Slashdot Mirror
Should Gamers Use Smarter Problem-Solving?
Thanks to the IGDA for its 'Culture Clash' column exploring the effect of technical and gameplay advances on videogame problem-solving. A situation regarding Deus Ex: Invisible War is discussed, where "...testers approached a T intersection: to the right were laser tripwires and gun turrets; to the left was a locked door; and directly in front was a (usable) window. He said every single one of them, without fail, went to the right." The author explains: "One can imagine how frustrated developers must occasionally get when they watch gamers consistently employ Neolithic problem solving tactics when modern development tools make much more advanced techniques available." Is this a problem that developers or gamers should work to overcome?
I like some of the ideas that are put forth in the article, but I think that people will gladly come up with new and interesting ways to succeed in games as the physics and AI models become increasingly complex.
My blog
I would assume that many gamers have been "trained" by linear games that the path requiring them to defeat various obstacles is the correct one, Otherwise why would the developers have spent the time populating that path with turrets and tripwires?
I think a similar test with non-gamers might have very different results, many gamers have a subconscious feel for how the designers want levels to flow, and most games reward that type of thinking.
Until games that encourage multiple solutions and alternate styles of play (stealth vs. shooting, etc.) are the norm I think the gamers can't be held responsible for dealing with problems in predictable ways.
The problem is that 90% of games require the "tripwire and turret" approach because they have no alternatives. Then, when a game offers such a choice, many players may not even recognize the options. They're so trained to go down the hallway with guns blazing that they don't realize there's a stealthier approach.
Of course, that was one of the great aspects of Deus Ex. There were typically multiple solutions to a puzzle, if you just looked hard enough. We just aren't used to looking for alternate solutions, since most of the time there aren't any.
Games are for entertainment. They are not used as tools to help improve problem solving skills. If game developers didn't like the fact that gamers make these kinds of decisions, then the developers shouldn't even make the option to "turn right."
Sure, it's easy enough to blame the testers. But let's face it, how many times have you had to find a "secret switch" of some sort in order to get through something in a game? It's maybe a slightly irregularly colored brick, or a knob on a bed, or a hairline door-shaped-crack in a wall. Or maybe it's something that's not even noticeably useful until u put the mouse cursor over it, like a candlestick.
What I'm saying is that if every door in the level is useless, you probably won't bother messing with the door right near you, either. And if all the windows are useless, you become unaccustomed to checking them as well.
In a game like Deus Ex, the level itself is your interface. There's no more reason to click on seemingly useless objects in-game than there is to try mashing all the vowels on the keyboard simultaneously every 7 seconds for an hour "just to see what happens". It's a waste of the player's time. And, if the level design isn't at least slightly clear (and a 100% decision rate amongst playtesters to take the "obvious" route indicates that it's not) then the designers are wasting their precious time as well.
This sig was blatantly stolen from someone else.
Hmm, something I just thought of: why would such a protected installation have a perfectly usable window there allowing intruders to gain entry?
Anyway, the key should be that as games continue to expand the range of what is possible in their system they must help the users discover and explore these new possibilities.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
Really this behavior is a byproduct of is the fact that in any game, there are almost never any useless items or empty hidden rooms.
I would have gone through the window, and then I would have come back and done the other 2 doors as well because I can't be sure that the developers didn't put something I am going to need or some secret mission objective beyond one of those obstacles. Gamers respond to the laws of the game world and the law of the game world says phat loot is always behind the most difficult to open best guarded door.
Put up a sign that says "do not push this button" and tell me how many out of 20 leave the button alone.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
I just thought of the obvious solution.
Give them a time limit, and let them know that they have to rush. Then they'll take the path of least resistence - e.g. the window.
Part of the solution is to understand the game's audience. As many people have already stated, most gamers are trained to go for the NPCs to kill, or explosives to disable/sneak around, rather than for the (seemingly) easier solution. There are of course, audiences who would be more interested in problem solving. Such games as ATITD (www.atitd.net) have gameplay that would break down if the player base was that of normal MMOGs. ATITD, instead, has drawn a large audience of people who enjoy crafting and developing, and most importantly, working together with other players, and do not mind the lack of fighting. If the Deus Ex 2 developers wanted to get people to do more problem solving or exploring, they should have targetted the FPS audience less than those that enjoy theif, or perhaps fans of action-oriented adventure games (if there are any...)
