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The Player's Bill of Rights
Gamasutra has a Designer's Notebook column up this week offering up a Player's Bill of Rights. Written by Ernest Adams, the article decries the many indignities that we as players should never be forced to suffer. From the article: "The Right to Feedback: The player has a right to know how she's doing, and in particular, to some means of determining if she's in danger of losing the game. If the player doesn't get feedback, she can't adjust her strategy, and the outcome will feel random. Players need to know whether their approach is working or not."
I disagree with that "right"--I still can't believe I'm replying to a post about a Player's Bill of Rights, only on slashdot. In some games, insulting and being insulted by NPCs is an important part of the game. Take Neverwinter Nights as an example. Depending on whether or not an NPC insults you or is ill-tempered, you might make different choices, ultimately causing a different outcome. Likewise, if you insult an NPC they may not be very helpful, which could change the outcome as well. Overall it was a good list of what should(n't) be done in a game. I especially liked the Right to Control Cut-Scenes, that's a must-have.
-William Brendel
Now, it's a different story if the product is advertised falsely in some way (e.g. a product's box says it can open Word documents when in fact it cannot).
If my computer meets the printed system requirements for a game, and the game crashes on my computer, the product is defective, right? How would the local corporate branch of your store chain react? I hope I don't have to take the issue to small claims court.
"The Right to Play." - Taste is like the bottom on this one (split). If the game promises gameplay and only have "intermission" videos then I'll be disappointed, but if I like stories and the game promises that I might enjoy it just like I enjoy a movie.
"The Right to Win." - I guess most of the offenders here are old shooter games with 100 or 255 levels of invading pixly monsters. Not sure if I have seen it in any new (big) games.
"The Right to Instructions." - I disagree about the "bad games, period." part here. I figured out Utopia K240 without instructions (read: I didn't own the manual *cough*), and a lot of other games, and they were very good games, I still play them. Most new games have pretty decent ingame tutorials/manuals or they are self explainatory due to the low complexity. I really miss games of K240's complexity. Just imagine what could be done with that concept today!
"The Right to Feedback." - I agree here, but I hope developers doesn't take this point as "Put as many numbers and bars floating over the head of the players as possible".
"The Right To Motivation." - I disagree. Adventure, Exile (2D game mind you), Zelda 1, Metroid 1 and ome older RPGs were good (appealing to me) just because they didn't herd and nanny you around. They just went like: "Here's a world and some stuff, have fun!". I remember first playing Zelda 1, walking straight to the first level right away. Maybe I was just lucky, or maybe the map design was so clever that it tilted me in that direction. It felt awesome finding it all by myself anyways.
"The Right to Make Decisions." - I agree with this one, especially the mole-whacking analogy. A shooting course with flat figures that pop up might be another fitting analogy. That's how I feel playing most games today.
"The Right to a Swift Death." - Exile (old 2D game) didn't kill off the player if things were hopeless. The player was responsible for his actions and didn't get nannied by the game. If it's impossible to mess up without dying the game is probably too limited for my taste. I'm not much for 65536 damage invisible forcefields.
"The Right To Control Cut-Scenes." - I think most people agree with this one. I think another should be added, namely the right to skip ESRB notices and stupid DVD menus, but that's a different discussion. I just wanted to RAGE a bit about that. I'm done.
"The Right to Quit, Pause, Save and Resume the Game." - This is a tricky one isn't it? Being able to save anywhere makes you behave sloppy, the game feels pointless cuz you feel you just can reload anyways, and you never get the same feeling of excitement when you're SO near killing the boss.
On the other hand it's very annoying having to repeat things when you die. There's a few other solutions, like a limited amount of 'save-coins' you can use, or the Exile approach where you just teleport, or the Nethack-ish 'permadeath', to mention a few. In anyway I don't think being able to 'save-state' anywhere is an ideal solution.
The Chair Corp. comic(*00-12)
> There isn't an elegant gender-neutral pronoun,
True enough
> and using 'he' is just not correct.
How is it incorrect? It's been in use as a language standard for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
I also have no problem using "she" from time to time -- or always.
Both are quite elegant to use, and both are easily understood as to applying to no person in particular when used in context.
The neo-cultural imperative to strip genderosity from language is a fraud perpetrated those eager to assume paternalistic authority all the while disclaiming otherwise.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Final Fantasy X
Not sure on this one, unless he means arcade-style games that don't have an end. Perhaps he's referring to games which have a bug that prevents finishing, none of which I've had the misfortune to encounter yet.
Mortal Kombat, Tekken, and other fighting games that make you figure out the combos by trial and error.
Bushido Blade
Sim City, Populous
Not sure, unless he means rhythm games like Parappa the Rapper or Space Channel Five
Sierra's Quest games (especially Space Quest) and any number of old adventure games.
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy games, Tomb Raider games, and lots of other console titles. Not to mention a horde of games based entirely on checkpoints. These are why at least one PS1 emulator comes with a "save state" function.
