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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.
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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.
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.
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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?
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.
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
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)
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.