1. The door on the left is the locked door, the player decides to open it. However instead of finding what hes looking for he find a room full of guards, some items he doesn't want, or simply failed to open the lock.
2. The window is straight ahead, and the player jumps through. However the height it too great and the guy takes damage from the fall, finds himself back at the beginning of the stage, or has actually jumped three rooms ahead and landed in the middle of 10 guards who were supposed to appear in grounds of 3 or 4 in the previous rooms. (Try playing any of the Hitman games and taking alternative paths/actions while killing seemingly random guards and that patrol that always annoyed you might not appear because you already killed them.)
3. The guy goes to the right having a 90% idea of whats going to happen and what the developers have setup in that hallway, the obvious and maybe a few guards that magicly appear and come through the door at the end of the hall.
The reason everyone takes the path with the turrets is simple: we have been conditioned thoroughly by prior experience.
... but that, that one door... you can explode. Of course. WHAT WAS I THINKING.
In every single other game where you have an intersection like that, the locked door's key is always after the turret area (having to return to points breaks up the walking a straight line feeling); the openable window at best leads to a small enclosure where I fight two or three guys to get at a medkit - I'm already at full health or I'm a maschoist, either way, I scorn your medkit window.
You want me to try blowing my way through doors, article writer? I do. After going through the turret area. Why? Because as a function of my time, 99% I'm going down that turret alley anyway for the key, that 1% of doors someone was bright enough to say, "Let's have them expend all their ammo testing which weapon and how many rounds thereof will be required to 'unlock' this door, it'll be clever," aren't exactly a silent majority there, presidentio.
As a simple (and I'm sure soon to be much maligned) example, take the Final Fantasy series. How often is the player provided choices? How significant is their impact on the game? Did you say to Bubba, "Man, I hate those pesky Killas." and go on the story arc that resulted in the village being burned to the ground? Or did you simply get a slightly different irrelevent conversation 10 gameplay hours later?
The problem has never been players unable or unwilling to experiment. It has been the glorious failure of one time gimmicks that trained us to shun experimentation. Oh, there's one door on level 17, third floor, fifth turn that you explode. Every other door on the level opens with a scripted event, key at the end of a turret infested alley,
Look, man. We've figured it out. You've got lots of dead ends, and those turrets aren't there screaming, "Wrong way!" The problem isn't gamers and our lack of problem solving ability. It's consistancy. Look at Metroid Prime. Every door I can remember that exploded under X circumstances looked the same (or had the same tell tale, or whatever). Imagine if none of the doors were marked. You don't need to fix gamers, man. You need to fix developers. CONSISTANCY. AFFORDANCES. STUDY HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION.
When I play games I try to cover an entire contiguous area before moving through a door into another. I don't want to trigger a boss battle or a level exit knowing that part of the level is still unexplored, and in the worst case now permanently inaccessible. In the case of the article, even though the right path might have been difficult and straightforward, it might have looked like less of a commitment. I would have taken it just to see where it led. Once I saw it all I would decide whether I wanted to go back and jump in the window, or take the door I found at the end of right path. Forks in the path of the game are cool, but I can't resist exploring both branches as far as possible before making my decision.
Give bonus points depending on how well they adapted. Have a door with tripwires on the other side so that you can't see them. Have a vent, easy to see but not necessarily notice, that lets you get in the room unharmed, killing the guards who are facing the wrong way with a silenced gun. Make AIs hesitate if you turn up unexpectedly. Give the player low health so that if you enter a room full of enemies from the door they blow your head off, but if you enter silently from the ceiling fan you can take them out before they have a chance to react. Put the best power-ups where you aren't likely to find them - like the 'Secret areas' in Jedi Knight and Jedi Outcast (among others, probably), but actual paths so that you can skip a hard part. Make them feel rewarded (even if they don't actually get rewarded - in Jedi Outcast getting secret areas was pointless, but it says how many you got, and that makes you want to improve) when they use their brains instead of charging in, and they'll leave the tripwires well alone.