Checkpoint-only games like Killzone
Lots and lots of console games. Final Fantasy Tactics comes to mind. Non-console, X-Wing comes to mind.
Never encountered this, myself.
Right to Win Not sure on this one, unless he means arcade-style games that don't have an end. Perhaps he's referring to games which have a bug that prevents finishing, none of which I've had the misfortune to encounter yet.
I actually have played such a game that was reasonably recent, called Sanity: Aiken's Artifact. Rather than use pre-rendered cinematics, all interactions were done in-engine. It was probably a 15 or 20 hour game that I got through and beat the final boss. At this point, there was to be a final interaction, which would presumably show everything going right and so on, except for the bug that in this final interaction that hero was a touch too close to a cliff and would die during the conversation, thus making it so nobody could see the ending. Arrrrghhh!
I have always loved how the old 2nd Edition D&D manuals handled this. From the introduction (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Player's Handbook (1995), p9):
A Note About Pronouns
The male pronoun (he, him, his) is used exclusively throughout the AD&D game rules. We hope this won't be construed by anyone to be an attempt to exclude females from the game or imply their exclusion. Centuries of use have neutered the male pronoun. In written material it is clear, concise, and familiar. Nothing else is.
This is a sig. Deal with it.
I was interested in Advent Rising because of Orson Scott Card and downloaded it to see if I could handle the perspective. Sadly, about fifteen minutes into it, I started to feel terrible. There was no demo to try out, nor could I buy the game and return it if I felt sick. So, sadly, I completely deleted the game.
I feel morally justified in what I did, but are there any developers out there who feel otherwise? The fact that I now get sick after playing 1st and 3rd person games means that I generally stay away from the genre (Battlefield 2 being the exception, as I seem to be okay playing that), but I legitimately wanted to try it out to see what its effects would be on me. Assuming that I'm not a bald-faced liar (hey, it's the Internet and anything's possible), how do game devs feel about the above situation?
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Instructions: While technically any game came with a manual, I can think of several which came with piss-poor manuals, including one whose manual seemed to be made for a completely different game. It described stuff that didn't even exist in the game, or didn't work even vaguely like in the manual. I can only assume that they made the manual at a very early point, and changed their mind about half the design by the time they finished it.
Winning: I can think of a lot of games which, while technically weren't impossible to win, felt a need to throw some massive tantrum at you at some point, that was out of your control and nigh impossible to recover from.
E.g., try playing China in EU2. Everything is fun and games until the 1600's, when the game suddenly throws some scripted events at you that raise dissent sky-high and drop your stability in the basement. I mean so high that you literally can't recruit an army any more, and your tax income drops massively. Any conquests you did to that point _will_ be lost, as everyone revolts, _and_ the only way to stabilize the country into something even vaguely playable at that point is to basically move the army out of the capital and hope the rebels kill your government.
While technically it doesn't necessarily mean you've "lost", it sure feels that way.
Or take "Crusader Kings" where, since you're playing a dynasty as opposed to a country, if one of your emperors doesn't have sons your game may well be over. Literally. (Or some other unpleasantries, like finding yourself allowed to continue playing as the Baron of East Bumfuckistan, instead of the empire you've worked on building so far.)
In both cases we're talking stuff that's basically outside the player's control. E.g., in EU2 all that condensed nastiness in the 1600's is on timed scripts. It doesn't matter if you're the best emperor ever and your population loves you, it doesn't matter if your policies don't reflect the historical causes of those revolts, you _will_ have those and your work _will_ be undone as your empire crumbles before your eyes. It will happen no matter what you do, and even if you had any feedback in advance (but you don't) you couldn't prevent it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The best solution is the nethack solution. You can quit & save whenever you want, but you can only load it once. i.e, it's not save per se but rather stand-by.
At least for parts where you usually don't have any save spots, it will solve the problem. For the save points, it can be allowed to save and load how many times you'd like, as expected from a save point.
^_^
I think this article is silly but brings up a few interesting points. I do disagree with the "Right to Instructions" however. I think too many games these days have annoying hand-holding tutorials that the player is forced to endure for up to the first couple of hours of the game. Fable is a good recent example of this.
I really think that with some forethought, many games could be designed to allow the player to learn how to play the game without handholding. An obvious example is to simply make things easier on the player at first - avoiding allowing opportunities for any major player decisions or actions early in the game that can severely stunt or otherwise negatively affect the player's progression later on. I remember playing Arcanum and not being able to leave the first town because I hadn't concentrated on any one skillset enough to get past the goons guarding the exit - I'd have had to start the whole game over and lose a couple hours of gameplay.
I can live with optional tutorials, but it's my opinion that they're still indicative of a lack of good game design. I think the best approach is to include a manual and just make the game a little more forgiving in the beginning without doing any overt handholding. Draw the player into the world instead of destroying the immersion with silly tutorials.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
I have the right not to be subjected to female third-person pronouns when the antecedent is of indeterminant gender.