Carmack on New id Game, Game Theory

An anonymous reader writes "CNN/Money interviewed id Software wizard John Carmack at the recently completed QuakeCon. Among the topics discussed is Nintendo's recent announcement that today's games are too complicated and hard for players. Carmack, surprisingly, agrees, saying 'I agree strongly with that point of view, but I'm in the minority in the PC space. I want a game you can sit down with, pick up and play. [Role playing games], for example, got to where they had to have a book ship with the game.'"

Comments

Fun learning curves

[Empiric]

For me, the main question isn't whether the game is "simple", or "deep", it's how the learning curve is implemented in the game.

Going back to the original Doom, it was almost perfect in this regard. It hooked me with the first impression ("How are they *doing* this 3D perspective...?"--having messed with graphics routines in assembly *way* back, it was striking how impressive this was for the time) and kept me going with it's playability and pretty seamless introduction of the more complex aspects of the game (hidden areas, etc.). The game was fun regardless of how far you were into discovering all there was to it.

I can't really get into most games in this way. It's not that I can't learn what other games require up-front, it's that there's no real motivation for doing so when there are games like Unreal Tournament I can enjoy immediately. And games like Ultima, well... yes, you can advance your character by numerous non-adventuring methods, but it ends up being rather mundane IMHO. I may as well go to work at that point.

Personally, I think Heretic had a good feel for the right approach... there was a fair amount of depth there, but it was introduced as a natural extension of playing the game, rather than a required up-front learning curve. As an example from another game genre, Total Annihilation worked really, really well in this way too.

Surprisingly?

[HalB]

I don't see how this is surprising. Simplicity has always been key in the id games. When everyone else was doing "action" buttons, id still had you bumping into buttons to open doors.
This simplicity and accessibility has earned them fans who don't like complicated games - they just want to play.

Too complicated?

[NanoGator]

Hmm I dunno if complicated is the word I'd use. I do feel, though, that not enough attention is paid to the UI in many cases. I remember when Zelda 64 came out, I was shocked that Link would jump automatically just by walking to the edge. No more jump button. *Whew* I was happy about that. No more worrying about hitting the button at the right time.

I think Nintendo is one of the few companies who watches somebody play and says "What are the common mistakes they are making? What can we do to alleviate them?"

Re:Too complicated?

[startled]

"I remember when Zelda 64 came out, I was shocked that Link would jump automatically just by walking to the edge. No more jump button. *Whew* I was happy about that. No more worrying about hitting the button at the right time."

The correct answer is to eliminate long-distance, high penalty jumping puzzles. You know the type: jump at this exact pixel or you plummet to your death, and have to play half an hour to get back to it again (only to fail once more).

The entirely wrong answer is to create a character who loves leaping off of narrow bridges into vast pools of lava when hyper-caffeinated me slightly twitches the joystick to the right.

Good platformer: character runs up to the ledge, teeters, hangs off with his hands. If you wanted to jump, you woulda hit the jump button-- but you're no idiot and that's a giant lake of hot fucking lava.

Bad Zelda: Link runs near the ledge, preps himself, and swan dives into a lake of hot lava because Link's a giant fucking idiot.

If Nintendo wanted to get away from jump "puzzle" frustration, why'd they implement curvy narrow bridge over lava puzzles?

To bring this back OT: simplification can be good, but you always run the hazard of doing it wrong (or pleasing half of your audience, like you, and pissing off the other half).

It's all about choices

[unfortunateson]

To continue the RPG complexity discussion: Final Fantasy I, on NES, was a blast: you chose characters, picked from a small selection of spells, and in general wandered wherever you wanted.

The SNES FF's were less fun: they had static plots that had to be followed, and some battles that always went the same way. Yawn.

I stopped playing them at FF7: you had a bazillion choices on how to equip your character with crystals and things, but no choice on what to do next.

Fallout was fun, Fallout 2 had some corollary problems: So many choices that the character development was tedious.

Re:It's all about choices

[mabinogi]

The problem with the Final Fantasy series, is that the conplication went up, and they stopped being RPGs.

RPGs can sustain complication, Interactive Movies can't.....

I always cringe when someone releases a FF style game and calls it an 'RPG'.

It's an RPG if the player gets to play a role, not push someone else's character through a script, no matter how many experience points you can get.

Games have gotten a bit too complex to be fun

[DaLiNKz]

I agree. I play a MMORPG called "Legend of Mir". MIR2 was coded in delphi and operates at 800x600@8bit. Ironically, even after Mir3, which uses 3d acceleration and 16bit graphics, mir2 still holds as the top game in china. The reason really is because of the complexity. They added a large number of additions to mir3 take made the game much more difficult to play, much more to do simple tasks.. Its why only about 300,000 players in china play mir3 over the 700,000 on mir2.