I'm sorry, but this seems like Ion Storm's fault. They hired testers from a certain breed of gamers, the "casual hardcore gamers"; the type of gamer that spends a large amount of time with only a select few games, usually the most popular games at that.
If they had found people that had played similiar games, such as the original Deus Ex, Thief, or even Half Life, then 60 percent of the Thief gamers would go through the window while 80 percent of the Deus Ex and Half Life fans would have gone after the locked door expecting an item.
I'm sorry but multiple paths isn't a new conecpt, it was around in the oringal Deus Ex and Thief games, about 4 years ago. Invisible war being a sequal, I don't expect multiple solutions, I require that.
My personal problem with Invisible War was that the branching was pointless. All branches were shallow and did not require any special skills or abilities. If I'm given the option of blazing guns verse stealth I expect that choice to follow me for atleast 15 minutes, not the 30 seconds it takes to get past that one point. I wanted to feel like my actions defined the character, not always take the path of least resistance and then double back and make sure that nothing was missed with the second path that joined with the first after one room.
It's because many of the gamers of today were trained very poorly. The games they played through their childhood were like Resident Evil or Goldeneye. I played those too, but I was older then. I had been trained on things like Metroid, Mario 3 and Zelda. You know, before you knew where every secret was you bombed every wall, shot every guy, flicked every combination of switches.
Back in the day games required you to have advanced problem solving skills to win. In this day and age of arbitrary gaming and strategy guides it is very difficult to make a game that actually requires thinking. I'm glad the people are trying though, because that's my kind of game.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
And lots of games don't let you shoot out windows and go through them. If you want to let people do this, make it clear in the tutorial, or make it the only way to get through a section earlier in the game.
If you really want to make people go through the window and not through the war zone, make the war zone so incredibly difficult that nobody can get through. Eventually, people will look for another way.
I would take the laser tripwires path because I know when I'm being herded: the game continues in the direction that's the most-defended, everything else is always a dead-end. :)
I am sick of locked doors, unscalable short piles of office furniture, and unbreakable glass. I have grenades, you have technology. Stop making things indestructable! For gods' sake, I have a fucking CROWBAR, shouldnt I be able to pry something open?
As "interactive" and "dynamic" as half-life 2 claims to be, I know that it doesnt matter that "if it looks like wood, it splinters like wood!", because I'll still be herded along an unavoidable path full of enemies and scripted events. I would appreviate having the alternative method of reaching the end of the level by way of obliterating the entire building, thank you.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
First question: if I enter the T to examine the window, will I come under fire from the turrets?
Second question: Can I look through the window into the room beyond without breaking/opening it? I've not played Deus Ex, but in some games windows can be astonishingly opaque until smashed open.
In a fire situation, you neutralize the threats you can see first, then you look for the threats you couldn't see at first.
Here's roughly how I'd approach something like this:
At this point, if I start taking fire from the turrets I will HAVE to deal with them. IF this is how the setup worked it is little wonder most people dealt with the turrets first!
www.eFax.com are spammers
They removed the skill system. If every character is the same, the player will natually decide to take the way that is the most challanging or the most rewarding. If they still had a skill system than the player would most likely take the way that is most fitting to their character.
While they might have done it with good intent (to give the player all the choices all the time), the choice itself loses meaning and the player becomes frustrated that he can't see where the other paths lead to (unless he reloads and trys out all three of them - which is probably also not what Ion Storm had in mind).
I'm saddened to hear this complaint comes from Warren Spector. The obvious solution to the particular problem is to introduce or foreshadow ways through the door on the left in prior levels. This doesn't have to be (and probably shouldn't be) a seperate tutorial level, but can come in the forms of some hinting descriptive text on an item, or dialogue/demonstration from another NPC.
One of the primary roles of good game design is teaching the rules of the game / game world. Poor game design, as in the example, ignores this and hinges on the idioms and habits prior games.
What I hope to see in the future is management of the knowledge with a player mental model. Every time a game rule is described/demonstrated/achieved, the mental model takes notice. With this info, a game manager can make sure that the player is both knowledgable enough to attempt the next challenge, as well as checking that the player isn't so familar with the problem concepts as too be bored. When the gap between current and required knowledge is too great, the game manager has a checklist of skills to teach. These could then trigger mini-games, sub-plots, cut scenes, or new quests.
