying, since it doesn't prevent you from completing the race; scoring too low in Elite Beat Agents is more or less equivalent to dying, because it prevents the player from continuing the game to completion. Whether or not it literally takes the form of a character's death, the way a game handles this sort of state has significant consequences on the narrative of the game. Some of these consequences are positive, and some are negative.
First of all, death is a great motivator. Competitive games have failure states built into them, providing a player with a clear goal ("win" or, alternatively for some games, "don't lose") and continual motivation to progress. Non-competitive games lack such an inherent motivator unless there is a constant threat of imminent failure. Of course, there are other ways to motivate players. The games of the Monkey Island series are prime examples of design that doesn't include the concept of character death or an equivalent failure state, and keeps the player motivated by rewarding progress with humor. Death is also a powerful narrative tool. The notion that the player character is risking their own life in order to achieve a goal amplifies the significance of their actions and can increase the player's emotional involvement. Some party-based RPGs, such as Knights of the Old Republic or Final Fantasy VII, even add emotional drama to the plot by using the death of a member of the party with narrative effect.
But the inclusion of player character death can also have negative consequences on the narrative, especially if it is implemented thoughtlessly. A character's death frequently breaks the continuity of the game, and triggers an extra layer of user interface (like God of War's "You Are Dead" screen) that prompts the player to try again. Trying again generally means restoring an earlier gamestate saved at an explicit or implicit savepoint - frequently at the beginning of the level or just before a particularly difficult section. The act of restoring the game's state effectively erases any progress the player had made past the savepoint, and implicitly asks the player to pretend, for narrative purposes, that the experience never happened. This disrupts the player's experience and forces them, to some extent, to disengage from the story, frequently at a moment when emotional engagement is especially high. If the cost of dying is low and it happens infrequently, then this disruption may be easy to ignore, but the effects are multiplied as the player grows frustrated.
I think it's fair to say that most games include some sort of death-like design element somewhere along traditional lines. But it's worthwhile to consider the many games that have taken a different tack, finding alternative ways to motivate the player. The new episodes of Sam & Max follow the same paradigm as the Monkey Island games, rewarding progress with humor. Puzzle Quest utilizes the inherent motivation of leveling by making level progression relatively rapid and providing a magic system that encourages the player to try out different play strategies. Animal Crossing relies on heavily on the collecting paradigm, and also draws upon social relationships to inspire the player to continue playing.
One of the most interesting examples of games that break from the traditional paradigm is Prey, in which player character death is presented in familiar terms, but doesn't actually represent a failure state or necessitate a break in narrative continuity. Contrast this which Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, which attempts to mitigate the disruptive effects of death by integrating a narrative segue. In Prince of Persia, death still represents a failure state, and the game returns to a previous state and the player is required to try again. Myst is another extremely interesting example, in which the failure state can only be reached at one specific point in the game; throughout the rest of the game, there is no concept of death or death-like failure. In this game, exploration, imagery and story are the primary motivators, and death is used only for dramatic purposes.
I'm of the opinion that the games that don't include this sort of failure state tend to give the player a smoother and more accessible narrative experience. Of course, the issue whether or not to include player character death in a game, and how to handle it if it is included, depends entirely on the context of the game. God of War, while it does have a story and certainly puts a lot of energy into creating an absorbing narrative experience, is at heart an action-oriented, ultra-violent brawler. Death is an important aspect of the game and the traditional model is entirely appropriate. There are only a few segments where I feel the narrative disruption becomes especially problematic. The traditional model of death and failure is valid in many cases, but it's important for designers to recognize that it isn't universally implemented, nor is it universally applicable. These sorts of examples remind us that there are alternative ways to structure story, player motivation and gameplay, when death is not desirable.
The issue of player character death is one of the most fundamental in modern game design - perhaps because modern games are so disproportionately focused on violence and death. In more general terms, the death of a player character can be equated to a game state from which it is not possible to complete the game. Placing fourth in Mario Kart is not not equivalent to dying, since it doesn't prevent you from completing the race; scoring too low in Elite Beat Agents is more or less equivalent to dying, because it prevents the player from continuing the game to completion. Whether or not it literally takes the form of a character's death, the way a game handles this sort of state has significant consequences on the narrative of the game. Some of these consequences are positive, and some are negative.
First of all, death is a great motivator. Competitive games have failure states built into them, providing a player with a clear goal ("win" or, alternatively for some games, "don't lose") and continual motivation to progress. Non-competitive games lack such an inherent motivator unless there is a constant threat of imminent failure. Of course, there are other ways to motivate players. The games of the Monkey Island series are prime examples of design that doesn't include the concept of character death or an equivalent failure state, and keeps the player motivated by rewarding progress with humor. Death is also a powerful narrative tool. The notion that the player character is risking their own life in order to achieve a goal amplifies the significance of their actions and can increase the player's emotional involvement. Some party-based RPGs, such as Knights of the Old Republic or Final Fantasy VII, even add emotional drama to the plot by using the death of a member of the party with narrative effect.
But the inclusion of player character death can also have negative consequences on the narrative, especially if it is implemented thoughtlessly. A character's death frequently breaks the continuity of the game, and triggers an extra layer of user interface (like God of War's "You Are Dead" screen) that prompts the player to try again. Trying again generally means restoring an earlier gamestate saved at an explicit or implicit savepoint - frequently at the beginning of the level or just before a particularly difficult section. The act of restoring the game's state effectively erases any progress the player had made past the savepoint, and implicitly asks the player to pretend, for narrative purposes, that the experience never happened. This disrupts the player's experience and forces them, to some extent, to disengage from the story, frequently at a moment when emotional engagement is especially high. If the cost of dying is low and it happens infrequently, then this disruption may be easy to ignore, but the effects are multiplied as the player grows frustrated.
I think it's fair to say that most games include some sort of death-like design element somewhere along traditional lines. But it's worthwhile to consider the many games that have taken a different tack, finding alternative ways to motivate the player. The new episodes of Sam & Max follow the same paradigm as the Monkey Island games, rewarding progress with humor. Puzzle Quest utilizes the inherent motivation of leveling by making level progression relatively rapid and providing a magic system that encourages the player to try out different play strategies. Animal Crossing relies on heavily on the collecting paradigm, and also draws upon social relationships to inspire the player to continue playing.
One of the most interesting examples of games that break from the traditional paradigm is Prey, in which player character death is presented in familiar terms, but doesn't actually represent a failure state or necessitate a break in narrative continuity. Contrast this which Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, which attempts to mitigate the disruptive effects of death by integrating a narrative segue. In Prince of Persia, death still represents a failure state, and the game returns to a previous state and the player is required to try again. Myst is another extremely interesting example, in which the failure state can only be reached at one specific point in the game; throughout the rest of the game, there is no concept of death or death-like failure. In this game, exploration, imagery and story are the primary motivators, and death is used only for dramatic purposes.
I'm of the opinion that the games that don't include this sort of failure state tend to give the player a smoother and more accessible narrative experience. Of course, the issue whether or not to include player character death in a game, and how to handle it if it is included, depends entirely on the context of the game. God of War, while it does have a story and certainly puts a lot of energy into creating an absorbing narrative experience, is at heart an action-oriented, ultra-violent brawler. Death is an important aspect of the game and the traditional model is entirely appropriate. There are only a few segments where I feel the narrative disruption becomes especially problematic. The traditional model of death and failure is valid in many cases, but it's important for designers to recognize that it isn't universally implemented, nor is it universally applicable. These sorts of examples remind us that there are alternative ways to structure story, player motivation and gameplay, when death is not desirable.
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