Then again, mir2 totally flopped in English countries, but mir3 seems to hold promise. Maybe us americans and (the) brits rather complicated games? :) Personally I rather MIR2, but mostly because i'm lazy ;) (MIR2: http://www.mir2.co.kr (korean) - http://www.legendofmir.net (english) MIR3: http://www.mir3.co.kr (korean) http://www.legendofmir3.co.kr (no (official) english sites (though the server software has been leaked for months now)))

Simple games rule.

[tambo]

You know, when I look back at the thousands of games I've played, two distinct groups stand out.

There are the wildly ambitious ones (Star Control II, Zelda, Ultima Underworld, Alternate Reality, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night... even Dungeons of Daggorath - yeah, I'm 0ld-sk00l!), which are fun to play and revisit... but you wouldn't, y'know, sit down and play them for 20 minutes.

And then there are those simple but ridiculously fun games. Tetris, Bust-a-Move, Dance Dance Revolution, Scorched Earth, Discs of Tron, Minesweeper, Archon... really simple concepts, but you can lose frightening swaths of your life mastering your skills. It's not that they're oversimplified. They've just got a really rewarding learning curve.

One of the modern champions of the latter is PopCap, of course. I've spent ridiculous amounts of time playing Insaniquarium, to name but one.

- David Stein

Let the market decide

[FeloniousPunk]

Why the need for all the pseudo-intellectual debates on "whither gaming?" If Carmack and whoever else think that there's a demand for simple games, then they should build them. If there really is a strong demand for such games, he/they will make a lot of money (or even more money, in the case of Mr. Carmack). Meanwhile, other developers will make more complex games that appeal to other segments of the market, and make money that way. It's really quite simple.
Role playing games didn't "get to where you needed a book to play them." The ones he probably had in mind (I'm guessing the Baldur's Gate games) are based on a famous old pen and paper game that required MANY books to play, as far back as back in the day. There are a lot of people who like these sort of games (D&D has been around since the 70s) and sales certainly support their further development. The market for games is hardly monolithic and there is plenty of room for both simple and complex games.

First person shooters

[Ex-MislTech]

Well AFAIK , Carmack just makes first person shooters .

So he has been thinking mostly in one box .

RPG's are following a layout similar to paper
ADnD that was laid out close to 30 years ago .

RPG's are suppose to be somewhat thought prevoking
instead of a simple trigger happy gore fests .

Trigger happy gore fests have their place, but the
other genre by no means should be displaced, or
disrespected because it takes grey matter to play it .

The eccentricity of alternate worlds, and solving
the social and spatial puzzle is part of the endearing
quality of RPGers .

since when were books or PDF's/readme's a bad thing ???

Have we gotten too lazy to read to have fun ???

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

You are quite simply wrong

[LordZardoz]

Your comment is so painfully wrong that I cannot post my initial thoughts if I dont want to be labeled flamebait.

Todays current crop of gamers is largly composed of yester days crop of gamers. People like you, and myself, dont need to be sold on gaming as a viable hobby. The problem is that the games you and I like are not attracting any new gamers. Let me put this more plainly.

Everyone who wants to play complicated games is already doing so.

Further more, your understanding of the idea of simple games is way off. Carmack and Nintendo are not saying that we need to make games for the mentally deficient. They are saying that there is a shortage of games that you can just pick up and play for 5 or 15 minutes at a time.

As an example, take a serious look at Chu-Chu-Rocket (Dreamcast), or Super Monkey Ball (1 or 2, both on Game Cube). You dont need to play a 15 tutorial to figure out everything that you can do in the game. If your not brain damaged, you figure it out in about 3 minutes. Super Monkey Ball is especially good for this. You can literally hand it to any random person on the street and they will know basically what they are doing in 30 seconds. Can you say the same for Quake? Starcraft? Warcraft?

The Old School games that fit this are Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Asteroids, Space Invaders, and the like.

No one is going to pick up a game for the joy of feeling like an idiot.

END COMMUNICATION

Re:Today's players are too simple for the games

[HBI]

Now here we have a classic examples of a "the common people are so stupid" post. Its a variation of the often seen bandwagon post. In this instance, a reader sees a condescending remark about the intelligence of the average person and thinks, "You know, he's right, the common people are so stupid. Sigh". The sense of belonging and increased self-esteem are defense mechanisms. The poster posting the message and the reader agreeing with it are exhibiting subconscious methods of bravery in an uncertain world. By creating an artificial bond of perceived intellectual superiority, all involved gain a temporary confidence.