Further, you could extend the player mental model from just a skills check list into statistics of habits. Depending on the designer's bent, you could use this to encourage diversity (offer better rewards in non-standard routes), specialization (aggressive action receives offensive tools), provide bottleneck challenges (aggressive action leeds to a lockpicking bottleneck), and even attempt player matching in online games.
The long term outlook is to design a system that can keep players entertained even in the most open of worlds such as the massively multiplayer persistent online worlds.
Anm
PS - hire me.
In this example, I don't blame the players for choosing the laser/turret route -- after all, the hallway, though obviously deadly, is logically passable.
Most games don't have a full interactive environment where doors and windows can be used. How many times have you gone through game levels with structures full of obviously fake, useless doors? Or played a game that has useable doors, the majority of which are purposely and permanently locked?
Windows are often just (you're looking for a pun here, aren't you?) wall candy. Most games don't allow you to open or use open windows, so why bother? I think that's something gamers have learned over time. Avoid wasting time on Windows, it's useless.
Programmmers and level designers don't have the time or resources to make completely detailed levels with useable doors/windows. Most are rushed to the market ASAP to satisfy some parent company's money hunger-- so who has time to make real, working levels?
Maybe we've learned to live with limited-environment games to the point where we look for the obvious 'working' door, the hidden switch, or even the linear route. (linear... that's a different topic)
A convenient window, a straight forward locked door, or a heap of lazers and turrets that wouldnt be there unless they were defending something. The turrets win because the route that is most apparently "defended" actually is very likely to be the one with the best bounty and is least liable to have nasty surprisesas punishment for taking the easy option. If there is any better route it will be another one that is only there like a reward - a barely visable ledge or a guard you might have helped earlier who might disable the lazers or whatever.
Games have a habit of punishing for taking the easy way, and rewarding the difficult acheivement. This is actually much liked, gaming is for fun and players want to be in control at least so they have informed decisions. Everyone wants to take the hard way and wants to get the best bounty from doing so.
When I am employed on a project, I work a lot. When I come home, I like to unwind playing games a bit. Maybe I'm missing the point, but sometimes I just don't _want_ to solve a problem the subtle, elegant way--I played Deus Ex once, and after being told that it was possible to solve it without firing a shot, I resolved to finish the game in as violent, confrontational a manner as possible.
Why? Pure fun. From listening to friends who finished it, I believe there are plenty of intelligent, thinking gamers out there who will not put their head through the wall figuring out how to finish a game. Not me--that's (usually) not my style. I like the fact that less ham-handed ways of solving games are available, for the rare times when I feel like doing the intellectual thing, but usually, well, thag smash crush.
That said, Deus Ex 2 licked the sweat from a dead man's b***s. The plot, the dialogues, the voice acting, the characters were cheesy and contrived and the developers should look to themselves before criticizing the gamers. Maybe the people blowing up the turrets were just annoyed that they'd just spent 40 bucks on such a crappy game?
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
For so many years games were designed around the fact that you have to shoot your way through everything... not climb out windows.
Sure games like Splinter Cell and such require you to do that, but still.
Can't expect someone to shoot their way through 30 terrorists, throwing gernades, maybe even pulling out a knife to finish a few off.... then opt to climb out a window just because there's more resistance.
It's just a conflict of game play.
I agree with this post completely. In fact, I've found myself with conflicting decision making in games lately, as they get more and more sophisticated. I think we're at a crossroads in game realism where the conflict for the player is thinking like the character youre simulating in the virtual world, and thinking like the game designer (which historically has been the correct way to think--how many times have I seen something slightly "interesting" in a rather linear game, have checked it out, and sure enough it turned out to be a "hidden bonus" type of situation?).
Should we be playing games like we are simulating an alternate world reality? Or should we be thinking like the game designers and level layout designers?
Is it a sign of flawed game design if players are not inherently thinking like the character they are playing should?
The fact that they went right in Deux Ex 2 was because they were disappointed and frustrated by a game that wasnt anything like as good as it's forebear.
I think game developers should stop worrying about this kind of rubbish and get to worrying about making games entertaining and enthrawling again. The very fact that this sort of thing gets a story is a blatant sign of the times. All is not peachy in the game industry. Give us some novel and interesting games, please.
All things being equal, my bet would be that the window completely lacks what Don Norman calls "affordances": indications that a thing can be used, for what purpose it may be used, and how one should go about using it. Is the window open, or at least half open? Is there some appealing path or alluring object visible beyond the window?
This is the sort of thing game designers need to take into account, but too often they rely on trial-and-error gameplay or "herding" to direct the player.
Yes, the level is, to some extent, the interface, but more than that; it is an unfamiliar environment that require certain thing to be taught.
So, if you want the player to be aware of his choice of sneaky window vs. hallway of death, you introduce the player to the window concept earlier in the game, by giving them a situation where the window is the only choice.
This is what play testing is for. Find the problem, then fix the problem.
What were you expecting?
"...testers approached a T intersection: to the right were laser tripwires and gun turrets; to the left was a locked door; and directly in front was a (usable) window. He said every single one of them, without fail, went to the right."
Do you have any idea how many games I've played where "going to the right" really was the only option to the player, how many game publishers I've had to deal with that believe that a game has to do nothing more than be time-consuming to be any fun? How many times have you come to a difficult spot in a game, told yourself "There's got to be an easier way to do this," looked around, and found no easier way?
If the publishers want gamers to use more subtle solutions they should put those subtleties into their games more consistently. In the example given, I wouldn't be surprised if the window wasn't used because it was the only time such a simple solution was put into the game at all, a gesture for the programmer to say "Ooh, look! I'm clever!" before going back to giving us nothing but hack-and-slash.
I refuse to play Deus Ex: Invisible War until some unfixable flaws are fixed. (Read: unlikely anytime soon)
But from what I can gather, using experience from the first game, which I beat, that I'd want to take out the turrets before they became active and see what special item is over there. In Deus Ex 1 there were a waste of empty rooms and pointless windows, so the developers themselves have no one to blame but themselves.
What the industry needs is some blue-sky investment: creative endowments, personal stipends, etc. Either this, or a breakdown of the current "distributocracy".
Not to go left or right, but why you chose to go the way you did.
Games = Entertainment, & fantasy The testers may have taken the Right-hand path, exploring the most extreme of the 3 fantasy choices. Players play games to escape reality temporarily, and the further you stray from the "norm" the logical conclusion could be: The more extreme the fantasy choice, the further from "norm" you can achieve. Also, there have been many studies on the movement patterns of people inside complex environments. For example, an Apple computer store, is based on the concept of the shopper moving right 1st, and chilling around the store. (It's sort of like traffic patterns... we drive on the right side of the road) I'm willing to bed that all of Ion Studios testers were Americans (seeing how they're based in Austin Texas), and we've apparently been culturally trained. Theoretically this could be applied just as easily to video games. These could each stand on they're own, or combined to explain certain play-testing patterns. (This would make a good study)
I also often take the longest path through a level just to pick up the free stuff, design, jokes or extra riddles that may be there. I avoid the straight-forward solution because I know it is a path I will not return from to check out the other stuff.
..
Of course, it gets kind of pointless to carry those 40 antipoisons around till after the final showdown
Of course, people should have checked out the door and the window, but only if the game offers them ways to switch off turrets, or avoid them - but in this case you usually get a hint, for example you see the lever through a bulletproof glass window, or some NPC tells you about it.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
JC knew he was in trouble when UNATCO personnel refused to die, dispite his best sniper efforts and his ingenious LAM in the toilet trick.
I once had a roommate that managed to convince an entire Half-Life free for all that violence wasn't necessary. He maanged to get the the whole group to stop shooting, and dance on the extra-large table in the 'Rats' map. It was hilarious watching a dozen people swat their crowbars in a strange ritualistic dance.
Of course, my roommate proceeded to simultaneously blow them all to hell with a single rocket 2 minutes later. But it was funny while it lasted.
--LordPixie
Obviously if gamers see the danger, and in masses go towards it, then clearly that's what they WANT to do. This isn't quantum physics, there is no rewards for genius. The best case you cleverly jump the tripwire and blast the turrets in mid air (massage that ego baby), the worst is you die and start over. Eventually if he can find no way to action hero it, the gamer may try to figure out the door or window.