All true, but that does not negate the truthfulness of the parent poster's statement. The population is dumbed down. How it happened is more complex than just video games - the educational system played its part as well, but people are less well educated today than 25 years ago and it shows in their amusements.

Re:Today's players are too simple for the games

[HRbnjR]

By creating an artificial bond of perceived intellectual superiority, all involved gain a temporary confidence.

Oh, the irony of your post :)

Re:Today's players are too simple for the games

[Politburo]

Very hard to say. 25 years ago the personal computer didn't exist. The game console was in its infancy. It's practically impossible to compare entertainment of 25 years ago to today, and come out with a rational conclusion on the intelligence of the people.

Simplicity

[hackwrench]

There's simplicity and there's simplicity. A Gradius type game can have only one button for shoot and the navigation keys and still be more complicated than a game that has one button for picking up stuff, another button for opening treasure chests and another button for opening doors. There's interface complexity and then there's gameplay complexity. Both can make a game too difficult for the player.

interface design

[X_Caffeine]

3D engines aside, Carmack's real genius might be for interface design. His comments about about the game interface perfectly mirror those of people like usability guru Jakob Nielsen, the developers of the classic Mac OS, and even industrial designer Jonathan Ives: good design is made by simplifying and removing elements; less is more!

Carmack has replaced the "use" key in Doom 3 by making the targetting reticle "context-sensitive"; when the character is within arm's reach of a switch or door and the reticle is over it, the gun drops and an open hand hovers over the object. The "fire button" does exactly what you would expect.

This is the reason for Linux's failure to reach mainstream desktops, despite a GUI and window manager that is easily as good as Windows (and even in some ways superior to any version of the Mac OS). Rather than striving for intuitive design that doesn't need excess buttons and options, the designers of desktop software throw as much crap into the forms and menus as they can fit. LESS IS MORE

(note that I understand that advanced users should have the options they want access to; bury stuff that doesn't need to be used constantly and by most users in an advanced options dialog somewhere!)

Re:Today's players are too simple for the games

[Kirby-meister]

That's just stupid. Simple doesn't just exclude depth.

Something that is easy to pick up is not inherently shallow. Play a game like Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, Super Smash Bros Melee, hell even Tetris. Controls are simple to pick up, fun to play, easy to learn, but it is tough to master such games, and there is an extreme amount of depth hidden to be found by the not-so-remedial game players.

Easy to pick up, tough to master - a simple game that's fun to play. That's why today's "current crop" games seem to suck more ass than before.

The difference between a good player and a "remedial" one is not the ability to read a fucking manual to learn all 400 ways to buy an item - it is being able to pick up on all the rules one can "bend" or take advantage of very quickly while playing the game. Parent is stupid, next post please.

Re:Today's players are too simple for the games

[pyrrho]

>All true, but that does not negate the truthfulness of the parent poster's statement. The population is dumbed down. How it happened is more complex than just video games - the educational system played its part as well, but people are less well educated today than 25 years ago and it shows in their amusements.

I don't think so. I think that's an apparent effect. We are all just becoming more in contact with the uneducated and ignorance of others, the uneducated have more voice in the media, the ignorant have more ways to discuss their ignorance [/me looks around quick].

-MY- dad an uncle used to have fun by throwing knives at each other.

Now, Video Games... THOSE have been dumbed down.

He's right

[JavaLord]

today's games are too complicated and hard for players. Carmack, surprisingly, agrees, saying 'I agree strongly with that point of view, but I'm in the minority in the PC space. I want a game you can sit down with, pick up and play. [Role playing games], for example, got to where they had to have a book ship with the game.'"

He's right in a sense, I don't think that PC games are too hard for players to play I think they are too had for players to *WANT* to play.

It's not that people are stupid, it's that they don't want to be frustrated by something that should be fun. Games for the most part should follow the golden rule of "Easy to learn, difficult to master". The mastery should come from learning the game too, not just the UI. Nobody says "Hey, I finally didn't have to look at my cheat sheet/instruction book to remember the 25 key mappings for UT2020." No, they will usually say, "Hey I had my first perfect deathmatch, I won and didn't get killed once." (UT's user interface is fine BTW, I just used them as an example)

Shipped with books? Getting more complicated?

[Drakonite]

[Role playing games], for example, got to where they had to have a book ship with the game.'

Modern games have more documents included? Riiight...

Although not the first (video game) RPG, Final Fantasy for NES is definately among the early home video game RPG games. For those that didn't have that game or don't remember, it came with a rather thick manual, a couple of large poster charts with all of the weapons/armor/etc. listed on them, and IIRC a map.