If I'm playing an FPS type of game (one that requires twitch and speed) then that's all I want to do. Otherwise i'll play an adventure game with a better story and more time to smell the roses.
they don't use the window because breaking and entering is illegal
Face it - forever and forever, gamers have been conditioned to believe that the greater the risk, the greater the reward.
If a hallway is empty, chances are nothing is important down it. Exploring it is largely meaningless.
If you see a spot where some massive split-second jumping timing is required to get to, past lots of nasties, there's a REWARD at the end. If you see the tripwires and all the crap you have to disarm, it's viewed as an indication that the developers WANT you to go that way.
The presence of a thousand signposts, saying "GO THIS WAY TO THE END OF THE LEVEL", would mean nothing if the opposite hallway was filled with traps/grunts/stuff to blow up - we will, by conditioned nature, want to find out what reward the programmers have put in should we manage to get past their little fun-obstacle.
Deus Ex games were always fundamentally different. I remember using up half a dozen resources in a couple places, to wind up with... a lousy box of bullets. But Deus Ex games are the EXCEPTION.
Modern gamers have been conditioned to linear gameplay, where taking the route of most resistance is the obvious choice. The trick, now, is to condition them (with games like Thief, Hitman, and Deus Ex for starters) that the EASIEST choice should be the first one.
As everyone else has pointed out, there are a variety of reasons to go right instead of left: the door might be locked and they may believe the key to be behind the turrets; the window may be unbreakable; the door conceals potential unknown baddies, while the path to the right is in plain sight; and so forth.
The developers are, in a limited extent, gods. They will create this virtual world in a short period of time, comparable to the biblical story of creation. If you want to uphold the biblical parallel, the testers are the Adams and Eves of this new virtual world. Much as god was displaeased at the taking of the apple, the devs are displeased with the taking of the turreted path.
You've got two choices: direct herding (walls/fences, obvious impenetrable obstacles, the dreaded inivisible wall, a giant demon with six heads that instakills you on sight), or information.
In an ideal game the door is opened a little bit or is maybe off its hinges or has a corner blown off or the like, and you can see a light on inside. You whip out your pocket binocs and you don't see anyone inside through the window, so then you make some noise.
This is an option that is seldom presented in games. You can't usually yell, or throw things, or spit on things, or the like. (In the games where you can, it usually achieves little or nothing) It was a while, if you recall, before developers got a handle on the whole "crouching" thing. Your character's basic actions are quite limited, no matter how lifelike he may look and appear.
So, back to the ideal game: You should be able to at any time take any part of your inventory and throw it. In this case, you would throw an extra clip at the door of the room in an attempt to knock it open and attract the attention of any baddies inside, while you cautiously take aim at the door.
If nobody comes, you enter the room. If people come, you open fire.
I'm thinking that they want you to go into the room to the left because there's a switch to disable the turrets on the right. They may indeed need some smarter testers, but they need better possibilities in the game, and they need a way to expose those possibilities to the user.
One option is a "companion character" that accompanies you for the first level and does all the different things that are possible in a situation where you can get an onscreen tip on how to replicate the behavior. That's how you breed some smarter testers, just by building their training into the game's first level.
Then, if these testers were getting into a turret/door scenario on, say, level 3, they should know what to do. Ideally, level 1 and 2 would use the same map, but level 2 in reverse so you can do all of those interactions again towards some functional usefulness so that you're prepared for what the game can offer you by level three. Make the onscreen tips optional past level 3, mandatory on the easiest difficulty.
Your companion character says, "Through the window there, isn't that Tony?" Onscreen tip says "Direct your center of attention (the crosshairs) to the windows and press B to use your binoculars."
Your companion character says "Quiet, listen." OSD says "Direct your center of attention down the hall and press Q to listen."
If people aren't briefed on the mechanics of the game before hand, the game's mechanics will initially be, in their minds, either identical to every other game they've played, or an average of all games they've played recently. If they've just come off a strong binge on a particular game, you're in trouble; in that case, they're predisposed to a certain set of game mechanics, and without proper information they will only interact with the world around them on the level applicable to those game mechanics.
In short: Better on-screen with information about gameplay tactics as well as game functionality. Developer's fault. Better instruction = smarter world inhabitants.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.