Move on to the SNES era and you have game manuals which may have a short reference in the back, occasionally a short walk through of the first little adventure, and if you are lucky a map is included.

Now we are in the era of PS2 and XBOX.. All the RPGs I've played come with a small manual which explains the basic controls in a few pages (ten at most). The only exceptions are when they decide to pack the stradegy guide with the game (usually a while after the release as a marketing ploy..)

If you ask me it looks like RPG's are getting simpler and coming with less documents.

The problem is how RPGs used to be played by "RPG nerds" but are now being played by the "mainstream idiot" who can't figure out how to play a game without a stradegy guide which gives him step by step instructions for beating the game.

Re:This is Carmack we're talking about here.

[Elwood P Dowd]

You've got it backwards, pal.

Back then, it was essential to know the machine because otherwise you couldn't get a playable game out of it.

Now, due to the work of Carmack and the other nuts 'n' bolts guys, we can make games like GTA3, KOTOR, etc. and the designers won't really have to worry about whether the computer can keep up. They concentrate on plots, scripts, characters, and progression.

Anyone who thinks video games are going downhill simply isn't paying attention. And they're playing the wrong games.

Complex *CONTROLS* are bad, not complex *games*

[DunbarTheInept]

If the game *rules* are complex, there's nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all. That makes the game better. I'll take a good strategy game like Civilization any day over some console button-masher. And I don't just mean strategy either. I'll take a good game of Thief 1 or 2 or Deus Ex any day over a speedy button mashing fest like most other 3d shooters are, because for them (Theif/Deus Ex) the complexity was inside the gameworld, not out on your keyboard. What makes games suck are on consoles when you have to know that A+B+down will let you win, but A+B+diagonally down/left will kill you. That's not fun. I don't want a dexterity challenge. I want a tactical challenge.

Am I the only one who thinks the console-game controllers feel like they're designed for left-handed people? It takes much more manual dexterity to correctly move the stick or arrow keys the direction you want than it does to press one of four distinct buttons, so why does it put the task requiring better dexterity on the left-hand side? Why do *ALL* games do this? It makes me suck at them. On a stand-up arcade game, I do much better when I cross my arms and use the buttons with the wrong hands, since I don't need good dexterity to whap buttons but I do to move the stick. But that's not an option on console games.

The left-handedness of console controllers make me hate any console game which contains a dexterity-related challenge.

Re:Hes right....

[snillfisk]

Jokes aside, I like complex games because they make you think. Coming from science/engineering field I find challenging games more fun. Personally I think games are dumbed down and repetitive. I'm looking forward to Half-Life 2 because it is definitely going to be complex and entertaining. If Doom 3 is dumbed down, then it ain't for me...my little brother will probably enjoy it though.

There's a huge difference in making a complex game and making a game that makes you think; i really enjoy games that make me thing and promotes some sort puzzles and brain activity -- but I really don't want to spend 8 hours reading the manual before playing (even NWN seemed a bit excessive for me :>).. There is really no problem in making a game that makes you think without making a complex game. Pikmin for the gamecube is an excellent example .. it took about 3 minutes to understand completly, but it still made me have to think. Other games in the same genre would be the old "Castle of Dr. Brain" (maybe a bit simple these days), all Lucas Arts adventure games (great humor too!) and etc.

IE; there is no need for a complex game to make you think.

Re:Hes right....

[Sethb]

Yes, but simple games can make you think too. Take Tetris as an example, it's a game that's simple to learn, but difficult to master, and quick thinking, reflexes, and strategy are all rewarded. Because it's simple, it has a lot of fans.

While I own an Xbox, not a Gamecube, I think Nintendo is right here. Some of my favorite games of all time came out of Nintendo, and many of them are "simple". For instance, Mario Kart 64 is a masterpiece of gaming, and it is pretty easy to pick up, but hard to master, which is the hallmark of a good game.

That said, I'm playing Star Wars Galaxies right now, which is supremely complex, and I don't even understand a lot of it, though I've been playing for nearly two months. It's still fun, but I can't hand it over to my wife or my dad for 10 minutes, and expect them to appreciate it at all.

By comparison, my wife was hooked on Bust-A-Move in about 5 minutes, because the controls and rules are simple. My dad loves to play video games, if I play a game that has only a few buttons, he doesn't want to have to remember 40 combinations of buttons to play the game, so this is why he mostly likes racing games. Gas, Brake, Steer, Shift, okay, pretty simple, but the games certainly aren't easy.